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Washing the Tick Mattress and Other Laundry (1994) Reference: Six Women Slave Narratives, The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers, History of Mary Prince   Click to Start. Click again to Stop. "I was obliged to wash, though I was very ill ... my mistress got together a great many heavy things, such as bed-coverlets, bed-ticks and such, for me to wash ... I got the rheumatism by catching cold at the pond side, from washing in the fresh water..."	Black Man's Saga Reference: Gates, Jr., Henry Louis, The Classic Slave Narratives, The Life of Olaudah Equiano, [an autobiography] Caption taken from Equiano Reflections on the State of My Mind "Well may I say my life has been One scene of sorrow and of pain; From early days I griefs have known, And as I grew my griefs have grown."	Frederick Douglass' Grandmother (1993) Reference: Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave   Click to Start. Click Again to Stop. "If any one thing in my experience, more than another, served to deepen my conviction of the infernal character of slavery, and to fill me with unutterable loathing of slaveholders, it was their base ingratitude to my poor old grandmother. She had served my old master faithfully from youth to old age. She had peopled his plantation with slaves; she had become a great-grandmother in his service. She had rocked him in infancy, attended him in childhood, served him through life, and at his death wiped from his icy brow the cold death-sweat, and closed his eyes forever. She was nevertheless left a slave--a slave for life--a slave in the hands of strangers, and in their hands she saw her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren, divided, like so many sheep, without being gratified with the small privilege of a single word, as to their or her destiny."
Grandmother II (1994) Reference: Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave   Click to Start. Click Again to Stop. "...my grandmother, who was now very old, having outlived my old master and all his children ... her present owners finding she was of but little value, her frame already wracked with the pains of old age ... they took her to the woods, built her a little hut, put up a little mud-chimney, and then made her welcome to the privilege of supporting herself there in perfect loneliness; thus virtually turning her out to die."	Home Sweet Home (1993) Reference: The American Slave, Prepared by the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration. Ellen Butler, Louisiana Slave. "...Lil log house with one room-floor dirt-house made jes like they usta make tater house--lil window in the back..." From Julius Lester, To Be a Slave, slaves' point of view of slave housing: "the softest couches in the world are not to be found in the log mansion of the slaves. The one whereon I reclined year after year was a plank twelve inches wide and ten feet long. My pillow was a stick of wood. The bedding was a coarse blanket and not a rag or shred beside. Moss might be used, were it not that it directly breeds a swarm of fleas. The cabin is constructed of logs, without floor or window..." Another account taken from Lester, To Be a Slave: "We lodged in log huts and on the bare ground. Wooden floors were an unknown luxury. In a single room were huddled, like cattle, ten or a dozen persons, men, women, and children..."	Labour Reference: The American Slave, Prepared by the Federal Writers' Project of the WPA. Sam and Louisa Everett. "Expectant mothers toiled in the fields until they felt their labor pains. It was not uncommon for babies to be born in the fields..." Caption with Painting from Gates, Jr., Henry Louis, (Editor), The Classic Slave Narratives, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, A West Indian Slave [Mary Prince] (related by herself) "Poor Hetty [a french black], my fellow slave....The consequence was that poor Hetty was brought to bed before her time, and was delivered after severe labour a dead child."

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