“I don’t know how my parents was sold.  I’m sure they was sold.  Pa’s name ivas Jim Bradley (Bradly).  He come from one of the Carolinas.  Ma was brought to Mississippi from Georgia.  All the name I heard fer her was Ella Logan.  When freedom cone on, I heard pa say he thought he stand a chance to find his folks and them to find him if he be called Bradley.  He did find some of his brothers, and ma had some of her folks out in Mississippi.  They come out here hunting places to do better.  They wasn’t no Bradleys.  I was little and I don’t recollect their names.  Seem lack one family we called Aunt Mandy Thornton.  One was Aunt Tillie and Uncle Mack.  They wasn’t Thorntons.  I knows that.

“My folks was black, black as I is.  Pa was stocky, guinea man.  Ma was heap the biggest.  She was rawbony and tall.  I love to see her wash.  She could bend ’round the easier ever I seed anybody.  She could beat the clothes in a hurry.  She put out big washings, on the bushes and a cord they wove and on the fences.  They had paling fence ’round the garden.

“Massa Tom didn’t have a big farm.  He had a lot of mules and horses at times.  They raised some cotton but mostly corn and oats.  Miss Liza Jane left b’fore us.  We all cried when she left.  She shut up the house and give the women folks all the keys.  We lived on what she left there and went on raising more hogs and tending to the cows.  We left everything.  We come to Hernando, Mississippi.  Pa farmed up there and run his blacksmith shop on the side.  My parents died close to Horn Lake.  Mama was the mother of ten and I am the mother of eight.  I got two living, one here and one in Memphis.  I lives wid ’em and one niece in Natches I live with some.

“I was scared to death of the Ku Klux Klan.  They come to our house one night and I took my little brother and we crawled under the house and got up in the fireplace.  It was big ’nough fer us to sit.  We went to sleep.  We crawled out next day.  We seen ’em coming, run behind the house and crawled under there.  They knocked about there a pretty good while.  We told the folks about it.  I don’t know where they could er been.  I forgot it been so long.  I was ’fraider of the Ku Klux Klan den I ever been ’bout snakes.  No snakes ’bout our house.  Too many of us.

“I tried to get some aid when it first come ’bout but I quit.  My children and my niece take keer or me.  I ain’t wantin’ fer nothin’ but good health.  I never do feel good.  I done wore out.  I worked in the field all my life.

“A heap of dis young generation is triflin’ as they can be.  They don’t half work.  Some do work hard and no ’pendence to be put in some ’em.  ’Course they steal ‘fo’ dey work.  I say some of ’em work.  Times done got so fer ’head of me I never ’speck to ketch-up.  I never was scared of horses.  I sure is dese automobiles.  I ain’t plannin’ no rides on them airplanes.  Sure you born I ain’t.  Folks ain’t acting lack they used to.  They say so I got all I can get you can do dout.  It didn’t used to be no sich way.  Times is heap better but heap of folks is worse ’an ever folks been before.”