"Course we ought to be free—you know privilege is worth everything.
"After surrender my mother stayed with old mistress till next year. She thought there wasn't nobody like my mother. When she got sick old mistress come six miles every day to see her and brought her things till she died.
"My mother learned to weave and spin and after we was free the white folks give her the loom. I know I made a many a yard of cloth after surrender. My mother was a seamstress and she learned me how to sew.
"I never did hire out—just worked at home. My mother had six boys and six girls and they're all dead but me and my sister.
"Somebody told me I was twenty-five when I married. Had three children—all livin'.
"I used to see the white folks lookin' at a map to see where the soldiers was fightin' and I used to wonder how they could tell just lookin' at that paper.
"Old mistress said after freedom, 'Now, Susa, I don't want you to suffer for nothin.' I used to go up there and stay for weeks at a time.
"I just got down with rheumatism here bout three or four years ago, and you know it goes hard with me—I always been used to workin' all my life."