Adeline White
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"I's born at Opelousas and my massa and missis was Dr. Bridget and his wife. They was mean and they beat us and put the hounds after us. They beat the little ones and the big ones and when massa ain't beatin' his wife is. It am continual. My pappy call Thomas Naville and my mammy 'Melia Naville. They was born in Virginia. I had four brothers and two sisters, all dead now.
"Like I says, old massa sho' whip us and when he whip he put us 'cross a barrel or chain us and stake us out with a rope. We didn't have much to eat and not much clothes. They weave us clothes on the loom and make the dress like a sack slip over the head.
"Our cabin wasn't so bad, made of logs with dirt 'tween the logs. The chimney make out of sticks and dirt and some windows with a wooden shutter and no glass in 'em. Massa give 'em lumber and paint to make things for the house and they have homemake bed and table and benches to sit on.
"Massa have the hoss power cotton gin and a hoss power sugar cane mill, too. Us work hard all day in the gin and the sugar cane mill and doesn't have no parties nor fun. Sometimes in the evenin' us git together and talk or sing low, so the white folks won't hear.
"I 'member going through the woods one time and seein' somethin' black come up 'fore me. It must a been a ghost. I got a boy call' Henry what live in Welch and he kin see ghosties all the time. He jus' look back over he lef' shoulder and see plenty of 'em. He say they has a warm heat what make him sweat.
"Old massa didn't go to the war and his boys was too little. We jus' heared about the war and that it was goin' to free us. In the night us would creep out way in the woods and have the prayer meetin', prayin' for freedom to come quick. We has to be careful for if massa find out he whip all of us, sho'. We stays nearly all night and sleeps and prays and sleeps and prays. At las' we hears freedom is on us and massa say we are all free to go, but if we stay he pay us some. Most of us goes, for that massa am sho' mean and if we doesn't have to stay we wouldn't, not with that massa.
"We scatters and I been marry twice. The first man was Eli Evans in Jennings, in Louisiana and us have six chillen. The second man he James White but I has no more chillen. Now I lives with my gal what called Lorena and she make me happy. She sho' good to her old mammy, what ain't much good no more."
