Viney Baker

Viney Baker was 78 and living on South Harrington Street in Raleigh, North Carolina, when Mary A. Hicks interviewed her. She was born in Virginia, enslaved by S. L. Allen. Her mother was Hannah Murry. As far as she knew she had no father; she supposed he was the man the enslaver used to father children on the plantation. When she was small, Allen moved to Durham County, where he held about a hundred people on some five hundred acres and worked everyone hard, the little ones included, on very little food and clothing.

One night she lay down on the straw mattress beside her mother, and the next morning her mother was gone. A speculator had come in the night wanting to buy a woman, and they had taken her mother without waking Viney. "I has always been glad somehow that I was asleep." She was tied to a tree and beaten until blood ran down her back. She didn't remember what she had done, only the whippings, and she screamed that she was dying.

She wasn't glad at the surrender because she didn't understand it, and the Allens kept her on and whipped her worse than ever. When she was about twelve, her mother came to the house and asked to have Viney visit for the weekend. The mistress couldn't refuse, since her mother might go to the federal authorities. On Sunday, when Viney mentioned going back, her mother just laughed. Viney stayed with her and never saw the Allens again.