The fieldworker provided only a summary of Mittie Blakeley’s narrative. Mittie was born in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1858. Her mother died when she was a baby, so she was taken into the “big house” and raised with the white children. She was always treated kindly and assigned only light chores, which had to be done well or she was chided, just as the white children were. Every evening the children collected eggs. The child who brought in the most eggs got a ginger cake, and Mittie almost always got the cake. When she was old enough, she had to spin wool for her mistress, who wove it into cloth to make the family clothes. She also learned to knit, and after supper she knitted until bedtime.
Her older brothers and sisters were not treated as well as she was. They were whipped often and hard. She said she hated to think, much less to talk, about their awful treatment. She also recalled that once an elderly female slave had displeased her master about something. He had a pit dug and boards placed over the hole. The woman was made to lie face down on the boards, and she was beaten until the blood gushed from her body. Then she was left there to bleed to death. Mittie remembered, too, that the slaves gathered in a cabin at night to dance. If they went without a pass, which they often did, and were caught, they were severely beaten. If the slaves heard the overseers riding toward the cabin, those without a pass would take the boards up from the cabin floor and hide under the floor until the overseers had gone. Mittie, a very serious woman, said she felt sorry for those who were treated much worse than any human would treat a beast.