Today the state of Alabama marks the birthday of Jefferson Davis, who served as president of the Confederate States of America from 1861 to 1865. A state holiday, state offices are closed throughout Alabama. Davis, who at one point owned more than 100 slaves, led a government resting on the principle of white supremacy. The Confederate Constitution contained a provision explicitly prohibiting any law "impairing the right of property in negro slaves," and his vice president, Alexander Stephens, said the "cornerstone" of the new government "rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition."

Davis was a racist. In a speech to the U.S. Senate in 1860, the then-senator from Mississippi said slavery was "a form of civil government for those who by their nature are not fit to govern themselves," adding "We recognize the fact of the inferiority stamped upon that race by the Creator, and from cradle to grave, our government, as a civil institution, marks that inferiority." After his inauguration as president of the Confederacy, Davis said "We recognized the negro as God and God's Book and God's laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him. Our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude."

Where was the Lord? Four slave testimonies Stories from U.S. slaves Delia Garlic, William Colbert, Laura Clark and George Young, narrated by Dr. Wendy R. Coleman of Alabama State University. Montgomery Advertiser

From 1936 to 1938, the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal agency, sent workers throughout the South to collect oral histories from survivors of slavery, eventually conducting more than 2,000 interviews, including at least 129 in Alabama. The workers were not necessarily trained interviewers, and scholars have noted that the race of the interviewer often had a major effect on the answers the former slaves gave. But the testimonies preserve the voices of those who experienced a hell that Davis and other white southerners were willing to destroy the country to protect.

Below, the testimonies of nine African Americans held in human bondage, all interviewed in Alabama in 1937. The transcripts have been edited for length and clarity.

'Take Care of My Baby'

An estimated 1.2 million men, women and children were sold from the upper South to the lower South in the domestic Southern slave trade between 1760 and 1865. Montgomery became one of the most active slave trading posts, and by 1860, nearly two-thirds of the population (23,710) comprised of enslaved people. Being sent to the Deep South was considered the equivalent of a death sentence for many slaves. One abolitionist wrote: "There is such havoc annually among the slaves of the great planters ... that in less than seven years, if no slave could be imported into those regions, one half of the plantations would lie uncultivated for want of slaves." Prices varied, but in 1860, Alabama slaveholders could sell a field hand for as much as $1,600 -- a little over $45,000 today. Many of those interviewed had first-hand experience with being sold.

William Henry Towns, Sheffield

Show caption Hide caption William Henry Towns was born into slavery in 1854 in Tuscumbia. His father came from Huntsville; his mother from Maryland. His father was later sold... William Henry Towns was born into slavery in 1854 in Tuscumbia. His father came from Huntsville; his mother from Maryland. His father was later sold by a plantation owner. After emancipation, Towns worked as a blacksmith and a carpenter. Library of Congress

Sometimes I visits old Mingo White and me and him talk over them days that me and him was boys. We gets to talking and before you know it old Mingo is crying like a baby. According to what he says he is lucky to be living. This is one thing I never like to talk about. When slavery was going on, it was all right for me because I never had it hard, but it just wasn’t right to treat human beings that way. If we hadn’t a had to work and slave for nothing we might have something to show for what we did do, and wouldn’t have to live from pillar to post now.

Mingo White, Sheffield

When I was about 4 or 5 years old, I was loaded in a wagon with a lot more people in it. Where I was bound I don’t know. Whatever become of my mammy and pappy I don’t know for a long time.

Laura Clark, Livingston (born in North Carolina, she and nine other children were sold when she was 6 or 7)

Show caption Hide caption Born in North Carolina, Laura Clark was sold away from her mother when she was six or seven years old. Speaking to an interviewer in... Born in North Carolina, Laura Clark was sold away from her mother when she was six or seven years old. Speaking to an interviewer in 1937, Clark, then 86, said she had outlived many of her children. Library of Congress

I recollect Mammy said to old Julie, ‘Take care my baby child (that was me), and if I never see her no more raise her for God.’ Then she fell off the wagon where us was all sitting and roll over on the ground just a-crying. But us was eatin’ candy what they done give us for to keep us quiet, and I didn’t have sense enough for to know what ailed Mammy, but I know now and I never seed her no more in this life. When I heard from her after surrender she done dead and buried. Her name was Rachel Powell. My pappy’s name I don’t know cause he done been sold to somewhere else when I was too little to recollect. But my mammy was the mother of 22 children and she had twins in her lap when us drive off. My grandmammy said when I left ‘Pray, Laura, and be a good gal, and mind both white and black. Everybody will like you, and if you never see me no more, pray to meet me in heaven. Then she cried. Her name was Rose Powell.

Delia Garlic, Montgomery

I was growed up when the war come, and I was a mother before it closed. Babies was snatched from their mother’s breasts and sold to speculators. Children was separated from sisters and brother and never saw each other again.

Course they cry; you think they not cry when they was sold like cattle? I could tell you about it all day, but even then you couldn’t guess the awfulness of it.

It’s bad to belong to folks that own you soul and body; that can tie you up to a tree, with your face to the tree and your arms fastened tight around it; who take a long curling whip and cut the blood, every lick. Folks a mile away could hear them awful whippings. They was a terrible part of living.

Beatings and torture

Oliver Bell said his first childhood memory was watching his mother get whipped. Library of Congress

Beatings and mutilations were well-known on plantations. Slaves also suffered from overwork and malnourishment. In his autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom, the abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass condemned "the rough usage of the field, where vulgar coarseness and brutal cruelty spread themselves and flourish, rank as weeds in the tropics; where a vile wretch, in the shape of a man, rides, walks, or struts about, dealing blows, and leaving gashes on broken-spirited men and helpless women, for $30 per month — a business so horrible, hardening, and disgraceful that, rather than engage in it, a decent man would blow his own brains out."

Oliver Bell, Livingston

I'll tell you the first thing I remember, and I don't know what started it. One day my mammy done something, and old master made her pull her dress down round her waist and made her lay down across the floor. Then he taken a leather strap and whooped her. I remembers that I started crying and Mistus Beckie said, ‘Go get that boy a biscuit.’

Angie Garrett, Livingston

Angie Garrett was born into slavery in Mississippi. "I've been whooped until I tell lies on myself," she said in 1937. Library of Congress

Us would get up before daylight. ‘Twas dark when (you) go out, dark when (you) come in. Us make a little fire in the field some mornings, it be so cold; then us let it go out before the overseer come. If he seed you he’d make you lay down flat on your belly, foots tied out and hands tied out and whoop yer. The whip was a leather strap with a handle. I been whooped til I tell lies on myself to make them quit. Say they whoop till I tell the truth, so I had to lie about myself to keep them from killing me.

If any of us died in those days, (they) buried us as quick as they could and got out of there and got to work.

Mary Ella Grandberry, Sheffield

The overseers was terrible hard on us. They’d ride up and down the field and haste you so twell you near about fell out. Sometimes and in general everything you hid the crowd you got a good lickin’ with the bullwhip that the driver had in the saddle with him. I heard mammy say that one day they whipped poor Leah twell she fall out like she was dead. Then they rubbed salt and pepper on the blisters to make them burn real good. She was so so twell she couldn’t lay on her back nights, and she just couldn’t stand for no clothes to touch (her) back whatsoever.

Laura Clark, Livingston

The overseer, Mr. Woodson Tucker, was mean as anybody. He’d whup you nigh about to death, and had a whupping log where he’d strip em buck naked and lay them on the log. He’d whup them with a wide strap, wider than my hand, then he pop the blisters what he raised and nint them with red pepper, salt and vinegar. Then he put them in the house they call the pest house and have a woman stay there to keep the flies off them till they get able to move. Then they had regular men in the fields with spades, and if you didn’t do what you got told, the overseer would wrap that strap round his hand and hit you in the head with the wooden handle til he killed you. Then the mens would dig a hole with the spades and throw them in it right there in the field, just like they was cows – didn’t have no funeral nor nothing.

Amy Chapman, Livingston

Amy Chapman, then 94, pictured in 1937. "I can tell you things about slavery times that would make your blood boil, but they's too terrible," she told an interviewer. "I just try to forget." Library of Congress

He was the meanest overseer us ever had. He took my oldest brother and had him stretched out just like you see Christ on the cross; had him chained, and I sat on the ground by him and cried all night like Mary and them done. That overseer was the first one that ever put me in the field, and he whupped me with the cat of nine tails when I was stark naked.

William Colbert, Fort Valley

One day I remember my brother, January was caught over seeing a gal on the next plantation. He had a pass but the time on it done give out. Well, sir, when the master found out that he was an hour late, he got as mad as a hive of bees. So when brother January, he come home, the master took down his long mule skinner and tied him with a rope to a pine tree. He stripped his shirt off and said:

“Now, n-----, I’m going to teach you some sense.”

Show caption Hide caption William Colbert was born on a plantation in Fort Valley, Ga. in 1844, one of 165 slaves owned by a man named Jim Hodison, a... William Colbert was born on a plantation in Fort Valley, Ga. in 1844, one of 165 slaves owned by a man named Jim Hodison, a man he recalled as an especially brutal person. "When he was too tired to whup us, he had the overseer do it; and the overseer was meaner than master." Library of Congress

With that, he started laying on the lashes. January was a big, fine looking n----r, the finest I ever seed. He was just 4 years older than me, and when the master begin a beating him, January never said a word. The master got madder and madder cause he couldn’t make January holler.

“What’s the matter with you, n-----?,” he say. “Don’t it hurt?”

January, he never said nothing, and the master keep a beating till little streams of blood started flowing down January’s chest, but he never hollered. His lips was a quivering and his body was a-shaking, but his mouth it never opened; and all the while I sat on my mammy’s and pappy’s steps a crying. The n----- was all gathered about and some of them couldn’t stand it; they had to go inside their cabins. After a while, January, he couldn’t stand it no longer himself, and he say in a hoarse, loud whisper:

“Master! Master! Have mercy on this poor n-----.”

Amy Chapman, Livingston

One day I seed ole Uncle Tip Toe all bent over a-coming down the road, and I ask him what ails him and he say: “I’d been in the stocks and been beat till the blood come. Then old master ninted my flesh with red pepper and turpentine, and I’d been almost dead but I is somewhat better now."

Mary Ella Grandberry, Sheffield

They’d whip if we was caught talking about the free states, too. If you wan’t whipped, you was put in the “n---- box’ and fed cornbread what was made without salt and with plain water. The box was just big enough for you to stand up in, but it had air holes in it to keep you from suffocating There was plenty turning round room in it to allow you to change your position every once in awhile. If you had done a big enough thing, you was kept in the n----- box for months at the time, and when you got out you was nothing but skins and bones and scarcely able to walk.

George Young, Livingston

George Young, 91, described torture of slaves and maulings by dogs. "Miss, where was the Lord in them days?" he asked. "What was he doing?" Library of Congress

Some of them runned away, anyhow. My brother, Harrison, was one, and they set the n---- dogs on him like fox hounds run a fox today. They didn’t run him down ‘till ‘bout night, but finally they catched him, and the hunters fetched him to the do and say: “Mary Ann, here Harrison.” Then they turned the dogs loose on him again, and such a screaming you never heard. He was all bloody and Mammy was a-hollering, ‘Save him, Lord, save my child, and don’t let them dogs eat him up.” Mr. Lawler said, ‘The Lord ain’t got nothing to do with this here,’ and it sure look like he didn’t, cause them dogs nigh ‘bout chewed Harrison up.

William Henry Towns, Sheffield

Every once in a while slaves would run away to the North. Most times they was caught and brought back. Sometimes they would get desperate and would kill themselves before they would stand to be brought back. One time that I heard of a slave that had escaped and when they tried to catch him he jumped in the creek and drowned himself. He was brought from over in Georgia. He hadn’t been in Alabama long before him and two more tried to escape. Two of them was caught and brought back but this other one went to the land of sweet dreams.

Mingo White, Sheffield

I was just a little thing; tooked away from my mammy and pappy, just when I needed them most. The only caring that I had or ever knowed anything about was given to me by a friend of my pappy. His name was John White. My pappy told him to take care of me for him. John was a fiddler and many a night I woke up to find myself sleeping twixt his legs while he was playing for a dance for the white folks. My pappy and mammy was sold from each other too, the same time as I was sold.

George Young, Livingston

I seed slaves plenty times with iron bands round their ankles and a hole in the band and an iron rod fastens to hit what went up the outside of their leg to the waist and fasten to another iron band around the waist. This was to keep them from bending their legs and running away. They called it putting the stiff knee on you, and it sure made them stiff. Sometimes it made them sick, too, because they had them iron bands so tight round the ankles that when they took them off live things was under them, and that’s what give them fever, they say. Us had to go out in the woods and get May-Apple root and mullen weed and all such to bile for to cure the fever. Miss, where was the Lord in them days? What was he doing?

William Henry Towns, Sheffield

Some of the slaveholders would double the proportion of work so as to get to whip them when night come. I heard my ma say after slavery that they just whipped the slaves so much to keep them cowed down and cause they might have fought for freedom much sooner than it did come.

Delia Garlic, Montgomery

Show caption Hide caption Delia Garlic was born in Virginia into slavery. She was later sold to Georgia and then Louisiana, and recounted repeated instances of abuse to interviewers... Delia Garlic was born in Virginia into slavery. She was later sold to Georgia and then Louisiana, and recounted repeated instances of abuse to interviewers with the WPA in 1937. Garlic married while a slave, but her husband was sold from the plantation. Library of Congress

Mammy and me was sold to a man by the name of Carter, who was a sheriff of the county. No, they weren’t no good times at his house. He was a widower and his daughter kept house for him. I nursed for her, and one day I was playing with the baby. It hurt its little hand and commenced to cry, and she whirled on me, picked up a hot iron and run it all down my arm and hand. It took off the flesh when she done it.

After awhile, master married again; but things weren’t no better. I seed his wife blacking her eyebrows with smut one day, so I thought I’d black mine just for fun. I rubbed some smut on my eyebrows and forgot to rub it off, and she caught me. She was powerful mad and yelled: ‘You black devil, I’ll show you how to mock your betters.’

Then she picked up a stick of stovewood and flails it against my head. I didn’t know nothing more ‘till I come to, lyin’ on the floor. I heard the mistus say to one of the girls: “I thought her thick skull and cap of wool would take it better than that.”

'As if we had killed somebody'

Following Nat Turner's unsuccessful slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831, Alabama made it a crime for anyone to teach a slave how to read. The maximum fine was $500, about $12,700 today. Douglass recalled one of his masters saying "he should know nothing but the will of his master, and learn to obey it," as well as "If you learn him how to read he'll want to know how to write; and, this accomplished, he'll be running away with himself." Amid paranoia about secret meetings, slaves were often forced to worship with whites, where they often heard expurgated biblical accounts and were expected to listen in silence. Some slaves held private prayer meetings in response.

Mary Ella Grandberry, Sheffield

We worked all day, every day except some Saturday, we had a half day off then. Us didn’t get many and only when us ask for them. On Sunday us just laid round most all day. Us didn’t get no pleasure out of going to church, cause we weren’t allowed to say nothing. Sometimes even on Christmas us didn’t get no rest. I remember one Christmas us had to build a lime kiln.

Mingo White, Sheffield

Us didn’t have nowhere to go except church and we didn’t get no pleasure out of it cause we weren’t allowed to talk from the time we left home till us got back. If us went to church the drivers went with us. Us didn’t have no church except the white folks church.

Mary Ella Grandberry, Sheffield

The white folks didn’t allow us to even look at a book. They would scold and sometimes whip us if they caught us with our heads in a book. That is one thing I surely did want to do and that was to learn to read and write. Master Jim promised to teach us to read and write, but he never had the time.

There wasn’t but one church on the place what I lived on, and colored and the whites both went to it. You know we was never allowed to go to church without some of the white folks with us. We weren’t even allowed to talk with nobody from another farm. If you did, you got one of the worst whuppings of your life.

William Henry Towns, Sheffield

If we so much as spoke of learning to read and write we was scolded like the devil. If we was caught looking in a book we was treated the same as if we had killed somebody. A servant better not be caught looking in a book. Didn’t make no difference if you want doing nothing but looking at the pictures.

A former slave cabin near Eufala, Ala., photographed in 1936. Library of Congress

Delia Garlic, Montgomery

One night the master come in drunk and sat at the table with his head lolling around. I was waiting on the table, and he looked up and see me. I was scared, and that made him awful mad. He called an overseer and told him: “Take her out and beat some sense in her.”

I begin to cry and run and run in the night; but finally I run back by the quarters and heard mammy calling me. I went in, and right away they come for me. A horse was standing in front of the house, and I was took that very night to Richmond and sold to a speculator again. I never seed my mammy anymore.

Mingo White, Sheffield

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One day I was sitting down at the barn when a wagon come up the lane. I stood round like a child will. When the wagon got to the house, my mammy got out and broke and run to me and throwed her arms round my neck and hugged and kissed me. I never even put my arms round her or nothing of the sort. I just stood there looking at her. She said, ‘Son, ain’t you glad to see your mammy?’ I looked at her and walked off. Mammy Selina call me and told me that I had hurt my mammy’s feelings, and that this woman was my mammy. I went off and studied and I begin to remember things. I went to Selina and asked her how long it been since I seen my mammy. She told me that I had been ‘way from her since I was just a little child. I went to my mammy and told her that I was sorry I done what I did and that I would like for her to forget and forgive me for the way I act when I first saw her.

Laura Clark, Livingston

Laura Clark's cabin, photographed by the Works Progress Administration in 1937. Libary of Congress

I sit across the road here from that church over yonder and can’t go cause I’m crippled and blind, but I hear them singing:

A motherless child sees a hard time

Oh Lord, help her on the road

Her sister will do the best she can

This is a hard world, Lord, for a motherless child.

And I just burst out crying. That was the song I had in view to sing for you, it’s so mournful.