dem days, we'd take cornmeal and
mix it with water and call 'em corn dodgers and dey awful nice with
plenty butter. We had lots of hawg meat and when dey kilt a beef a man
told all de neighbors to come git some of de meat.

"Right after de war, times is pretty hard and I's taken beans and
parched 'em and got 'em right brown, and meal bran to make coffee out
of. Times was purty hard, but I allus could find somethin' to work at in
dem days.

"I lived all my life 'mong white folks and jus' worked in first one
place and then 'nother. I raised ten white chillen, nine of de Lowe
chillen, and dey'd mind me quicker dan dey own pappy and mammy. Dat in
McMullin County.

"De day I's married I's 59 year old and my wife is 'bout 60 year old
now. De last 20 years I's jus' piddled 'round and done no reg'lar work.
I married right here in de church house. I nussed my wife when she a
baby and used to court her mammy when she's a girl. We's been real happy
together.

420928

[Illustration: James D. Johnson]

JAMES D. JOHNSON, born Oct. 1st, 1860, at Lexington, Mississippi,
was a slave of Judge Drennon. He now lives with his daughter at
4527 Baltimore St., Dallas, Texas. His memory is poor and his
conversation is vague and wandering. His daughter says, "He ain't
at himself these days." James attended Tuckaloo University, near
Jackson, Mississippi, and uses very little dialect.

"My first clear recollection is about a day when I was five years old. I
was playing in the sand by the side of the house in Lexington with some
other children and some Yankee soldiers came by. They came on horseback
and they drew rein by the side of the house and I ran under the house
and hid. My mother called to me to come out and told me they were
Federal soldiers and I could tell it by their blue uniforms. One of the
soldiers reached into his haversack and pulled out a uniform and gave it
to me. 'Have your mammy make a suit out of it,' he said. Another soldier
gave me a uniform and my mother was a seamstress in the home of the
Drennons and she made me two suits out of those uniforms.

"Judge Drennon had married the daughter of Colonel Terry and he had
given my parents to his daughter when she married the judge. My father
and mother both came from Virginia. Colonel Terry had bought them at
separate times from a slave trader who brought them from Virginia to
Mississippi. They had a likeness for each other when th