Emma Taylor

Emma Taylor was born in Mississippi, where her parents were enslaved by the Greer family. Her earliest memory was following her mother through the cotton patch, where her mother's dragging sack cleared a path. The worst whipping she ever got was for playing with a corncob doll in a silk dress that belonged to her enslaver's daughter; she said she had never seen a doll as pretty.

When the old enslaver decided he had too many people, he held a sale. They were put on a platform and stripped of nearly all their clothes. Terrified of being separated from her mother, Emma screamed as loud as the auctioneer until he told her to shut up. She and her mother were sold together to a man in Texas whose name she later forgot, and there she got the first shoes she ever wore. Work ran from four in the morning until dark, and then every woman had to spin four cuts of thread at night or be whipped. Rations were issued weekly, and when they ran out, Emma slipped into the potato patch at night to steal food so they wouldn't go hungry. She carried pepper to throw in the dogs' eyes.

She married at fifteen, shortly before freedom; her husband, Rube Taylor, was bought by her enslaver so he could live with her. After freedom they stayed on for 35 cents a day, then drifted from job to job until they managed to get a farm. When interviewed at 89 she lived with her youngest child in Tyler, Texas.