Julius Nelson

Julius Nelson was 77 and an inmate of the State Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he had spent about fifteen years, when Mary A. Hicks interviewed him. He was five when the war ended, so he said he barely remembered slavery. His parents, Ann and Alex, were enslaved by a Mr. Nelson in Anson County. He was one of eleven children, and all the others had died.

He remembered the horn blowing before daylight, workers galloping to the fields at sunrise, and the dinner bell at noon, when one large woman cooked for fifty or sixty people. He pulled weeds and picked up apples. He described big pots of turnip greens, collards, peas and beans, pans of blackberry pie the children picked for, a tub of candy one Christmas, dances with banjos and fiddles twice a year, and the corn shucking where whoever found a red ear could kiss anyone they pleased. He did not remember seeing Union soldiers, but he said the Ku Klux gave them a great deal of trouble after the war.