"They had a slave block in Georgia. You see they would go to Virginia
and get the people that they would bring across the water--regular
Africans. Sometimes they would refugee them four or five hundred miles
before they would get the chance to sell them. Sometimes a woman would
have a child in her arms. A man would buy the mother and wouldn't want
the child. And then sometimes a woman would holler out: 'Don't sell that
pickaninny.' (You know they didn't call colored children nothin' but
Pickaninnies then.) 'I want that little pickaninny.' And the mother
would go one way and the child would go the other. The mother would be
screaming and hollering, and of course, the child wouldn't be saying
nothin' because it didn't know what was goin' on.
"They had a sale block in my home (Fort Valley, Georgia), and I used to
go and see the Niggers sold often. Some few wasn't worth nothin' at
all--just about a hundred dollars. But they generally ran about five or
six hundred dollars. Some of them would bring thousands of dollars. It
depended on their looks. The trader would say, 'Look at those shoulders;
look at those muscles.'
"Someone would holler out, 'A thousand dollars.'
"Then another would holler out, 'Fifteen hundred.'
"They went like horses. A fine built woman would bring a lot of money. A
woman that birthed children cost a heap.
"Virginia was where the slaves would be brought first. The slave traders
would go there and get them and take them across the country in
droves--just like you take a drove of cattle. They would sell them as
they would come to sale blocks. The slaves would be undressed from the
shoulders to the waist."