Sometime we had a good time.  I danced till I joined the church.  We didn’t have no nigger churches that I knowed till after freedom.  Go to the white folks church.  We danced square dance jess like the white folks long time ago.  The niggers baptized after the white folks down at the pond.  They joined the white folks church sometimes.  The same woman on the place sewed for de niggers, made some things for Miss Frances.  I recollects that.  She knitted and seed about things.  She showed the nigger women how to sew.  All the women on the place could card and spin.  They sat around and do that when too bad weather to be on the ground.  They show didn’t teach them to read.  They whoop you if they see you have a book.  If they see you gang round talkin, they say they talkin bout freedom or equalization.  They scatter you bout.

When they sell you, they take you off.  See drove pass the house.  Men be ridin wid long whips of cow hide wove together and the dogs.  The slaves be walkin, some cryin cause they left their folks.  They make em stand in a row sometimes and sometimes they put em up on a high place and auction em.

The pore white folks whut not able to buy hands had to work their own land.  There shore was a heap of white folks what had no slaves.  Some ob dem say theys glad the niggers got turned loose, maybe they could get them to work for them sometimes and pay em.

When you go to be sold you have to say what they tell you to say.  When a man be unruly they sell him to get rid of him heap of times.  They call it sellin nigger meat.  No use tryin run off they catch you an bring you back.

I don’t know that there was ever a thought made bout freedom till they was fightin.  Said that was what it was about.  That was a white mans war cept they stuck a few niggers in front ob the Yankee lines.  And some ob the men carried off some man or boy to wait on him.  He so used to bein waited on.  I ain’t takin sides wid neither one of dem I tell you.

If der was anything to be knowed the white folks knowed it.  The niggers get passes and visit round on Saturday evening or on Sunday jes mongst theirselves and mongst folks they knowed at the other farms round.

When dat war was done Georgia was jes like being at the bad place.  You couldn’t stay in the houses fear some Ku Klux come shoot under yo door and bust in wid hatchets.  Folks hide out in de woods mostly.  If dey hear you talkin they say you talkin bout equalization.  They whoop you.  You couldn’t be settin or standing talkin.  They come and ask you what he been tell you.  That Ku Klux killed white men too.  They say they put em up to hold offices over them.  It was heap worse in Georgia after freedom than it was fore.  I think the poor nigger have to suffer fo what de white man put on him.  We’s had a hard time.  Some of em down there in Georgia what didn’t get into the cities where they could get victuals and a few rags fo cold weather got so pore out in the woods they nearly starved and died out.  I heard em talk bout how they died in piles.  Niggers have to have meat to eat or he get weak.  White folks didn’t have no meat, no flour.