“When they were stolen, they were made slaves. Nick Toliver bought ’em. He was their first master, far as I heard ’em say. After old man Nick Toliver died, Tom Brewer bought my mother. Toliver and Brewer were the only two masters she had.
“After freedom came, my grandma took back her own name, Gillespie. Grandma’s second husband was named Berry Green. She was free and in the Indian reservation when she married Gillespie, but she was a slave when she married Berry Green.
“After my mother came to be of age, she married a man named Willis. He was a slave. That is why I am like I am now. If my grandma had stayed in the nation, I never would have been a slave, and I wouldn’t need to be beatin’ around here trying to get just bread and meat.
“After freedom, she taken her mother’s name by her free husband, Gillespie, and she made her husband take it too. That how I got the name of Gillespie.”
Occupation of Forefathers
“After they were made slaves, my grandmother cooked and my mother waited table and worked as a house girl. My grandma used to make clothes too, and she could work on one of these big looms.”
Patrollers
“My mother told me that when the boys would go out to a dance, they would tie a rope across the road to make the horses of the patrollers stumble and give the dancers time to get away. Sometimes the horses’ legs would be broken.”
Subject’s Occupation
“I wants to work and can’t get work; so they ain’t no use to worry. I used to cook. That is all I did for a living. I cooked as long as I could get something for it. I can’t get a pension.”