Slave Narrative of Emoline Wilson

Interviewer: G. Leland Summer
Person Interviewed: Emoline Wilson
Date of Interview: August 10, 1937
Location: Newberry, South Carolina
Place of Birth: Newberry County SC

“I was born in Newberry County near Cannon’s Creek section in the Dutch Fork. I was a slave of Lemuel Lane. He was killed by some slaves just after freedom. They killed him for his money but didn’t find any, it was said. When freedom come, my mistress give me some things to eat when we left.

“I can’t work much any more; I am old and I can’t get about. I live with my son who works when he can find work. We rent a two-room cottage in town.

“I never heard anything about slaves getting 40 acres of land and a mule. None in that section got any. We had to go to work for other people.

“The Ku Klux Klan never bothered us then, and we never had nothing to do with them, nor with politics.

“There was no slaves living in our section who had come from Virginia.”


Surnames:
Lane, Wilson,

Collection:
Federal Writers' Project. WPA Slave Narratives. Web. 2007-2024. The WPA Slave Narratives must be used with care. There is, of course, the problem of confusion in memory resulting from (73+ years) of the participants. In addition, inexperienced interviewers sometimes pursued question lines related to their own interests and perspectives and attempted to capture the colloquialism of the informant's speech. The interviews provide fascinating insight and surprisingly candid information, however.

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