The following is an account of Charles Grandy found on ‘Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938’.
Charles Grandy was born in 1842 in Mississippi. As an infant Grandy was sent to Norfolk and then on to Virginia where he was made to start working at 5 years’ old on cotton and other crops. His labour was brutal and the long hours were hard on his young body. Frequently he would fall asleep from sheer exhaustion before reaching his living quarters. Due to the strenuous labour and young age he got an injury to his arm which wasn’t treated correctly and therefore became deformed. Fear of being whipped or being sent away to the south had him working with his one good hand in the fields for several years.
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