and said protect themselves. They got
together and organized the militia and had leaders like reg'lar
soldiers. They didn't meet 'cept when they heered the Klu Kluxes was
coming to get some cullud folks. Then they was ready for 'em. They'd
hide in the cabins and then's when they found out who a lot of them Klu
Kluxes was, 'cause a lot of 'em was kilt. They wore long sheets and
covered the hosses with sheets so you couldn't rec'nize 'em. Men you
thought was your friend was Klu Kluxes and you'd deal with 'em in stores
in the daytime and at night they'd come out to your house and kill you.
I never took part in none of the fights, but I heered the others talk
'bout them, but not where them Klu Klux could hear 'em.

"One time they had 12 men in jail, 'cused of robbin' white folks. All
was white in jail but one, and he was cullud. The Klu Kluxes went to the
jailor's house and got the jail key and got them men out and carried 'em
to the River Bridge, in the middle. Then they knocked their brains out
and threw 'em in the river.

"We was 'fraid of them Klu Kluxes and come to town, to Snow Hill. We
rented a little house and my mother took in washing and ironing. I went
to school and learned to read and write, then worked on farms, and
fin'ly went to Columbia, in South Carolina, and worked in the turpentine
country. I stayed there a while and got married.

"I come to Texas in 1877 and Galveston was a little pen then, a little
mess. I worked for some white people and then went to Houston and it
wasn't nothing but a mudhole. So I messed 'round in South Carolina again
a while and then come back to Galveston.

"The Lawd called me then and I answered and I answered and was preacher
here at the Union Baptist Church, on 11th and K, 'bout 25 years.

"I knowed Wright Cuney well and he held the biggest place a cullud man
ever helt in Galveston. He was congressman and the white people looked
up to him just like he was white.

"Durin' the Spanish-American War I went to Washington, D.C., to see my
sister and got in the soldier business. The gov'ment give me $30.00 a
month for drivin' a four-mule wagon for the army. I druv all through
Pennsylvania and Virginia and South Carolina for the gov'ment. I was
a----what do they call a laborer in the army?

"When war was over I come back here and now I'm too old to work and the
state gives me a pension and me and my granddaughter live on that. The
young folks is makin' their mark now. One thing