Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, Volume 3, Number 1, January 1993 Page: 4
This periodical is part of the collection entitled: Texas Cultures Online and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Nesbitt Memorial Library.
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Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal
eating. My mother would make weak ashes lye at night, [and] put it in corn meal to sour.
[The] next morning my sister would take it to her mother who cooked for the field hands.
Grandmother Patsy would give mother's children half of that risen bread. Slaves was
given so much a week. If their ration did not last a week, they had to do as best they
could.
During the Civil War time were very hard. I have known slaves to pull up
tobacco stalks and smoke chip them and use okra seed for coffee; [to] build pens in the
woods to catch wild turkeys. [They would] lay poles on top, dig a hole under the bottom
of the pen, and drop corn fifty steps leading up to the pen. The turkeys would go in.
After they eat they would never look down. Deer would have a regular place to jump
in the field. Slaves would set a stob and sharpening [the] upper end and sometime catch
a deer. Father did the weaving during the Civil War. I imagine seeing him dashing the
sickle right and left, the women carding and spinning.
Soldiers camped on the plantation playing tricks. I were often in the weaving
room, also at the kitchen when grandmother started Uncle Orange and the cart pulled
by old jule mule, then she would say, "come on Dick now we will catch a fish." At that
time I learned how skillful grandma pulled a fierce fluttering blue cat out. She just held
her pole perfectly still, [and] when the fish tire down she pulled him out. Skill. Some
time I think of Jesus saying to the fisherman "come go with me I will make you fish for
men." Seems that it takes more skill to catch a man.
All food stuff were carried to the big house. Meat was salted down in large
hewed out troughs ten feet in length. Several years after freedom them troughs were
sound made of old cotton wood. Slaves were very religiously inclined. They believed
in prayer, [and] that God would richly reward the humble. They produced their own
songs.
The influence of American slavery oppressed the negro and he poured out
his soul in richest song. To the thinking negro the spiritual is a thing sacred, because
it is the heart fruitage of the race. It is the negro's most distinct contribution to American
literature. The words of these songs [are] crude and often the music is fantastic. God
gave the fugitive Hebrews songs of triumph to sing when they marched all night through
a divided sea. To the scourged apostles gave He songs to sing at midnight. In the
dungeon at Philippi these poor enslaved people never walking in the full day of
opportunity of religious truth, communed with God the night of their oppression and
wrong, and it is marvelous how wonderful He revealed Himself to them.
These old plantation melodies that burst forth from the hearts of these slaves
when crushed under bondage - through all of their melody rings a golden thread of
philosophy. These great truths burst forth from their lips in jubilant song.
Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel
Deliver Daniel Daniel Daniel
And why not every man.
They steadfastly held to the divinity of Christ [and] crudely maintain, the
Virgin birth to them was not a problem. I refer to two that illustrate this idea.
Why He's the Lord of Lords
And the King of Kings
Why Jesus Christ is the first and last
No man can work like Him.
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Nesbitt Memorial Library. Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, Volume 3, Number 1, January 1993, periodical, January 1993; Columbus, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth151387/m1/4/?q=nesbitt%20memorial%20library%20journal: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Nesbitt Memorial Library.