“The Ku Klux wanted to whoop my papa.  They all called him Dan.  They said he was mean.  His white folks protected him.  They said he worked well.  They wouldn’t let him be whooped by them Ku Kluxes.

“Miss Sallie Ann was visiting and she had mama along to see after the children and to help the cook where she visited.  They was there a right smart while from the way papa said.  The pattyrollers whooped somebody on that farm while she was over there.  They wasn’t many slaves on her place and they was good to them.  That whooping was right smart a curiosity to mama the way papa told us about it.

“When mama and papa married, Johnny Williams had a white preacher to read out of a book to them.  They didn’t jump over no broom he said.

“They was the biggest kind of Methodist folks and when mama was five years old Johnny Williams had all his slaves baptized into that church by his own white preacher.  Papa said some of them didn’t believe niggers had no soul but Johnny Williams said they did. (The Negroes must have been christened—­ed.)

“Papa said folks coming through the country would tell them about freedom.  Mama was working for Miss Sallie Ann and done something wrong.  Miss Sallie Ann says, ’I’m a good mind to whoop you.  You ain’t paying ‘tention to a thing you is doing the last week.’  Mama says, ’Miss Sallie Ann, we is free; you ain’t never got no right to whoop me no more care what I do.’  When Bill come home he say, ’How come you to sass my wife?  She so good to you.’  Mama say, ’Master Bill, them soldiers say I’m free.’  He slapped her.  That the first time he laid hands on her in his life.  In a few days he said, ’We going to town and see is you free.  You leave the baby with Sallie Ann.’  It was the courthouse.  They questioned her and him both.  Seemed like he couldn’t understand how freedom was to be and mama didn’t neither.  Then papa took mama on Johnny Williams’ place.  He come out to Arkansas and picked cotton after freedom and then he moved his children all out here.

“Uncle Albert and grandpa take nights about going out.  Uncle Albert was courting.

“They put potatoes on fire to cook when next morning they would be warm ready to eat.  The fire popped out on mama.  She was in a light blaze.  Not a bit of water in the house.  Her sisters and brothers peed (urinated) on her to put out the fire.  Her stomach was burned and scarred.  They was all disappointed because they thought she would be a good breeder.  Miss Sallie Ann took her and cured her and when Miss Sallie Ann was going to marry, her folks didn’t want to give her Minerva.  She tended (contended) out and got her and Agnes both.  Agnes died at about emancipation.

“I’m named for my mother.  I’m her youngest child.

“I recollect my grandmother and what she told, and papa’s mind went back to olden times the older he got to be.  When folks would run down slavery he would say it wasn’t so bad with them—­him and mama.  He never seen times bad as times is got to be now.  Then he sure would wanted slavery back some more.  He was a strong hard laboring man.  He was a provider for his family till he got so no ’count.