“Mr. Criss Moore was kickin’ a nigger boy.  Old Miss say, ’Criss, quit kickin’ him, you hurt him.’  He say, ‘I ain’t hurtin’ him, I’m playin’ wid him!’ White boys played wid nigger boys when they come round the house.  Glad to meet up to get to play.

“Mr. Criss Moore, Jr. (John Moore’s grandson) is a doctor way up North and so is Mr. Daniel Johnson, Jr.  One of em in Washington I think.  I could ask Miss Betty Carter when I go back to Mississippi.

“When I left Mississippi Mr. Criss hated to see me go.  Mr. Johnson say, ‘I wanted all our niggers buried on our place.’  He say to Jim, my husband, ’Now when she die you let me know and I’ll help bring her back and bury her in the old graveyard.’  When my papa died Mr. Johnson had the hearse come out and get him and take him in it to the graveyard.  He was buried by mama and nearly all the Johnson, Moore, and Reed (or Reid) niggers buried there.  My husband is buried here (Hazen, Arkansas) but he was a Curlett.

“Papa set out apple trees on the old Johnson place, still bearin’ apples.  The old farm place is forty-eight miles from Tupelo and three miles from Houlka, Mississippi.

“My mother had eighteen children and I had sixteen but all mine dead now but three.  Mama’s ma and grandpapa Haley had twenty-two children.  Yes ma’am, they sho did have plenty to eat.  Mars Daniel say to his wife, ‘Cornelia, feed my niggers.’  That bout last he said when he went off to war.  Mars Green, Daniel, and Jimmie three brothers.  Three Johnson brothers buried their gold money in stone jars and iron cookin’ pots fore they left and went to war.

“When the fightin’ stopped, people was so glad they rung and rung the farm bells and blowed horns—­big old cow horns.  When Mars Daniel come home he went to my papa’s house and says, ‘John, you free.’  He says, ’I been free as I wanter be whah I is.’  He went on to my grandpa’s house and says, ‘Toby, you are free!’ He raised up and says, ’You brought me here frum Africa and North Carolina and I goiner stay wid you long as ever I get sompin to eat.  You gotter look after me!’ Mars Daniel say, ‘Well, I ain’t runnin’ nobody off my place long as they behave.’  Purtnigh every nigger sot tight till he died of the old sets.  Mars Daniel say to grandpa, ‘Toby, you ain’t my nigger.’  Grandpa raise up an’ say, ‘I is, too.’

“They had to work but they had plenty that made em content.  We had good times.  On moonlight nights somebody ask Mars Daniel if they could have a cotton pile, then they go tell Mars Moore and Judge Reid (or Reed).  They come, when the moon peep up they start pickin’.  Pick out four or five bales.  Then Mars Daniel say you come to the house.  Ring the bell.  Then we have a big supper—­pot of chicken, stew and sweet potatoes roasted.  Have a wash pot full of molasses candy to pull and all the goobers we could eat.