ey learned both
came from Virginia. Both of them had white fathers, were light
complected and had been brought up in the big house.

"When they told the Colonel they wished to marry he only said, 'Julia,
do you take William,' and 'William, do you take Julia?' Then they were
man and wife. He gave them the name of Johnson, which was the family
name of my father's mother and the name of his father.

"When my parents lived with Judge Drennon they had a house in the yard
quarters. The Drennon home was the most beautiful house I ever have
seen. It was a big, brick mansion with tall, white pillars reaching up
to the second story. The yards and grounds were so beautiful the white
folks used to come from long ways off to see them.

"After the surrendering we lived with the Drennons four or five years.
They paid my parents for their work and I had an easy time of it. I was
youngest of eight children and there was ten years or more between me
and the next older child. My mother wanted to make something special out
of me.

"I went to three different schools down in the woods before I was nine.
White people would come and put up schools for the colored children but
the white people in Mississippi said they were not good people and would
criticize them. Sometimes the schools would get busted up. We studied
out of the Blue Back speller and an arithmetic and a dictionary. I could
spell and give the meaning of most nigh every word in that dictionary.

"When I was thirteen they held an examination at Lexington for colored
children to see who'd get a scholarship at Tuckaloo University, eight
miles from Jackson. I was greatly surprised when I won from my county
and I went but didn't finish there. Then I went a little while to a
small university near Lexington, called Allcorn University. I loved to
go to school and was considered bookish. But my people died and I had to
earn a living for myself and I couldn't find any way to use so much what
I learned out of books, as far as making money was concerned. So I came
to Texas, doing any kind of labor work I could find. Finally I married
and went to farming 35 or 40 years and raised five children.

"I'm the only one left now of my brothers and sisters and it won't be
long until I'm gone, too, but I don't mind that. We lived a long time.
Some of it was hard and some of it was good. I tried all the time to
live according to my lights and that is as far as I know how to do. I
don't feel resent