Tempe Pitts

Tempe Pitts was 91 and living at 307 Tarboro Street in Raleigh, North Carolina, when Mary A. Hicks interviewed her. She showed a paper written that year by her former enslaver's granddaughter, stating her age and that Tempe had been her nurse and a good, trustworthy servant. Tempe was born in Halifax County to Phillis Pitts and Isaac Williams. They belonged first to Mason L. Wiggins and then, through marriage, to Captain Hardy Pitts, whose family held more than two hundred people on plantations in North Carolina and Virginia. She said they had enough to eat, tough but good clothes, and the best doctor when sick, and did not have to work while ill.

The one whipping she remembered was for leaving the silverware she'd been told to scour with sand lying dirty in the yard; the mistress stung her legs with a small switch. She said she saw the overseer whip a man.