re were
brutal masters then just like there are brutal people now. Louisiana and
Alabama and Mississippi always were tough states on colored people.
South Carolina and Georgia got that way after people from those places
came in and taught them to mistreat colored people. Yet in Alabama and
Louisiana where they colored people were worse treated, it seems that
they got hold of more property and money. Same way it was in
Mississippi."

Patrollers

"The patrollers was just a set of mean men organized in every section of
the country. If they'd catch a nigger out and he didn't have a pass,
they'd tie him up and whip him and then they'd take him back. You had
to have a pass to be out at night. Even in the daytime you couldn't go
no great distance without a pass. Them big families--rich families--that
had big plantations would come together and the niggers from two or
three places might go to a church on one of them. But you couldn't go no
place where there wasn't a white man looking on."

Reading and Writing in Slave Time

"Some of the white people thought so much of their slaves that they
would teach them how to write and read. But they would teach them
secretly and they would teach them not to read or write out where
anybody would notice them. They didn't mind you reading as much as they
minded you writing. If they'd catch YOU now and it was then, they'd take
you out and chop off them fingers you're doing that writing with."

Slave Occupation and Wages

"My daddy was a builder. Old man Willingham gave him freedom and time to
work on his own account. He gave him credit for what work he done for
him. He got three hundred dollars a year for my father's time, but all
the money was collected by him, because my father being a slave couldn't
collect any money from anybody. When my father's master died, he may
have had money deposited with him. But he was strictly honest with my
father. No matter how much he collected, he wouldn't take no more'n
three hundred dollars and he put all the rest to the credit of my
father. He said three hundred dollars was enough to take."

How Freedom Came

"The owners went to work and notified the slaves that they were free.
After the proclamation was issued, the government had agents who went
all through the country to see if the slaves had been freed. They would
see how the proclamation was being carried out. They would ask them,
'How are you working?' 'You are free.' 'What are you