Mrs. Fannie Berry, WPA Narrative, 1937

“Back ’fore the sixties, I can ’member by Mistress, Miss Sara Ann, comin’ to de window an’ hollerin’, ‘De niggers is arisin’! De niggers is arisin’! De niggers is killin’ all de white folks, killin’ all de babies in de cradle!’ It must have been Nat Turner’s Insurrection; which wuz sometime ’fo de breakin’ of de Civil War.

          “I wuz waitin’ on table in dinin’ room an’ dis day dey had finished eatin’ early an’ I wuz cleanin’ off table. Don’t you know I must have been a good size gal.”

Mrs. Fannie Berry, ex-slave, Petersburg, Virginia, February 26, 1937, Virginia Narratives, Volume XVII, p. 1