Clay Bobbit

Clay Bobbit turned 100 on May 2, 1937, three weeks before Mary A. Hicks interviewed him at his home on South Harrington Street in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was born in Warren County to Washington and Delisia Bobbit, enslaved by Richard Bobbit, called "Massa Dick," who held more than a hundred people on a large plantation. His siblings were Henry and Delilah.

He showed the interviewer a large scar above his elbow where he had been whipped with a cowhide, "for nothing except that I was Black," and said he received many whippings, mostly for refusing orders, and saw people beaten nearly to death. Rations were short and clothing scant. The only pleasures came from slipping away, and when they sang they turned a pot upside down at the door to catch the sound. He married before the war in a broomstick ceremony, but his wife was sold away before they had been married a year.

No one told him about the surrender, so he stayed on several months after the war ended. Then he came to Raleigh and worked for the city for nearly fifty years before retiring. On his hundredth birthday he was too sick to go to the city lot, but he received many presents. He had recently married his third wife.