ped, too. I asked him
why he should be whipped, he hadn't done anything wrong. But Uncle Simon
said he guessed he needed it anyway.

"I think there was a jail on the plantation, because Mamma said if the
slaves weren't in at a certain hour at night, the watchman would lock
them up if he found them out after hours without a pass.

"Uncle Simon used to tell me slaves were not allowed to read and write.
If you ever got caught reading or writing, the white folks would punish
you. Uncle Simon said they were beaten with a leather strap cut into
strips at the end.

"I think the colored folks had a church, because Mamma was always a
Baptist. Only colored people went to the church.

"Mamma used to sing a song:

"Don't you remember the promise that you made,
To my old dying mother's request?
That I never should be sold,
Not for silver or for gold.
While the sun rose from the East to the West?

"And it hadn't been a year,
The grass had not grown over her grave.
I was advertised for sale.
And I would have been in jail,
If I had not crossed the deep, dancing waves.

"I'm upon the Northern banks
And beneath the Lion's paw,
And he'll growl if you come near the shore.

"The slaves left the plantation because they were sold and their
children were sold. Sometimes their masters were mean and cranky.

"The slaves used to get together in their cabins and tell one another
the news in the evening. They visited, the same as anybody else.
Evenings, Mamma did the washing and ironing and cooked for my father.

"When the slaves got sick, the other slaves generally looked after them.
They had white doctors, who took care of the families, and they looked
after the slaves, too, but the slaves looked after each other when they
got sick.

"I remember in the Civil War, how the soldiers went away. I seen them
all go to war. Lots of colored folks went. That was the time we were
living in Detroit. The Negro people were tickled to death because it was
to free the slaves.

"Mamma said the Ku Klux was against the Catholics, but not against the
Negroes. The Nightriders would turn out at night. They were also called
the Know-Nothings, that's what they always said. They were the same as
the Nightriders. One night, the Nightriders in Louisville surrounded a
block of buildings occupied by Catholic people. They permitted the women
and children to exscape, but killed all the men. When they found out the
men were putting