hape."

"The master farmed his land and the men folks helped in the fields but
the women took care of their homes."

"We had our churches, too. Sometimes the white folks would try to cause
trouble when the negroes were holding their meetings, then a night the
men of the church would place chunks and matches on the white folks gate
post. In the morning the white folks would find them and know that it
was a warning if they din't quit causing trouble their buildings would
be burned."

"There was a farm that joined my parents' master's place and the owner
was about ready to sell the mother slave with her five small children.
The children carried on so much because they were to be separated that
the mistress bought them back although she had very little money to
spare."

"I don't know any more slave stories, but now I am getting old, and I
know that I do not have long to live, but I'm not sorry, I am, ready to
go. I have lived as the Lord wants us to live and I know that when I die
I shall join many of my friends and relatives in the Lord's place.
Religion is the finest thing on earth. It is the one and only thing that
matters."

Former Slave Interview, Special
Aug 16, 1937

Butler County, District #2
Middletown

MRS. NANCE EAST
809 Seventeenth Ave.,
Middletown, Ohio

"Mammy" East, 809 Seventeenth Ave., Middletown, Ohio, rules a four-room
bungalow in the negro district set aside by the American Rolling Mill
Corporation. She lives there with her sons, workers in the mill, and
keeps them an immaculate home in the manner which she was taught on a
Southern plantation. Her house is furnished with modern electrical
appliances and furniture, but she herself is an anachronism, a personage
with no faith in modern methods of living, one who belongs in that vague
period designated as "befo' de wah."

"I 'membahs all 'bout de slave time. I was powerful small but my mother
and daddy done tole me all 'bout it. Mother and daddy bofe come from
Vaginny; mother's mama did too. She was a weaver and made all our
clothes and de white folks clothes. Dat's all she ever did; just weave
and spin. Gran'mama and her chilluns was _sold_ to the Lett fambly, two
brothers from Monroe County, Alabama. _Sole_ jist like cows, honey,
right off the block, jist like cows. But they was good to they slaves.

"My mother's last name was Lett, after the white folks, and my daddy's
name was Harris Mosley, after his master. After mother and dad