in what is now a colored settlement between 10th and 14th and Watt and
Spring Sts. The clay was obtained from this field. It was his task to
off-bare the brick after they were taken from the molds, and to place
them in the eyes to be burned. Wood was used as fuel.

"Uncle Billy" reads his Bible quite often. He sometimes wonders why he
is still left here--all of his friends are gone; all his brothers and
sisters are gone. But this he believes is the solution--that there must
be someone left to tell about old times.

"The Bible," he quotes, "says that two shall be working in the field
together and one shall be taken and the other left. I am the one who is
left," he concludes.

Henrietta Karwowski, Field Worker
Federal Writers' Project
St. Joseph County--District #1
South Bend, Indiana

EX-SLAVES
MR. AND MRS. ALEX SMITH
127 North Lake Street
South Bend, Indiana

Mr. and Mrs. Alex Smith, an eighty-three year old negro couple were
slaves in Kentucky near Paris, Tennessee, as children. They now reside
at 127 North Lake Street, on the western limits of South Bend. This
couple lives in a little shack patched up with tar paper, tin, and wood.

Mrs. Elizabeth Smith, the talkative member or the family is a small
woman, very wrinkled, with a stocking cap pulled over her gray hair. She
wore a dress made of three different print materials; sleeves of one
kind, collar of another and body of a third. Her front teeth were
discolored, brown stubs, which suggested that she chews tobacco.

Mr. Alex Smith, the husband is tall, though probably he was a well built
man at one time. He gets around by means of a cane. Mrs. Smith said that
he is not at all well, and he was in the hospital for six weeks last
winter.

The wife, Elizabeth or Betty, as her husband calls her, was a slave on
the Peter Stubblefield plantation in Kentucky, the nearest town being
Paris, Tennessee, while Mr. Smith was a slave on the Robert Stubblefield
plantation nearby.

Although only a child of five, Mr. Smith remembers the Civil War,
especially the marching of thousands of soldiers, and the horse-drawn
artillery wagons. The Stubblefields freed their slaves the first winter
after the war.

On the Peter Stubblefield plantation the slaves were treated very well
and had plenty to eat, while on the Robert Stubblefield plantation Mr
Smith went hungry many times, and said, "Often, I would see a dog with a
bit of bread, and I would have been willing to