This submission is one in a series of "undercover" assignments by CHRONOS historians posing as interviewers for the Federal Writer's Project during the Great Depression. 
May 8, 1937
A. Wainwright
Interview with Aunt Sally Graves
Skidmore, Missouri
I made a visit to Skidmore, Missouri to interview Sarah Frances Shaw Graves, who spent her childhood and adolescence as a slave. Now 87, Sarah lives in a comfortable, well-kept house with her grown son, Arza. Her house is well-furnished, including a radio and a stack of daily newspapers in the corner.
As I came into the living room, I could see that her immaculately washed, stiffly starched print dress and apron were unwrinkled, as though she had been standing since putting them on. In spite of her years, most of which were spent in grueling labor, she is rugged and healthy and meets the world with a smile and ready sympathetic laughter.
She began. “My name is Sarah Frances Shaw Graves, but ever'one calls me Aunt Sally. Yes’m that’s a lot of name an’ I come by it like this. My husband was owned by a man named Graves, and I was owned by a man named Shaw, so when we was freed we took the surnames of both masters."
"I was born March 23, 1850 in Kentucky, somewhere near Louisville. I am goin’ on 88 years right now. I was brought to Missouri when I was six months old, along with my mama, who was a slave owned by a man named Shaw, who had allotted her to a man named Jimmie Graves, who came to Missouri to live with his daughter Emily Graves Crowdes. I
always lived with Emily Crowdes."
"What do you mean by alloted?" I asked.
"Well, allotment was kinda like hiring out. You see there was slave traders in those days, jes' like the horse and mule an' auto traders today, and they'd buy slaves to hire 'em out. The slave never got no wages. They went to the master. “I never was sold, however. My mama was sold only once, but she was hired out many times. Yes’m when a slave was allotted, somebody made a down payment and gave a mortgage for the rest. A chattel mortgage.”
I found the concept of a slave mortgage shocking-- I had never imagined it possible that common modern financial transactions could be applied to human property. Aunt Sally had an enlightened way of framing it: "Times don’t change, just the merchandise."
"Allotments made a lot of grief for slave families. We left my papa in Kentuck, ‘cause he was allotted to another man. My papa never knew where my mama went, an’ my mama never knew where papa went. They never wanted mama to know, ‘cause they knowed she would never marry so long as she knew where he was. Our master wanted her to marry again and raise more children to be slaves. They never wanted mama to know where papa was, an’ she never did."
She went on to tell how her mother married a sick man who was unable to father any children, as her mother did not wish to start another family. Her stepfather was so sick he was unable to work much, so Aunt Sally and her mama had to compensate. They lived in the kitchen, which was in a log house adjoining the master’s residence. When Aunt Sally was a baby, her mother would work in the field, laying her down on a pallet near the fence nearby. At night, her stepfather and mother would tend the tobacco and grain which they were allowed to sell for their own earnings. The family would attend church, which was held in the school house.
"There was most always something to do. Master never allowed nobody to be idle. Mama worked in the house and the fields too. At night after she come home from the field, she had to grate corn for the family next day. We didn’t have many grist mills them days, an’ we would punch holes in a piece of tin, and rub the ear or corn across it and make meal for our use."
"Some masters was good an’ some was bad. My mama’s master whipped his slaves for pastime. My master was not so bad as some was to their slaves. I’ve had many a whippin’, some I deserved, an’ some I got for being blamed for doin’ things the master’s children did. My master whipped his slaves with a cat-o-nine tails. He’d say to me, ‘You ain’t had a curryin’ down for some time. Come here!!!’ Then he whipped me with the cat. The cat was made of nine strips of leather fastened onto the end of a whip. Lots of times when he hit me, the cat left nine stripes of blood on my back. Yes ma’am."
Aunt Sally paused to brood about the whippings. I was saddened at the brutality of her early life, as all of the hard labor and devastating beatings would have happened while she was little more than a child. Slavery was not outlawed until the year she turned 13.
After a moment, her memories landed on a lighter note, and she told me of a specific incident when the master’s daughter got punished for causing her a beating: “I belong to the African Methodist Episcopal Church, an’ I ain’t never cussed but once in my life, an’ that was one time I nearly got two whippin’s for somethin’ I didn’t do. Some of master’s kin folks had a weddin’, an’ we walked to the church, an’ somebody kicked dust on the bride’s clothes, an’ I got blamed but I ain’t never kicked it. The master’s daughter Puss, she kicked it. Old mistress she whipped me. Yes’m, she whipped me. It was the worst whippin’ I ever got. The worst whippin’ in my whole life an’ I still got the marks on my body. Yes’m I got ‘em yet."
"When the master come home, he was goin’ to whip me again, an’ I got mad, an’ told him it was a lie, an’ if Puss said I kicked dust on the white folks she was a DAMNED LYIN’ DEVIL. He took the switch an’ gave Puss a whippin’ for tellin’ a lie. Yes’m. That’s the only time I ever cussed in my life."
After she and her mother were freed, Aunt Sally went to school for a couple of winters, but she was never able to go full time, as she had to work. Her mother left slavery with only fifty cents. Aunt Sally married Joseph H. Graves, a man she had known her whole life, as he was also allotted to Jimmie Graves. She and Joseph eventually bought their own farm, where she has lived since their marriage. They only had one child, Arza Alexander Graves.
Explaining how freed life was different from enslavement, Aunt Sally continued: “We first bought 40 acres for $10, then two years later we bought the back 80 acres for $15. Things is changed. We workin’ for ourself now an’ what we get is our’n, an’ no more whippin’s."
Learn more about the Federal Writer's Project:
- Library of Congress. Full interview with Sarah Graves. 1936-1938.
- Library of Congress. American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940.
- Smithsonian Channel. The Soul of a People: Writing America's Story.
Photo Credits:
- Sarah Frances Shaw Graves. Library of Congress. 1936-1938.
- Collier, John. Spinning Wool by the Light of the Fire. Library of Congress. 1943.
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