“They say Abe Lincoln come down in this part of the country and asked for work.  He had his little grip just like you got.  The man said, ’Wait till I go to dinner.’  Didn’t say, ‘Come to dinner,’ and didn’t say nothin’ ’bout, ‘Have dinner.’  Just said, ‘Wait till I go eat my dinner.’  When he come back, Abe Lincoln was up there looking over his books.  He’d done changed his clothes and everything.  He had guards with him but they didn’t see ’em.  That is the story I heard them tell.

What the Slaves Got

“When the slaves got freed, they wasn’t expecting to get nothing that I knows of ‘cept what they worked for.  They weren’t spectin’ no forty acres and a mule.  Who was goin’ to give it to ’em?  The Rebs?  They didn’t give ’em nothin’ but what they could put on their backs—­I mean lashes.

“Blount had stocks that he used to put them in.  The stocks had hinges on one side and latches on the other.  The nigger would put his head in one hole and his arms through the others, and the old man would eat on the other end.  Your feet would be stretched out and you would be layin’ on your belly.

“Blount whipped me once because I wouldn’t go to the cow barns to get the milk to put in the coffee that morning.  I didn’t have time.  They had given me to Lela, and I had to take her to school.  I was ’sponsible if she was late.  He had give me to Lela.  Next morning with her, and we didn’t come back till Friday evening.  She went down to her Aunt Leona Harrison’s and carried me with her.  She was mad because they whipped me when I belonged to her.

“After slavery, we worked by the month on people’s plantations.  I did that kind of work till after a while the white people got so they rented the colored people land and selled them mules for their work.  Then some worked on shares and some rented and worked for theirselves.  Right after the war most of the farms were worked on shares.  We were lucky to be able to get to work by the month.

Schooling

“I went to school in Natchaz, Mississippi.  My teacher came from the North, I suppose.  But those I had in Rodney, I know they come from the North.  Miss Mary—­that’s all the name I knowed—­and Miss Emma were my teachers in Rodney.  They come from Chicago; I never went to school here.  I didn’t get no farther than the second grade.  I stopped school to go work when the teacher went back to Chicago.  After that I went to work in the field and made me a living.  I hadn’t done but a little work in the field helping pa now and then before that.

Marriages

“I married a long time ago in Rodney.  Lord, it’s been so long ago I couldn’t tell you when.  I been married four times.  They all quit me for other men.  I didn’t quit none of them.

Present Condition