e bed. We all got over it.

"Pa made us go clean. He made me comb and wrop my hair every night. I
had prutty hair then. I had tetter and it all come out. I has to wear
this old wig now. When I was young my eye-sight got bad, they said
measles settled in em and to help em Ma had these holes put in em (in
her ears). I been wearin' earbobs purt nigh all my life.

"The Ku Klux never bothered us. They never come nigh our house no time.
Pa died and Ma married a old man. They stayed in the same place a while.
When Pa died he had cattle and stock that why I don't know if he got
somepin at Freedom. He had plenty.

"We lived at Holly Springs (Miss.) when they started the first colored
schools. There was three lady teachers. I think a man. One of the white
teachers boarded at my Ma's. On Saturday the other two eat there. I
recollect Ma cooking and fixing a big dinner Saturday. No white folks
let em stay with em or speak to em. They was sent from up north to teach
the darky chaps. I was one went to school. They wasn't nice like my
white folks then neither. They paid high board and white folks sent em
to Ma so she get the money. I was 14 years old when I married. I lived
wid my husband more an 50 years. We got long what I'ze tellin' you. This
young set ain't got no raisin' reason they cain't stand one nother. I
don't let em come in my yard. I cain't raise no children, I'm too old
and they ain't got no manners and the big ones got no sense. Jes wild.
They way they do. They live together a while and quit. Both them soon
livin' wid somebody else. That what churches fer, to marry in. Heap of
em ain't doin' it. No children don't come here tearin' up what I work
and have. I don't let em come in that gate, I have to work so hard in my
old days. I picked cotton. I can, by pickin' hard, make a dollar a day.
I cooked ten years fore I stopped, I cain't hold up at it. I washed and
ironed till the washing machines ruined that work fer all of us black
folks. Silk finery and washin' machines ruint the black folks.

"Ma named Elsie Langston and Lewis Langston. They took that name somehow
after the old war (Civil War), I recken it was her old master's name.

"After I was married and had children I was hard up. I went to a widow
woman had a farm but no men folks. She say, 'If you live here and leave
your little children in my yard and take my big boys and learn em to
work, I will cook. On Saturday you wash and iron.' She took me in that
way when