Ku Klux Klan

“I don’t remember much about the Ku Klux Klan.  They never bothered me, and never bothered any one connected with me.

Powell Clayton

“I have stood at the bar and drank with Powell Clayton.  He had been ’round here ever since we had.  He was a very particular friend of my boss’—­the bosses of my work after the war and freedom.  They were all Yankees together.  They would all meet at the office.  That was while I was working my way through school and afterwards too.  He was strictly a ‘Negroes’ Friend’.  He was a straight out and out Yankee.

A Broken Thumb in a Political Fight

“I got this thumb broken beating a white man up.  No, I’ll tell the truth.  He was beating me up and I thought he was going to kill me.  It was when Benjamin Harrison had been elected President.  I was in Sol Joe’s saloon and I said, ‘Hurrah for Harrison.’  A white man standing at the bar there said to me, ’What do you mean, nigger, insulting the guests here?’ And before I knew what he was going to do—­bop!—­he knocked me up on the side of the head and put me flat on the floor.  He started to stamp me.  My head was roaring, but I grabbed his legs and held them tight against me and then we was both on the floor fighting it out.  I butted him in the face with my head and beat him in the face with my fists until he yelled for some one to come and stop me.  There was plenty of white people ’round but none of them interfered.  A great commotion set up and I slipped out the back door and went home during the excitement.

“When I went back to the saloon again after about a week or so, the fellow had left two dollars for me to drink up.  Sol Joe told me that he showed the man he was wrong, that I was one of his best customers.  To make Sol and me feel better, he left the two dollars.  When I got there and found the money waiting for me, I just called everybody in the house up to the bar and treated it out.

“They claimed I had hit him with brass knucks, but when I showed them my hand—­it was swollen double—­and then showed them how the thumb was broken, they agreed on what caused the damage.  That thumb never did set properly.  You see, it’s out of shape right now.

Domestic Life

“I met my wife going home.  I was a train porter between here and Memphis.  She was put in my care to see that she took her train all right out of Memphis, Tennessee, going on farther.  I fell in love with her and commenced courting her right from there.  She was so white in color that you couldn’t tell she was colored by looking at her.  After I married her, I was bringing her home, and three white men from another town got on the train and followed us, thinking she was white.  Every once in a while they would come back and peep in the Negro coach.  Sometimes they would come in and sit down and smoke and watch us.  My sister notice it and called my attention to it.  I went to the conductor and complained.  He called their hand.