of thing, but I'll tell
you bout what I has experience. I had two dogs dere en somebody poison
em cause dey tell me somebody do dat. Oh, I know dey was poison. De
police say de dog was poison. A 'oman do it dat had chillun what was
afraid of my dog en dat how-come she poison it. I sho think she done it
cause it just like dis, anything peoples tell me, I believes it."

"I have seen dem things peoples say is a ghost when I was stayin here to
Lake View. I plant a garden side de road en one night I hear somethin en
I look out en dere was a great big black thing in me garden dat was
makin right for de house. I call me wife en tell her to look yonder. De
thing was comin right to de house en my wife hurry en light up de lamp.
I hear de peoples say if you didn' light up de lamp when you see a
spirit, dat it would sho come in en run you out. I had done paid some
money on de place but after I see dat thing, I didn' have no mind to
want it. Had de best garden en chickens dere I ever had, but I never
bother no worry bout dat. Just pick right up en leave dere to come here
en I been here ever since. I knows dat been somethin come dere to scare
me out dat house. Dat ain' been nothin else but a spirit. Ain' been
nothin else."

Source: Charlie Davis, age 88, colored, Marion, S. C.
Personal interview, July 1937.

Project #1655
Henry Grant
Columbia, S. C.

CHARLIE DAVIS'S MUSINGS.

Charlie Davis, now seventy-nine years old, was a small boy when the
slaves were freed. He lives alone in one room on Miller's Alley,
Columbia, S. C., and is healthy and physically capable of self-support.

"I has been wonderin' what you wanted to talk to dis old nigger 'bout
since I fust heard you wanted to see me. I takes it to be a honor for a
white gentleman to desire to have a conversation wid me. Well, here I
is, and I bet I's one of de blackest niggers you's seen for a season.
Somehow, I ain't 'shame of my color a-tall. If I forgits I is dark
complected, all I has to do is to look in a glass and in dere I sho'
don't see no white man.

"Boss, I is kinda glad I is a black man, 'cause you knows dere ain't
much expected of them nowhow and dat, by itself, takes a big and heavy
burden off deir shoulders. De white folks worries too much over dis and
over dat. They worries 'cause they ain't got no money and, when they
gits it, they worries agin 'cause they is 'fraid somebody is gwine to
steal it from them. Yes, sir, they fret