After my mother’s return, she decided to sue for her freedom, and for that purpose employed a good lawyer.  She had ample testimony to prove that she was kidnapped, and it was so fully verified that the jury decided that she was a free woman, and papers were made out accordingly.

In the meanwhile, Miss Martha Berry had married Mr. Mitchell and taken me to live with her.  I had never been taught to work, as playing with the babies had been my sole occupation; therefore, when Mrs. Mitchell commanded me to do the weekly washing and ironing, I had no more idea how it was to be done than Mrs. Mitchell herself.  But I made the effort to do what she required, and my failure would have been amusing had it not been so appalling.  In those days filtering was unknown and the many ways of clearing water were to me an unsolved riddle.  I never had to do it, so it never concerned me how the clothes were ever washed clean.

As the Mississippi water was even muddier than now, the results of my washing can be better imagined than described.  After soaking and boiling the clothes in its earthy depths, for a couple of days, in vain attempt to get them clean, and rinsing through several waters, I found the clothes were getting darker and darker, until they nearly approximated my own color.  In my despair, I frantically rushed to my mother and sobbed out my troubles on her kindly breast.  So in the morning, before the white people had arisen, a friend of my mother came to the house and washed out the clothes.  During all this time, Mrs. Mitchell was scolding vigorously, saying over and over again, “Lucy, you do not want to work, you are a lazy, good-for-nothing nigger!” I was angry at being called a nigger, and replied, “You don’t know nothing, yourself, about it, and you expect a poor ignorant girl to know more than you do yourself; if you had any feeling you would get somebody to teach me, and then I’d do well enough.”

She then gave me a wrapper to do up, and told me if I ruined that as I did the other clothes, she would whip me severely.  I answered, “You have no business to whip me.  I don’t belong to you.”

My mother had so often told me that she was a free woman and that I should not die a slave, I always had a feeling of independence, which would invariably crop out in these encounters with my mistress; and when I thus spoke, saucily, I must confess, she opened her eyes in angry amazement and cried: 

“You do belong to me, for my papa left you to me in his will, when you were a baby, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself to talk so to one that you have been raised with; now, you take that wrapper, and if you don’t do it up properly, I will bring you up with a round turn.”

Without further comment, I took the wrapper, which was too handsome to trust to an inexperienced hand, like Mrs. Mitchell very well knew I was, and washed it, with the same direful results as chronicled before.  But I could not help it, as heaven is my witness.  I was entirely and hopelessly ignorant!  But of course my mistress would not believe it, and declared over and over again, that I did it on purpose to provoke her and show my defiance of her wishes.  In vain did I disclaim any such intentions.  She was bound to carry out her threat of whipping me.