“We stayed there three years after surrender. They paid my mother and stepfather but they wouldn’t pay us chillun nothin’, so my mother sent me to town to live with my sister.
“I hired out as a nurse girl and them white folks just as good to me as could be. She paid me $3 a month and give me all my clothes. I was young and didn’t have no sense, but all I didn’t spend on candy I sent to my mother.
“In slavery times the white folks had a servant to comb the hair and lift up the dress. Yes ma’m, they had servants. I sho was glad they had that war and freed me.
“Yes, Jesus, I seen them Ku Klux. I member once we had a big ball. We was cuttin’ a dash that night. The Ku Klux come and made out they was dead. Some of the folks run they was so scared, but one woman come out and said she knowed every one of the men. She knowed em by their hosses. Next mornin’ we went by old Purvis Newman’s house and it looked like they was a hundred saddles layin’ out in the yard. I was a young woman then and sparkin’ fit to kill. Yes ma’m I member all about it. I reekolect it just as well as I can walk out that door.
“My son wrote me bout eight years ago and say, ‘Mama, you is might near a hunderd.’ My daughter, my baby chile, is bout sixty-three.
“About this younger generation, I don’t know what to think. Some say the devil loose ‘for a season.’ I say if he ain’t loose, he tied mighty slack.”