“I never learnt to read and write.  In slave time, they didn’t let you have no books.  My brother though was a good reader.  He could write as well as any of them because he would be with the white children and they would show him.  That is the way my brother learnt.  He would lay down all day Sunday and study.  The good blessed Lord helped him.

Marriage

“The man I married was on the plantation.  They married in slave time just like they do these days.  When I married, the justice of peace married me.  That was after freedom, our folks would give big weddings just like they do now (just after the war).  I ain’t got my license now.  Movin’ ’round, it got lost.  I was married right at home where me and my old man stayed.  Wasn’t nobody there but me and him and another man named Dr. Bryant.  That wasn’t far from Midway.

“I can’t talk much since I had those strokes.  Can’t talk plain, just have to push it out, but I thank God I can do that much.  The Lord let me stay here for some reason—­I don’t know what.  I would rather go, but he ain’t called me.

How the Day Went

“We got up after daylight.  Tom Eford didn’t make his folks git up early.  But after he was dead and gone, things changed up.  The res’ made ’em git up before daylight.  He was a good man.  The Lord knows.  Yes Lord, way before day.  You’d be in the field to work way before day and then work way into the night.  The white folks called Eford’s colored people poor white folks because he was so good to them.  Old Tom Eford was the sheriff of Clayton.

“His folks came back to the house at noon and et their dinner at the house.  He had a cook and dinner was prepared for them just like it was for the white folks.  The colored woman that cooked for them had it ready when they came there for it.  They had a great big kitchen and the hands ate there.  They came back to the same place for supper.  And they didn’t have to work late either.  Old Tom Eford never worked his hands extra.  That is the reason they called his niggers poor-white folks.  Folks lived at home them days and et in the same place.  When my old man was living, I had plenty.  Smokehouse was full of good meat.  Now everything you git, you have to buy.

“Next morning, they all et their breakfast in the same kitchen.  They et three meals a day every day.  My mother never cooked except on Sunday.  She didn’t need to.

Patrollers

“Me and old lady Eford would be out in the yard and I would hear her cuss the pateroles because they didn’t want folks to ’buse their niggers.  They had to git a pass from their masters when they would be out.  If they didn’t have a pass, the pateroles would whip them.

Jayhawkers

“The jayhawkers would catch folks and carry them out in the woods and hang them up.  They’d catch you and beat you to death.