“I have heard women scream and holler, ‘Do pray, massa, do pray.’  And I was sure glad when she beat up young Tom and got away.  I didn’t have no use for neither one of ’em, and ain’t yet.

“It wasn’t her work to be in the field.  He made her breed and then made her work at the loom.  That wasn’t nothin’.  He would have children by a nigger woman and then have them by her daughter.

“I went out one day and got a gun.  I don’t know whose gun it was.  I said to myself, ‘If you whip my mother today, I am goin’ to shoot you.’  I didn’t know where the gun belonged.  My oldest sister told me to take it and set it by the door, and I did it.

How Freedom Came

“Dr. Polk had a fine horse.  He came riding through the field and said, ’All you all niggers are free now.  You can stay here and work for me or you can go to the next field and work.’

“I had an old aunt that they used to make set on a log.  She jumped off that log and ran down the field to the quarters shouting and hollering.

“The people all said, ’Nancy’s free; they ain’t no ants biting her today.’  She’d been setting on that log one year.  She wouldn’t do no kind of work and they make her set there all day and let the ants bite her.

“Big Niggers”

“They used to call my folks ‘big niggers.’  Papa used to get things off a steamboat.  One day he brought a big demi-john home and ordered all the people not to touch it.  One day when he went out, I went in it.  I had to see what it was.  I drunk some of it and when he came home he said to me, ‘You’ve been in that demi-john.’  I said, ‘No, I haven’t.’  But he said, ‘Yes, you have; I can tell by the way you look.’  And then I told him the truth.

“He would get shoes, calico goods, coffee, sugar, and a whole lot of other things.  Anything he wanted, he would get.  That he didn’t, he would ask him to bring the next trip.

“It was a Union gunboat, and ran under the water.  You could see the smoke.  The white people said, ‘That boat’s goin’ to carry some of these niggers away from here one of these days.’

“And sure enough, it did carry one away.

Buried Treasure and a Runaway

“I went to the big gate one morning and there was a nigger named Charles there.

“I said, ‘What you doing out here so early this morning?’

“He said to me, ‘You hush yo’ mouth and get on back up to the house.’

“I went back to the house and told my mother, ‘I saw Charles out there.’  That was before my mother ran away.

“My mother said, ’He’s fixing to run away.  And he’s got a barrel of money.  And it belongs to the Doctor.  ’Cause he and the Dr. went out to bury it to keep the Yankees from getting it.’

“He ran away, and he took the money with him, too.  He went out to Kansas City and bought a home.  We didn’t think much of it, because we knew it was wrong to do it.  But Old Master Tom had done a heap of wrong too.  He was the first one spotted the boat that morning—­Charles was.  And he went away on it.