“Wasn’t no law then.  He was the law.  I worked all day long for ten cents a day.  They would allowance you so many pounds of meat, so much meal, so much molasses.  I have worked all day for ten cents and then gone out at night to get a few potatoes.  I have pulled potatoes all day for a peck of meal and I was happy at that.  I never did know what the price of cotton was.

“Where we was, the Ku Klux never did bother anybody.  All there was, every time we went out we had to have a pass.

“My grandfather and grandmother were both whipped sometimes.  I don’t know the man that whipped them.  I don’t know whether it was the agent or the owner or who, but they were whipped.  Lots of times they had work to do and didn’t do it.  Naturally they whipped them for it.  That was what they whipped my grandparents for.  Sometimes too, they would go off and wouldn’t let the white folks know where they was going.  Sometimes they would neglect to feed the horses or to milk the cows—­something like that.  That was the only reason I ever heard of for punishing them.

“I heard that if the boss man wanted to be with women that they had, the women would be scared not to be with him for fear he would whip them.  And when they started whipping them for that they kept on till they got what they wanted.  They would take them ’way off and have dealings with them.  That is where so much of that yellow and half-white comes from.

“There was some one going through telling the people that they was free and that they was their own boss.  But yet and still, there’s lots of them never did leave the man they was with and lots of them left.  There was lots of white people that wouldn’t let a nigger tell their niggers that they was free, because they wanted to keep them blind to that for years.  Kept them for three or four years anyway.  Them that Bullocks liked was crazy about him.  He would give them a show—­so much a month and their keeps.  I don’t remember exactly how much it was but it was neighborhood price.  He was a pretty good man.  Of course, you never seen a white man that wouldn’t cheat a little.

“He’d cheat you out of a little cotton.  He would have the cotton carried to the gin.  He would take half the corn and give us five or six shoats.  After he got the cotton all picked and sold, the cotton it would all go to him for what you owed him for furnishing you.  You never saw how much cotton was ginned, nor how much he got for it, nor how much it was worth nor nothing.  They would just tell you you wasn’t due nothing.  They did that to hold you for another year.  You got nothing to move on so you stay there and take what he gives you.

“Of all the crying you ever heard, one morning we’d got up and the pigs and hogs in the lot that we had fattened to go on that winter, he was catching them.  After we’d done fattened them with the corn that was our share, he took ’em and sold ’em.  We didn’t even know we owed him anything.  We thought the crops had done settled things.  Nobody told us nothin’.  All we children cried.  The old man and the old woman didn’t say nothing, because they was scared.  My mother would get up and go down and milk the cows and what she’d get for the milking would maybe be a bucket of buttermilk.