in the morning at a place three miles distant from Malden. In
addition to this, I gave private lessons to several young men whom I was
fitting to send to the Hampton Institute. Without regard to pay and with
little thought of it, I taught any one who wanted to learn anything that
I could teach him. I was supremely happy in the opportunity of being
able to assist somebody else. I did receive, however, a small salary
from the public fund, for my work as a public-school teacher.

During the time that I was a student at Hampton my older brother, John,
not only assisted me all that he could, but worked all of the time in
the coal-mines in order to support the family. He willingly neglected
his own education that he might help me. It was my earnest wish to help
him to prepare to enter Hampton, and to save money to assist him in his
expenses there. Both of these objects I was successful in accomplishing.
In three years my brother finished the course at Hampton, and he is
now holding the important position of Superintendent of Industries at
Tuskegee. When he returned from Hampton, we both combined our efforts
and savings to send our adopted brother, James, through the Hampton
Institute. This we succeeded in doing, and he is now the postmaster
at the Tuskegee Institute. The year 1877, which was my second year of
teaching in Malden, I spent very much as I did the first.

It was while my home was at Malden that what was known as the "Ku Klux
Klan" was in the height of its activity. The "Ku Klux" were bands of
men who had joined themselves together for the purpose of regulating the
conduct of the coloured people, especially with the object of preventing
the members of the race from exercising any influence in politics. They
corresponded somewhat to the "patrollers" of whom I used to hear a
great deal during the days of slavery, when I was a small boy. The
"patrollers" were bands of white men--usually young men--who were
organized largely for the purpose of regulating the conduct of the
slaves at night in such matters as preventing the slaves from going from
one plantation to another without passes, and for preventing them from
holding any kind of meetings without permission and without the presence
at these meetings of at least one white man.

Like the "patrollers" the "Ku Klux" operated almost wholly at night.
They were, however, more cruel than the "patrollers." Their objects, in
the main, were to crush out the political aspirat