“Jeff Davis went on.  The Confederates went on.  They all went on.  Then the Yanks passed through.

“The first fight they had there, they cleaned up the Sixty-Ninth Alabama troops.  My young master had been helping drill them.  He went on and overtook the others.

Right After the War

“I am not sure just what we did immediately after freedom.  I don’t know whether it was a year or whether it was a year and a half.  I can just go by my mother.  After freedom, we came from Auburn, Alabama to Opelika, Alabama, and she went to cooking at a hotel until she got money enough for what she wanted to do.  When she got fixed, she moved then to Columbus, Georgia.  She rented a place from Ned Burns, a policeman.  When that place gave out, she went to washing and ironing.  Sterling Love rented a house from the same man.  He had four children and they were going to school and they took me too.

Schooling

“I fixed up and went to school with them.  I didn’t get no learning at all in slavery times.

How Freedom Came

“I don’t know whether all the whites did it or not; but I know this—­when they quit fighting, I know the white children called we little children and all the grown people who worked around the house and said, ‘You all is jus’ as free as we is.  You ain’t got no master and no mistiss,’ and I don’t know what they told them at the plantation.

Occupation

“Right after the War, my mother worked—­washed—­for an old white man.  He took an interest in me and taught me.  I did little things for him.  When he died, I took up the teaching which he had been doing.

“At first I taught in Columbus, Georgia.  By and by, a white man came along looking for laborers for this part of the country.  He said money grew on bushes out here.  He cleaned out the place.  All the children and all the grown folks followed him.  Two of my boys came to me and told me they were coming.  We hoboed on freights and walked to Chattanooga, Tennessee.  We stayed there awhile.  Then a white man came along getting laborers.  I never kept the year nor nothin’.  He brought us to Lonoke County, and I got work on The Bood Bar Plantation.  Squirrels, wild things, cotton and corn, plenty of it.  So you see, the man told the truth when he said money grew on bushes.

“I taught and farmed all my life.  Farming is the greatest occupation.  It supports the teacher, the preacher, the lawyer, the doctor.  None of them can live without it.

“I can’t do much now since that lady knocked me down with her automobile and made me a cripple.  I’d a been all right if so many of them young doctors hadn’t experimented on me.  Then I can’t see good out of one eye.  I can’t do much now.  I don’t know why they won’t give me a pension.”