“I heard my stepmother—­I call her my mother—­say some thing once.  She belonged to a white family named Bell.  They had a lot of slaves.  My stepmother was the house girl; so she could get on to a lot of things the others couldn’t.  She stayed in the house.  That was in slavery times.  The speculators who were buying colored folks would put up at that place.  Looked like a town but it all belonged to one person.  The name of the place was Cloverdale, Tennessee.  My stepmother said that a gang of these folks put up at Cloverdale once and then went on to Nashville, Tennessee.  On the next day a nigger sold the speculator.  He was educated and a mulatto, and he sold his master in with a bunch of other niggers.  He was just fixin’ to take the money, when his master got aware of it, and come on up just in time.  I don’t know what happened to the nigger.  It was just an accident he got caught.  My stepmother said it was true.

Good Masters

“My mother had a good master.  At least, she said he was good.  Slaves from other plantations would run away and come to her master’s place to stay.  They would stay a good while.

“My father said his master was good to him too.  My father’s young master has come to see us since the War.  He got down low and used to come ’round.  My father would give him turns of corn.  You know when you used to go to the mill, you would carry about two bushels of corn and call it a milling or a turn.  My father would let his young master shell a bushel or two of corn and carry it to the mill.  He got poor and sure ’nough you see.  We had moved away from them then, and he got in real hard luck.  He used to come and sit a half day at a time at our house.  And father would give him the corn for his family.  We were living in Dickson County, Tennessee then.  Seems like we was on Frank Hudson’s place.  We hadn’t bought a place for ourselves then.

Ku Klux Klan

“You know they used to ku klux the niggers.  They went to the house after the War of an old man named Hall.  They demanded for him to let them in but he wouldn’t.  They said that they would break open the door if he didn’t let them in.  He didn’t let them in, and they broke it down.  When they started in, his wife threw fire brands in amongst ’em and he knicked one down with an ax.  Them that wasn’t hurt carried the wounded man away and it was reported the next day that he was sick.  They never did bother the nigger no more and he never had no charges made against him.

Runaway Negroes—­After Freedom