Many of the Negroes with whom we talked looked back on those days of
plenty with longing. Rations of meal, bacon and syrup were given out
once a week by the overseer. Vegetables, eggs and chickens raised in the
little plots back of the cabins were added to these staples.
Ellen Campbell, who was owned by Mr. William Eve of Richmond County
said, "My boss would feed 'em good. He was killin' hogs stidy fum
Jinuary to March. He had two smokehouses. Dere wus four cows. At night
de folks on one side de row o' cabins go wid de piggins fer milk, and in
de mawnin's, dose on de odder side go fer de piggins o' milk."
"And did you have plenty of other good things to eat?" we asked.
"Law, yas'm. Rations wus give out to de slaves; meal, meat, and jugs o'
syrup. Dey give us white flour at Christmas. Every slave family had de
gyarden patch and chickens. Marster buy eggs and chickens fum us at
market prices."
Another slave told us that when the slaves got hungry before dinner time
they would ask the nursing mothers to bring them back hoe-cake when they
went to nurse the babies. Those hot hoe-cakes were eaten in mid-morning,
"to hold us till dinner-time."
On one plantation where the mother was the cook for the owner, her
children were fed from the big kitchen.
A piece of iron crossed the fireplace, and the pots hung down on hooks.
"Us cooked corn dodgers," one ex-slave recalled, "the hearth would be
swept clean, the ash cakes wrapped up into corn shucks and cooked brown.
They sure was good!"