“They packed a two-story jail so full of men they had orders to turn ’em out. Then they built a high fence ’bout eight foot tall and put ’em in it. They had lights and guards all ’round it. They kept ’em right out in the hot sun in that pen. That’s where the Yankees put the Ku Klucks. Then they had trials and some was sent to Albany for three years and eight years and the like. They made glass at Albany. Them Yankees wouldn’t let ’em have no bonds. Then the white folks told them they needn’t settle among them. They owned all the land and wouldn’t sell them a foot for nuthing. A heap of lawyers and doctors got in it. That fence was iron and bob wire. The Ku Kluck killed good men, but Republicans.
“We stayed on like we were ’cause we done put in the crop and the Ku Kluck never did bother us. We made a prutty good crop. Then we took our freedom. Started workin’ fer money and part of the crop.
“I married in 1871. Me and Emma went to bed. Somebody lam on the door. Emma say ‘You run they won’t hurt me.’ I say ‘They kill me sure.’ We stayed and opened the door. They pull the cover offen her looking. They lifted up a cloth from over a barrel behind the bed in the corner. I say that are a hog. He say we right from hell we ain’t seen no meat. Then they soon gone. The moon shining so bright that night. They were lookin’ for my wife’s brother I heard ’em say. They say he done something or another.
“Charleston was the nearest a army ever come to me but I seed a heap of soldiers on the roads. One road was the Rock Hill road.
“One man I heard ’em talk cheap about had the guns and powder. They shot holes in the walls. He climbed up in the fireplace chimney and stood up there close to the brick. It was dark and they couldn’t see him. They looked up the chimney but didn’t see him. It was a two-story chimney. Lady if you ain’t never seen one I can’t tell you just how it was. But they shot the house full of holes and never harmed him.
“For them what stayed on like they were Reconstruction times ’bout like times before dat ’ceptin’ the Yankees stole out an’ tore up a scanlus heap. They tell the black folks to do something and then come white folks you live wid and say Ku Kluck whoop you. They say leave and white folks say better not listen to them old Yankees. They’ll git you too fur off to come back and you freeze. They done give you all the use they got fer you. How they do? All sorts of ways. Some stayed at their cabins glad to have one to live in an’ farmed on. Some runnin’ ’round beggin’, some hunting work for money an’ nobody had no money ’ceptin’ the Yankees and they had no homes or land and mighty little work fer you to do. No work to live on. Some goin’ every day to the city. That winter I heard ’bout them starving and freezing by the wagon loads.
“I never heard nuthing ’bout votin’ till freedom. I don’t think I ever voted till I come to Mississippi. I votes Republican. That’s the party of my color and I stick to them long as they do right. I don’t dabble in white folk’s buzness an’ that white folks votin’ is their buzness. If I vote I go do it and go on home.
“I been plowin’ all my life and in the hot days I cuts and saws wood. Then when I gets outer cotton pickin’ I put each boy on a load of wood an’ we sell wood. Then we clear land till next spring. I don’t find no time to be loafing. I never missed a year farming till I got the Brights disease an’ it hurt me to do hard work. The last years we got $3 a cord. Farmin’ is the best life there is when you are able.
“I come to Holly Springs in 1850, stopped to visit. I had six children and $90 in money. We come on the train. My parents done come on from South Carolina to Arkansas. Man say this ain’t no richer land than you come from. I tried it seven years. I drove from there, ferried the rivers. It took a long time. We made the best crop I ever seed in 1888. I had eight children, my wife. I cut and hauled wood all winter. I soon had three teams haulin’ wood to Clarendon. Some old men, [white men] mean things! Learned one of my boys to play craps. They done it to git his money.
“When I owned most I had six head mules and five head horses. I rented 140 acres of land. I bought this house and some other land about. The anthrax killed nearly all my horses and mules. I got one big fine mule yet. Its mate died. I lost my house. My son give me one room and he paying the debt off now. It’s hard for colored folks to keep anything. Somebody gets it frum ’em if they don’t mind.