and then go right back to work. Mama said
she could hear them niggers bein' whipped at night and yellin', 'Pray,
marster, pray,' beggin' him not to beat 'em.

"Other niggers would run away and come to Major Odom's place and ask his
niggers for sumpin' to eat. My mama would get word to bring 'em food and
she'd start out to where they was hidin' and she'd hear the hounds, and
the runaway niggers would have to go on without gettin' nothin' to eat.

"My husban's tol' me about slavery times in Alabama. He said they would
make the niggers work hard all day pickin' cotton and then take it to
the gin and gin away into the night, maybe all night. They'd give a
nigger on Sunday a peck of meal and three pounds of meat and no salt nor
nothin' else, and if you et that up 'fore the week was out, you jus'
done without anything to eat till the end of the week.

"My husban' said a family named Gullendin was mighty hard on their
niggers. He said ole Missus Gullendin, she'd take a needle and stick it
through one of the nigger women's lower lips and pin it to the bosom of
her dress, and the woman would go 'round all day with her head drew down
thataway and slobberin'. There was knots on the nigger's lip where the
needle had been stuck in it.

420911

[Illustration: Gus Johnson]

GUS JOHNSON, 90 years or more, was born a slave of Mrs. Betty
Glover, in Marengo Co., Alabama. Most of his memories are of his
later boyhood in Sunnyside, Texas. He lives in an unkempt, little
lean-to house, in the north end of Beaumont, Texas. There is no
furniture but a broken-down bed and an equally dilapidated trunk
and stove. Gus spends most of his time in the yard, working in his
vegetable garden.

"Dey brung thirty-six of us here in a box car from Alabama. Yes, suh,
dat's where I come from--Marengo County, not so far from 'Mopolis. Us
belong to old missy Betty Glover and my daddy name August Glover and my
mammy Lucinda. Old missy, she sho' treat us good and I never git whip
for anything 'cept lyin'. Old missy, she do de whippin'.

"Old missy she sho' a good woman and all her white folks, dey used to go
to church at White Chapel at 'leven in de mornin'. Us cullud folks goes
in de evenin'. Us never do no work on Sunday, and on Saturday after
twelve o'clock us can go fishin' or huntin'.

"Dey give de rations on Saturday and dat's 'bout five pound salt bacon
and a peck of meal and some sorghum syrup. Dey m