Name: Willbanks, Green

Address: 347 Fairview Street Athens, Georgia

Age: 77

Written by: Mrs. Sadie B. Hornsby (Athens)

Edited by: Mrs. Sarah H. Hall (Athens) and John N. Booth (District Supervisor Federal Writers' Project Residencies 5 & 7 Augusta, Georgia)

Citation: Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 4, Part 4, Telfair-Young (1936), Library of Congress, Manuscript/Mixed Material. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mesn.044

Interview

Fairview Street, where Green Willbanks lives is a section of shabby cottages
encircled by privet hedges.

As the visitor carefully ascended the shaky steps to his house a mulatto man, who
was sitting on the veranda, Quickly arose. "Good morning," he said, "Yes man, this is
Green Willbanks. Have a seat in the swing." The porch furniture was comprised of a
chair, a swing, and a long bench. Green is tall, slender, and stooped; a man with white
hair and grizzled face. A white broadcloth shirt, white cotton trousers, blue socks, and
low cut black shoes made up his far from immaculate costume.

The old man's eyes brightened when he was asked to give the story of his life. His
speech showed but little dialect, except when he was carried away by interest and
emotion, and his enunciation was remarkably free from Negroid accent.

"I don't mind telling you what I know," he began, "but I was such a little chap
when the war ended that there's mighty little I can recollect about slavery time, and it
seems that your chief interest is in that period. I was born on a plantation the other side of
Commerce, Georgia, in Jackson County. My Ma and Pa were Mary and Isom Willbanks;
they were raised on the same plantation where I was born. Ma was a field hand. and this
time of the year when work was short in the field - laying-by time, we called it - and on
rainy days she spun thread and wove cloth. As the thread left the spinning wheel it went
on a reel where it was wound into hanks, and then it was carried to the loom to be woven
into cloth. Pa had a little trade; he made shoes and baskets, and Old Boss let him sell
them. Pa didn't make shoes for the slaves on our plantation; Old Boss bought them readymade
and had them shipped here from the West.

"Me and Jane, Sarah, Mitchell, and Willie were the five children in our family.
Oh! Miss, I was not big enough to do much work. About the most I done was pick up
chips and take my little tin bucket to the spring to get a cool, fresh drink for Old Miss. Us
children stayed 'round the kitchen and drunk lots of buttermilk. Old Miss used to say,
'Give my pickaninnies plenty of buttermilk.' I can see that old churn now; it helt about
seven or eight gallons.

"Our houses? Slaves lived in log cabins built the common way. There was lots of
forest pine in those days. Logs were out the desired length and notches put in each end so
they would fit closely and have as few cracks as possible, when they stacked them for a
cabin. They sawed pine logs into blocks and used a frow to split them into planks that
were used to cover the cracks between the logs. Don't you know what a frow is? That's a
wooden wedge that you drive into a pine block by hitting it with a heavy wooden mallet,
or maul, as they are more commonly called. They closed the cracks in some of the cabins
by daubing them with red mud. The old stack chimneys were made of mud and sticks. To
make a bed, they first cut four posts, usually of pine, and bored holes through them with
augers; then they made two short pieces for the head and foot. Two long pieces for the
sides were stuck through the auger holes and the bedstead was ready to lay on the slats or
cross pieces to hold up the mattress. The best beds had heavy cords, wove crossways and
lengthways, instead of slats. Very few slaves had corded beds. Mattresses were not much;
they were made of suggin sacks filled with straw. They called that straw 'Georgia
feathers.' Pillows were made of the same things. Suggin cloth was made of coarse flax
wove in a loom. They separated the flax into two grades; fine for the white folks, and
coarse for the Negroes.

"The only one of my grandparents I can bring to memory now is Grandma Rose
on my Pa's side. She was some worker, a regular man-woman; she could do any kind of
work a man could do. She was a hot horse in her time and it took an extra good man to
keep up with her when it came to work.

"Children were not allowed to do much work, because their masters desired them
to have the chance to grow big and strong, and therefore they had few opportunities to
earn money of their own. I never did own any money during slavery days, but I saw
plenty of ten cent greenbacks (shinplasters).

"White children and slave children played around the plantation together but they
were not allowed to fight. They had to be on friendly terms with each other.

"What about our food? The biggest thing we had was buttermilk, some sweet
milk, and plenty of cornbread, hog neat, and peas. As a rule we had wheat bread once a
week, usually on Sunday. All kinds of fruits were plentiful in their seasons. Each slave
family was permitted to have separate garden space, in fact, Old Boss insisted that they
work their own gardens, and they raised plenty of vegetables. Grown folks had rabbits
and 'possums but I never did get much 'quainted with them. We fished in the cricks and
rills 'round the plantation and brought in lots of hornyheads and perch. You never saw
any hornyheads? Why they is just fish a little bigger and longer than minnows and they
have little herns on their heads. We caught a good many eels too; they look like snakes,
but folks call them eels. I wasn't much 'quainted with them fish they brought from way
down South; they called them mullets.

"The kitchen was a separate log house out in the back yard. The fireplace, where
the cooking was done, took up one end of the kitchen, and there was a rack acrost it to
hang the cook-pots on for biling. Baking and frying was done in ovens and heavy iron
skillets that sat on trivets so coals could be piled underneath, as well as over the lids.

"The long shirts slave boys wore in summer were straight like a meal sack open at
both ends, with holes in the sides for your arms to go through. You stuck your head in
one end and it came out the other; then you were fully dressed for any whole summer
day. These summer shirts were made of thin osnaburg. Our winter clothes were made of
woolen cloth called merino. Old Boss kept enough sheep to provide plenty of wool and
some mighty good food. Slave children had no extra or special clothes for Sunday; they
wore the same kind of gowns, or long shirts, seven days a week. Old Boss provided
brass-toed brogans for winter, but we never thought of such a thing as shoes to wear in
hot weather.

"My owners were Marse Solomon and his wife, Miss Ann Willbanks. We called
them Old Boss and Old Miss. As I saw it, they were just as good as they could be. Old
Boss never allowed nobody to impose on his slave children. When I was a little chap
playing around the big house, I would often drop off to sleep the minute I got still. Good
Old Boss would pick me up and go lay me on his own bed and keep me there 'til Ma
come in from the field.

"Old Boss and Old Miss had five children. The boys were Solomon, Isaac, James,
and Wesley. For the life of me I can't bring to memory the name of their only daughter. I
guess that's because we frolicked with the four boys, but we were not allowed to play
with Little Miss.

"It was a right decent house they lived in, a log house with a fine rock chimney.
Old Boss was building a nice house when the war come on and he never had a chance to
finish it. The log house was in a cedar grove; that was the style then. Back of the house
were his orchards where fruit trees of every kind we knew anything about provided
plenty for all to eat in season as well as enough for good preserves, pickles, and the like
for winter. Old Boss done his own overseeing and, 'cording to my memory, one of the young
bosses done the driving.

"That plantation covered a large space of land, but to tell you how many acres is
something I can't do. There were not so many slaves. I've forgot how they managed that
business of getting slaves up, but I do know we didn't get up before day on our place.
Their rule was to work slaves from sunup to sundown. Before they had supper they had a
little piddlin' around to do, but the time was their own to do as they pleased after they had
supper. Heaps of times they got passes and went off to neighboring plantations to visit
and dance, but sometimes they went to hold prayer-meetings. There were certain
plantations where we were not permitted to go and certain folks were never allowed on
our place. Old Boss was particular about how folks behaved on his place; all his slaves
had to come up to a certain notch and if they didn't do that he punished them in some way
or other. There was no whipping done, for Old Boss never did believe in whipping slaves.

"None of the slaves from our place was ever put in that county jail at Jefferson.
That was the only jail we ever heard of in those days. Old Boss attended to all the
correction necessary to keep order among his own slaves. Once a slave trader came by
the place and offered to buy Ma. Old Boss took her to Jefferson to sell her on the block to
that man. It seemed like sales of slaves were not legal unless they took place on the
trading block in certain places, usually in the county site. The trader wouldn't pay what
Old Boss asked for her, and Old Miss and the young bosses all objected strong to his
selling her, so he brought Ma back home. She was a fine healthy woman and would have
made a nice looking house girl.

"The biggest part of the teaching done among the slaves was by our young bosses
but, as far as schools for slaves was concerned, there were no such things until after the
end of the war, and then we were no longer slaves. There were just a few separate
churches for slaves; none in our part of the country. Slaves went to the same church as
their white folks and sat in the back of the house or in a gallery. My Pa could read the
Bible in his own way, even in that time of slavery; no other slave on our place could do
that.

"Not one slave or white person either died on our plantation during the part of
slavery that I can bring to memory. I was too busy playing to take in any of the singing at
funerals and at church, and I never went to a baptizing until I was a great big chap, long
after slavery days were over.

"Slaves ran off to the woods all right, but I never heard of them running off to the
North. Paterollers never came on Old Boss' place unless he sont for them, otherwise they
knowed to stay off. They sho was devils in sheeps' clothing; that's what we thought of
them paterollers. Slaves worked all day Saddays when there was work to be done, but
that night was their free time. They went where they pleased just so Old Boss gave them
a pass to protect them from paterollers.

"After slaves went to church Sunday they were free the rest of the day as far as
they knowed. Lots of times they got 'em a stump speaker - usually a Negro - to preach to
them. There were not as many preachers then as now.

"'Bout Christmas Day? They always had something like brandy, cider, or whiskey
to stimulate the slaves on Christmas Day. Then there was fresh meat and ash-roasted
sweet 'taters, but no cake for slaves on our place, anyhow, I never saw no cake, and
surely no Santa Claus. All we knowed 'bout Christmas was eating and drinking. As a
general thing there was a big day's work expected on New Years Day because we had to
start the year off right, even if there was nothing for the slaves to do that day but clean
fence corners, cut brush and briers, and burn off new ground. New Years Day ended up
with a big old pot of hog jowl and peas. That was for luck, but I never really knowed if it
brought luck or not.

"Well, yes, once a year they had big cornshuckings in our section and they had
generals to lead off in all the singing; that was done to whoop up the work. My Pa was
one of the generals and he toted the jug of liquor that was passed 'round to make his
crowd hustle. After the corn was shucked the crowd divided into two groups. Their object
was to see which could reach the owner of the corn first and carry him where he wanted
to go. Usually they marched with him on their shoulders to his big house and set him
down on his porch, then he would give the word for them to all start eating the good
things spread out on tables in the yard. There was a heap of drinking done then, and
dancing too - just all kinds of dancing that could be done to fiddle and banjo music. My
Pa was one of them fiddlers in his young days. One of the dances was the cotillion, but
just anybody couldn't dance that one. There was a heap of bowing and scraping to it, and
if you were not 'quainted with it you just couldn't use it.

"When any of the slaves were bad sick Old Boss called in his own family doctor,
Dr. Joe Bradbury. His plantation hit up against ours. The main things they gave for
medicine them days was oil and turpentine. Sometimes folks got black snakeroot from
the woods, biled it, and gave the tea to sick folks; that was to clean off the stomach.
Everybody wore buckeyes 'round their necks to keep off diseases for we never knowed
nothing about asafetida them days; that came later.

"When the Yankees came through after the surrender Old Boss and Old Miss hid
their valuables. They told us children, 'Now, if they ask you questions, don't you tell them
where we hid a thing.' We knowed enough to keep our mouths shut. We never had
knowed nothing but to mind Old Boss, and we were scared 'cause our white folks seemed
to fear the Yankees.

"Old Boss had done told slaves they were free as he was and could go their own
way, but we stayed on with him. He provided for Pa and give him his share of the crops
he made. All of us growed up as field hands.

"Them night-riders were something else. They sho did beat on Negroes that didn't
behave mighty careful. Slaves didn't buy much land for a long time after the war because
they didn't have no money, but schools were set up for Negroes very soon. I got the
biggest part of my education in West Athens on Biggers Hill. When I went to the Union
Baptist School my teacher was Professor Lyons, the founder of that institution.

"When me and Molly Tate were married 50 years ago we went to the church,
because that was the cheapest place to go to have a big gathering. Molly had on a
common, ordinary dress. Folks didn't dress up then like they does now; it was quite
indifferent. Of our 10 children, 8 are living now and we have 14 grandchildren. Six of our
children live in the North and two have remained here in Athens. One of them is
employed at Bernstein's Funeral Home and the other works on the university campus. I
thanks the Lord that Molly is still with me. We bought this place a long time ago and
have farmed here ever since. In fact, I have never done nothing but farm work. Now I'm
too old and don't have strength to work no more.

"I thinks Abraham Lincoln was a all right man; God so intended that we should be
sot free. Jeff Davis was all right in his way, but I can't say much for him. Yes mam, I'd
rather be free. Sho! Give me freedom all the time. Jesus said: 'If my Son sets you free,
you shall be free indeed.'

"When I jined the church, I felt like I was rid of my burden. I sot aside the things I
had been doing and I ain't never been back to pick 'em up no more. I jined the Baptist
church and have been teaching a class of boys every Sunday that I'm able to go. I sho am
free from sin and I lives up to it.

"I wonder if Molly's got them sweet 'taters cooked what I dug this morning. They
warn't much 'count 'cause the sun has baked them hard and it's been so dry. If you is
through with me, I wants to go eat one of them 'taters and then lay this old Nigger on the
bed and let him go to sleep."

BACK TO: WPA Interviews