Review of Mighty Rough Times, I Tell You

To get salt to go in your bread in slavery, well, they would dig up the dirt where the fresh meat hung over and had been dripping salt, and would boil this to get the salt. They would get and parch sweet potato peelings to make coffee. You-all are blessed children; you are living on flowery beds of ease. I would to God sometimes that I was able to express myself. Mr. Reed, in "A Negro Has Got No Name" - pg 25

One time, they had a beef killed for General Forrest's regiment, but somehow or other Forrest didn't get there to eat that meat, and it begin[^6] to spoil, and they was feeding the slaves that then. I couldn't stomach it, and one day I told Master that I had to quit work 'cause I was starving to death, and that I might as well die one way as the other. He asked me what was the matter, that the other slaves was eating all right. I told him I couldn't stand that meat, that I just couldn't stomach it. He carried me to the house and fed me from their table. Mr. Chapman, in "We Didn't Know Nothing Else But Slavery" - pg 31

I think I's 107 years old. Was born in Williamson County 'fore the Civil War. Guess the reason I have lived so long was 'cause I took good care of myself and wore warm clothes and still do, wear my yarn petticoats now. Have had good health all my life. Have took very little medicine, and the worst sickness I ever had was smallpox. I's been a widow about seventy years. Precilla Grey, in "I Got Many a Whipping" - pg 33

Then we came back. I don't know how long that was before the war broke out, but we stayed with the same white people until the war ceasted[^7]. Now, you know what happened then. They told us we were free, but of course we didn't know where to go nor nothing. Vergy, in "I Was Four Years Old When I Was Put on the Block" - pg 36

I'm about played out now. Yes, I like to look at the ladies sometimes. I don't get out much now. Last night was a cold night, wasn't it? I expect I am the oldest man in Nashville. Nearest we can come to making out my age, I am 'bout 120 years old. I don't know it exactly 'cause when the war broke out they lost the Bible [slaves' birth dates were customarily recorded in the Bible of their white family.][^8] name unknown, in "I Expect I Am the Oldest Man in Nashville" - pg 43

I remember the first streetlights in Nashville. When the lamp man would come round and light the lamps, they would yell out, "All is well!" And I also remember the Southern money going out and Yankee money going in, and also when there wasn't any coal here, and everything was wood, and most of the town was in the woods. Patsy Hyde, in "I Never Worries No Matter What Happens" - pg 49