He let her go to see grandmother and he let her go
to church.

"Sometimes my mother went to the white church and sometimes she went
to the colored folks church. When we went to the white folks church,
we took and sat down in the back and behaved ourselves and that was
all there was to it. When they'd have these here big
meetings--revivals or protracted meetings they call them--she'd go to
the white and black. They wouldn't have them all at the same time and
everybody would have a chance to go to all of them.

"They wouldn't allow the colored to preach and they wouldn't even call
on them to pray but he could sing as good as any of them.

"Generally all colored preachers that I knowed of was slaves. The
slaves attended the churches all right enough--Methodists and Baptists
both white and black. I never heard of the preachers saying anything
the white folks did not like.

"The Methodists' church started in the North. There was fourteen or
fifteen members that got dissatisfied with the Baptist church and went
over to the Methodist church. The trouble was that they weren't
satisfied with our Baptism. The Baptists were here before the
Methodists were thought of. These here fourteen or fifteen members
came out of the North and started the Methodist church going.

Share Cropping

"Share cropping has been ever since I knowed anything. It was the way
I started. I was working the white man's land and stock and living in
his house and getting half of the cotton and corn. We had a garden and
raised potatoes and greens and so on, but cotton and corn was our
crop. Of course we had them little patches and raised watermelon and
such like.

Food and Quarters

"We ate whatever the white man ate. My mother was the cook. She had a
cook-room joined to her room [which reached clear over to the white
folks' house.] [HW: see p. 4] Everything she cooked on that stove, we
all ate it, white and black--some of the putting, [HW: pudding] some
of the cakes, some of the pies, some of the custard, some of the
biscuits, some of the corn bread--we all had it, white and black. I
don't know no difference at all. Asa Brown was a good old man. There
was some mean slave owners, but he wasn't one.

Whippings

"You could hear of some mean slave owners taking switches and beating
their niggers nearly to death. But I never heard of my old master
doing that. Slaves would run away and it would be a year or two before
they would be caught. Someti