perhaps one or two weeks. One day when they were in
the field moulding corn, going round the corn hoeing it and putting a
little hill around it, the conk sounded at about eleven o'clock, and
they knew that the long expected time had come. They dropped their hoes
and went to the big house. They went around to the back where the master
always met the servants and he said to them, 'You are all free, free as
I am. You can go or come as you please. I want you to stay. If you will
stay, I will give you half the crop.' That was the beginning of the
share cropping system.

"My mother came at once to the quarters, and when she found me she
pulled the end out of a corn sack, stuck holes on the sides, put a cord
through the top, pulled out the end, put it on me, put on the only dress
she had, and made it back to the old home (her first master's folk).

What the Slaves Expected

"When the slaves were freed, they got what they expected. They were glad
to get it and get away with it, and that was what mother and them did.

Slave Time Preaching

"One time when an old white man come along who wanted to preach, the
white people gave him a chance to preach to the niggers. The substance
of his sermon was this:

"'Now when you servants are working for your masters, you must be
honest. When you go to the mill, don't carry along an extra sack and put
some of the meal or the flour in for yourself. And when you women are
cooking in the big house, don't make a big pocket under your dress and
put a sack of coffee and a sack of sugar and other things you want in
it."

"They took him out and hanged him for corrupting the morals of the
slaves.

Conditions After the War

"Immediately after the War, there was a great scarcity of food. Neither
Negroes nor white folk had anything to eat. The few white people who did
have something wouldn't let it be known. My grandmother who was
sixty-five years old and one of the old and respected inhabitants of
that time went out to find something for us to eat. A white woman named
Mrs. Burton gave her a sack of meal and told her not to tell anybody
where she got it.

"My grandmother brought the meal home and cooked it in a large skillet
in a big cake. When it got done, she cut it into slices in the way you
would cut up a pie and divided it among us. That all we had to eat.

House

"The white people in those days built their houses back from the front.
In South Carolina, there were lots of far