"My mother was born March 16, 1865, and knew nothing of slavery.
"Both my grandmothers and both grandfathers were slaves. My father was born in the same year as my mother and like my mother knew nothing of slavery although both of them might have been born slaves.
"I knew my mother's mother and father and my father's mother, but I didn't know my father's father.
"He was from Texas and he always stayed there. He never did come out to Louisiana where I was born. My mother was born in Louisiana, but my father was born in Texas. I don't know what county or city my father was born in. I just heard my grandmother on his side say he was born in Texas.
"During the War (he was born in '65 when the War ceased), Grandmother Katy—that was her name, Katy, Katy Elmore—she was in Louisiana at first—she was run out in Texas, I suppose, to be hidden from the Yankees. My father was born there and my grandfather stayed there. He died in Texas and then Grandma Katy come back to Louisiana with my father and settled in Ouachita Parish.
"Grandma Katy was sold from South Carolina into Louisiana to Bob McClendon, and she kept the name of Elmore who was her first owner in South Carolina. It was Bob McClendon who run her out in Texas to hide her from the Yankees. My grandfather in Texas kept the name of Jamison. That was the name of his master in Texas. But grandma kept the name of Elmore from South Carolina because he was good to her. He was better than Bob McClendon. The eastern states sold their slaves to the southern states and got all the money, then they freed the slaves and that left the South without anything.
"Grandma Katy had Creek Indian blood in her. She was of medium size and height, copper colored, high cheek bones, small squinchy eyes, black curly hair. Her hair was really pretty but she didn't curl it. It was just naturally curly. She was a practical nurse as they call it, but she did more of what some people call a midwife. They call it something else now. They got a proper word for it.
"They got it in these government agencies. That is what she was even in slavery times. She worked for colored people and white people both. That was after she was freed until she went blind. She went blind three years before she died. She died at the age of exactly one hundred years. She treated women and babies. They said she was a real good doctor in her day. That is been fifty-four years ago. [I will be fifty-four years old tomorrow—September 18, 1938.] In slavery times my grandma was almost as free as she was in freedom because of her work.
"She said that Bob McClendon was cruel to her. Sometimes he'd get angry and take the shovel and throw hot ashes on the slaves. And then he'd see them with blisters on them and he would take a handsaw or a flat plank and bust the blisters. Louisiana was a warm country and they wouldn't have much clothes on. When the slaves were freed, he went completely broke. He had scarcely a place to live.
"I seen him once. Be look like on old possum. He had a long beard down to his waist and he had long side burns too. Just a little of his face showed. He was tall and stooping and he wore his hair long and uncut down on his neck. You know about what he looked like. He had on blue jeans pants and brogan shoes and a common shirt—a work shirt. He wore very common clothes. When they freed the Negroes, it broke him up completely. He had been called a 'big-to-do' in his life but he wasn't nothing then. He owned Grandma Katy.