“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 that a woman would be put up on the block and sold and bring good money because she was known to be a good and fast breeder.”