of furniture they could git.
Some of them had old homemade beds and some of them one thing and
another. You know the white folks wasn't goin' to give them no
furniture.

"They had plenty of meat and bread and milk to eat. Coarse food--the
commonest kind of food they could get 'hold of! When I knowed anything,
I was in the big house eating the bes' with the white folks. Some of
them could live well then. My mama gave me to the Owenses--her old
mistress. I was raised on a pallet in the house. I was in the house from
the time I was large enough to be taken from my mother. I didn't never
do any work till I was married. Old mistress wouldn't let me work. Just
keep by her and hand her a drink of water, and on like that. She's dead
now--dead, dead, dead! They didn't leave but two children, they was
'round in the country somewheres then I left there.

"After I married I went to her husband's first wife's child. She had
about nine or ten boys and one girl. I raised part of them. But most of
them was great big children--big enough for me to throw a glass of milk
at their heads. I would fight. Sometimes they used to hear them
hollering and come out, and I would be throwing a glass at one and
jumping across the table at the other. But when them boys grew up, they
loved me just the same as anybody. Nobody in town could touch me, right
or wrong."

Mean Masters

"My mother's masters used to tie her down before the dairy door and have
two men beat her. She has told me that they used to beat her till the
blood ran down on the bricks. Some white people in slavery times was
good to the niggers. But those were mean, that's the reason I ain't got
no use for white folks. I'm glad I was not old in that time. I sure
would have killed anybody that treated me that way. I don't know that
my father's people beat him up. I think his people were kinder and
sorter humored him because he was so small."

Marriage

"They tell me some of them would have a big supper and then they would
hug and kiss each other and jump over the broomstick and they were
supposed to be married."

Amusement and Recreation

"They used to go out and dance and carry on for amusement, and they
would go to church too. It was just about like it is now. Dancing and
going to church is about all they do now, isn't it? They got a gambling
game down there on the corner. They used to do some of that too, I
guess."

Breeders

"I have heard my mother say many times