Rusty Bertrand on Nostr: Photograph: Fannie Moore was 88 years old when she was interviewed in 1937. She lived ...

Photograph: Fannie Moore was 88 years old when she was interviewed in 1937. She lived at 151 Valley Street, Asheville.

'I don’t know where any of my people are now.'

The 'breed woman' always bring more money than the rest, even the men. When they put her on the block they put all her children around her to show folks how fast she can have children. When she sold, her family never see her again. She never know how many children she has. . . Many boys and girls marry they own brothers and sisters and never know the difference lest they get to talkin' about they parents and where they used to live. . .

Folks back then never hear tell of all the ailments the folks have now. There were no doctors. Just use roots and bark for teas of all kinds. My ole granny used to make tea out o' dogwood bark and give it to us children when we have a cold, else she make a tea out of wild cherry bark, pennyroil, or hoarhound. My goodness, but they was bitter. We do most anything to get out of takin' the tea, but it weren't no use, granny just get you by the collar, hold your nose, and you just swallow it or get strangled. When the baby have the colic she get rat's vein and make a syrup and put a little sugar in it an boil it. Then soon as it cold she give it to the baby. For stomach ache she give us snake root. Sometimes she make tea, other time she just cut it up in little pieces and make you eat one or two of them. When you have fever she wrap you up in cabbage leaves or ginseng leaves, this make the fever go. When the fever got too bad she take the hoofs of the hog that had been killed and parch 'em in the ashes and then she beat 'em up and make a tea. This was the most terrible of all. . .

The n------ was afraid to move, much less try to do anything. They never know what to do, they have no learnin’. Have no money. All they can do was stay on the same plantation til they can do better. We live on the same plantation till the children all grown up and mammy and pappy both die then we leave. I don’t know where any of my people are now.

Federal Writers' Project

In the depths of the Great Depression, as unemployed Americans toiled away at infrastructure projects like the Blue Ridge Parkway and dams for the Tennessee Valley Authority, there was a different kind of public work in action. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal founded the Federal Writers' Project, a small army of out-of-work writers that roamed across the Southeast to gather testimony from the few remaining former slaves. Those interviews, numbering over two thousand, are held in the Library of Congress and available to read (and in many cases, listen to) online.