"Dr. Pope was good to me, better to me than he was to Master Walter and Master Billy and my young Miss, Aurelia, cause me and Laura was scared of em and we tried to do everything they wanted.
"When the war ended in 1865 we was out in the field gettin' pumpkins. Old master come out and said, 'Hardy, you and Laura is free now. You can stay or you can go and live with somebody else.' We stayed till 1868 and then our mammies come after us. I was seventeen.
"After freedom my mammy sent me to school. Teacher's name was W.H. Young. Name was William Young but he went under the head of W.H. Young.
"I went to school four years and then I got too old. I learned a whole lot. Learned to read and spell and figger. I done pretty good. I learned how to add and multiply and how to cancel and how to work square root.
"What I've been doin' all my life is farmin' down at Fairfield on the Murphy place.
"Vote? Good lord! I done more votin'. Voted for all the Presidents. Yankees wouldn't let us vote Democrat, had to vote Republican. They'd be there agitatin'. Stand right there and tell me the ones to vote for. I done quit votin'. I voted for Coolidge—we called him College—that's the last votin' I did. One of my friends, Levi Hunter, he was a colored magistrate down at Fairfield.
"Ku Klux? What you talkin' about? Ku Klux come to our house. My sister Ellen's husband went to war on the Yankee side durin' the war—on the Republican side and fought the Democrats.
"After the war the Ku Klux came and got the colored folks what fought and killed em. I saw em kill a nigger right off his mule. Fell off on his sack of corn and the old mule kep' on goin'.
"Ku Klux used to wear big old long robe with bunches of cotton sewed all over it. I member one time we was havin' church and a Ku Klux was hid up in the scaffold. The preacher was readin' the Bible and tellin' the folks there was a man sent from God and say an angel be here directly. Just then the Ku Klux fell down and the niggers all thought 'twas the angel and they got up and flew.
"Ku Klux used to come to the church well and ask for a drink and say, 'I ain't had a bit of water since I fought the battle of Shiloh.'