"Share cropping has been ever since I knowed anything. It was the way I started. I was working the white man's land and stock and living in his house and getting half of the cotton and corn. We had a garden and raised potatoes and greens and so on, but cotton and corn was our crop. Of course we had them little patches and raised watermelon and such like.
Food and Quarters
"We ate whatever the white man ate. My mother was the cook. She had a cook-room joined to her room [which reached clear over to the white folks' house.] [HW: see p. 4] Everything she cooked on that stove, we all ate it, white and black—some of the putting, [HW: pudding] some of the cakes, some of the pies, some of the custard, some of the biscuits, some of the corn bread—we all had it, white and black. I don't know no difference at all. Asa Brown was a good old man. There was some mean slave owners, but he wasn't one.
Whippings
"You could hear of some mean slave owners taking switches and beating their niggers nearly to death. But I never heard of my old master doing that. Slaves would run away and it would be a year or two before they would be caught. Sometimes they would take him and strip him naked and whip him till he wasn't able to stand for running away. But I never heard of nothing like that happening with Asa Brown. But he sometimes would sell a hand or buy one sometimes. He'd take a nigger in exchange for a debt and rent him out.
Voting
"There wasn't any voting by the slaves. But ever since freedom they have been voting. None of my friends ever held any office. I don't know anything about the niggers not voting now. Don't they vote?
Patter Rollers, K. K. K., White Carmelias, Etc.
"My mother and father knowed about Patter Rollers, but I don't know nothing about them. But they are dead and gone. I have heard of the Ku Klux but I don't know nothing about it. I don't know what I used to know. No sir, I am out of the question now.
"There is one thing I keep straight. When I wants to drink or when I wants to eat—oh yes, I know how to go to bed.