“They didn’t give her anything much to eat.  They was farmers.  They raised their own cattle and hogs.  The niggers did the same—­that is, the niggers raised everything and got a little to eat.  They had one nigger man that was around the house and others for the field.  They didn’t allow the slaves to raise anything for themselves and they didn’t give them much.

“The slaves made their own clothes and their own cloth.  They would not let the slaves have anything much.  To keep them from being stark naked, they’d give them a piece to wear.

“Mama got to see her mother in 1885.  When I married she left and went to Missouri and found her sister and half-sister and her mother and brother or cousin.  She found her sister’s oldest daughter.  She was a baby laying in the cradle when mama ran through the field to get away from a young man that wanted to talk to her.

“My grandmother was a full-blooded Indian.  Her husband was a French Negro.  Nancy Cheatham was her name.

“The Ku Klux never bothered us.  They bothered some people about a mile from us.  They took out the old man and whipped him.  They made his wife get up and dance and she was in a delicate state.  They made her get out of bed and dance, and after that they took her and whipped her and beat her, and she was in a delicate state too.

“There was a man there in Black Rock though that stopped them from bothering anybody.  He killed one of them.  They went to the train.  They was raging around there then.  He got off the train and they tried to take him to jail.  The jail was way out through the woods.  He hadn’t done anything at all.  They just took hold of him to take him to the jail because he had just come into the town.  They had tugged him down the road and when they got to the woods, he took out his gun and killed one of them, and the rest left him alone.  The man who was killed had a wife and four or five children.  They sent the nigger to the penitentiary.  He stayed there about a year and come out.  That broke up the Ku Klux around Black Rock and Portia.  They never seemed to get much enjoyment out of it after that.

“I heard from different ones’ talk that a big hogshead full of money was given to the Negroes by the Queen, but they never did get it.  I think they said the queen sent that money.  I reckon it was Queen Victoria, but I don’t know.  But the white folks got it and kept it for themselves.

“Didn’t nobody have any rights then.  They would just put em up on a block and auction them off.  The one that give the most he would take em.  Didn’t nobody have no schooling only white folks.  The white children would go to school but they didn’t allow her to go.

“Once there was a slave woman.  They worked her day and night.  She had a little log cabin of her own.  The spirit used to come to her at night and tell her if she would follow them she wouldn’t have to work all the rest of her life.  At first she was scared.  But finally, she got used to them and she listened to them.  She got directions from them and followed them.  She went up into the loft and found a whole lot of money hid there.  She took it and built her a new house and used it.  I heard my grandmother tell this.  That was my step-grandmother named Dilsey.