I was a purty big sized girl by then and had to go to work to help pappy.  A man name Captain Hodge, a northerner, got a plantation down the river.  He wanted to raise cotton but didn’t know how and had to get colored folks to help him.  A lot of us niggers from the barracks was sent to pick.  We got $1.25 a hundred pounds.  What did I do with my money?  Is you asking me that?  Bless your soul, honey, I never seen that money hardly long enough to git it home.  In them days chilluns worked for their folks.  I toted mine home to pappy and he got us what we had to have.  That’s the way it was.  We picked cotton all fall and winter, and went to school after picking was over.

When I got nearly growd, we moved on this very ground you is a setting on.  Pappy had a five year lease,—­do you know what that was, I don’t—­but anyhow, they told him he could have all the ground he could clear and work for five years and it wouldn’t cost him nothing.  He built a log house and put in a orchard.  Next year he had a big garden and sold vegables.  Lord, miss, them white ladies wouldn’t buy from nobody but pappy.  They’d wait till he got there with his fresh beans and roasting ears.  When he got more land broke out, he raised cotton and corn and made it right good.  His name was Harry Williams.  He was a stern man, and honest.  He was named for his old master.  When my brothers got growed they learned shoemakers trade and had right good business in Little Rock.  But when pappy died, them boys give up that good business and tuck a farm—­the old Lawson place—­so to make a home for mammy and the little chilluns.

I married Freeman.  Onliest husban ever I had.  He died last summer.  He was a slave too.  We used to talk over them days before we met.  The K.K.K. never bothered us.  They was gathered together to bother niggers and whites what made trouble.  If you tended to your own business, they’s let you alone.

No ma’am, I never voted.  My husband did.  Yes ma’am, I can remember when they was colored men voted into office.  Justice of Peace, county clerks, and, er—­er—­that fellow that comes running fast when somebody gets killed.  What you call him?  Coroner?  Sure, that’s him.  I know that, ’cause I seen them a-setting in their offices.

We raised our fam’ly on a plantation.  That’s the bestest place for colored chilluns.  Yes ma’am.  My five boys stayed with me till they was grown.  They heerd about the Railroad shops and was bound theys going there to work.  Ben—­that was my man—­and me couldn’t make it by ourselfs, so we come on back to this little place where we come soon after the war.  He was taken with a tumor on his brains last summer and died in two weeks.  He didn’t know nothing all that time.  My onliest boy what stayed here died jest two weeks after his pa.  All them others went to Iowa after the big railroad strike here.  They was out of work for many years; they didn’t like no kind of work but railroad, after they been in the shops.