05/15/2024
Mr. Tabb was a pretty good man. He used to beat us, sure; but not nearly so much as others did, some of his own kin people, even.
But he was kinda funny sometimes; he used to have a special slave who didn’t have nothin’ to do but teach the rest of us ⎯ we had about ten on the plantation, and a lot on the other plantations near us ⎯ how to read and write and figger. Mr. Tabb liked us to know how to figger.
But sometimes when he would send for us and we would be a long time comin’, he would ask us where we had been. If we told him we have been learnin’ to read, he would near beat the daylights out of us ⎯ after gettin’ somebody to teach us; I think he did some of that so that the other owners wouldn’t say he was spoilin’ his slaves . . .
Arnold Gragston, enslaved in Kentucky, interviewed in Florida, ca. 1937
