George Dillard

George Dillard was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1852. His family was taken from Virginia to Mississippi, and he was enslaved first by a Mr. Dillard and then by Bob Steele, who held about 200 people on some 2,000 acres. George worked as a field hand, rising at the bell and working as long as there was daylight. Meals were cooked in the mistress's kitchen and sent to the field on a big cart.

There was a dance every Saturday night, and George loved to play the banjo while the others danced. People often danced late into the night and then had to get up for church, which was held on the plantation with a white preacher; everyone had to attend. George loved the singing most. He believed firmly in ghosts but said they never bothered him.

After freedom he stayed and sharecropped with Steele, who he said was always fair to him. He married Cella Shelton, with the help of the white family, and they had twenty-four children. "It was a bunch of dem," he said, "but I loved ebry one." He came to Greene County, Alabama, about sixty years before his interview and in old age lived in Eutaw.