Millie Evans

Millie Evans was born in North Carolina in 1849. She didn't know the exact date, but her birthday came at fodder-pulling time, because her mother was pulling fodder until an hour before she was born. She didn't remember her enslavers' names, only that they held about a hundred people, that the enslaver managed the men and his wife the women, and that the bell rang at four every morning: "I can hear it now." She was raised largely by the mistress, who called the small children up to the house for johnnycake and buttermilk, served in a long trough they drank from with their mouths, and put them down for naps every afternoon at three.

When she was big enough she nursed the mistress's baby, and later she cooked in the kitchen built apart from the big house. Her father was called to preach, and the enslaver let him preach in the kitchen and the yard. She described in detail how they dyed cloth: beech bark for slate, hickory bark and bay leaves for yellow, pine straw for purple, tanning water for brown, indigo for blue. She also described starting a fire by striking a flint over cotton on a skillet lid, sometimes for half an hour.

She was a young woman at the surrender. When interviewed by Carol Graham in Arkansas, she said she got lonesome thinking about those times.