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"Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves Arkansas Narratives, Part 7"

That was on Jim Holbert and Lard Moore's
place. Them was two different men and two different places--plantations.
They whipped their slaves a good deal--always beating down on somebody.
They made their backs sore. Their backs would be bleeding just like they
cut it with knives. Then they would wash it down with water and salt.
"On my master's farm, each one cooked in his own cabin. While the hands
were working, my master left one child, the largest, stay there and
taken care of the little ones.
"They had bloodhounds too; they'd run you away in the woods. Send for a
man that had hounds to track you if you run away. They'd run you and bay
you, and a white man would ride up there and say, 'If you hit one of
them hounds, I'll blow your brains out.' He'd say 'your damn brains.'
Them hounds would worry you and bite you and have you bloody as a beef,
but you dassent to hit one of them. They would tell you to stand still
and put your hands over your privates. I don't guess they'd have killed
you but you believed they would. They wouldn't try to keep the hounds
off of you; they would set them on you to see them bite you. Five or six
or seven hounds bitin' you on every side and a man settin' on a horse
holding a doubled shotgun on you.
"My old miss's sister hired slave women out to old Jim Holbert once.


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