“I am stricken now with the rheumatism on one side.  This hip.

“My mother was treated well in slavery times.  My father was sold five times.  Wouldn’t take nothin’.  So they sold him.  They beat him and knocked him about.  They put him on the block and they sold him ’bout beatin’ up his master.  He was a native of Virginia.  The last time they sold him they sold him down in Claiborne County, Mississippi.  Just below where I was born at.  I was born in Copiah County near Hazlehurst, about fifteen miles from Hazlehurst.  My mother was born in Washington County.  Virginia.  Her first master was Qualls Tolliver.  Qualls moved to Mississippi and married a woman down there and he had one son, Peachy Toliver.  After he died, he willed her to Peachy.  Then Peachy went to the Rebel army and got killed.

“My mother’s father was a free Indian named Washington.  Her mother was a slave.  I don’t know my father’s father.  He moved about so much and was sold so many times he never did tell me his father.  He got his name from the white folks.  When you’re a slave you have to go by your owner’s name.

“My master’s mother took me to the house after my mother died.  And the first thing I remember doing was cleaning up.  Bringing water, putting up mosquito-bars, cooking.  My master’s mother was Susan Reed.  I have done everything but saw.  I never sawed in my life.  The hardest work I did was after slavery.  I never did no hard work during slavery.  I used to pack water for the plow hands and all such as that.  But when my mother died, my mistress took me to the house.

“But Lawd!  I’ve seen such brutish doin’s—­runnin’ niggers with hounds and whippin’ them till they was bloody.  They used to put ’em in stocks.  When they didn’t put ’em in stocks, used to be two people would whip ’em—­the overseer and the driver.  The overseer would be a man named Elijah at our house.  He was just a poor white man.  He had a whip they called the black snake.

“I remember one time they caught a man named George Tinsley.  They put the dogs on him and they bit ’im and tore all his clothes off of ’im.  Then they put ’im in the stocks.  The stocks was a big piece of timber with hinges in it.  It had a hole in it for your head.  They would lift it up and put your head in it.  There was holes for your head, hands and feet in it.  Then they would shut it up and they would lay that whip on you and you couldn’t do nothin’ but wiggle and holler, ’Pray, master, pray!’ But when they’d let that man out, he’d run away again.

“They would make the slaves work till twelve o’clock on Sunday, and then they would let them go to church.  The first time I was sprinkled, a white preacher did it; I think his name was Williams.

“The preacher would preach to the white folks in the forenoon and to the colored folks in the evening.  The white folks had them hired.  One of them preachers was named Hackett; another, Williams; and another, Gowan.  There was five of them but I just remember them three.  One man used to hold the slaves so late that they had to go to the church dirty from their work.  They would be sweaty and smelly.  So the preacher ’buked him ’bout it.  That was old man Bill Rose.