"There was some one going through telling the people that they was free and that they was their own boss. But yet and still, there's lots of them never did leave the man they was with and lots of them left. There was lots of white people that wouldn't let a nigger tell their niggers that they was free, because they wanted to keep them blind to that for years. Kept them for three or four years anyway. Them that Bullocks liked was crazy about him. He would give them a show—so much a month and their keeps. I don't remember exactly how much it was but it was neighborhood price. He was a pretty good man. Of course, you never seen a white man that wouldn't cheat a little.
"He'd cheat you out of a little cotton. He would have the cotton carried to the gin. He would take half the corn and give us five or six shoats. After he got the cotton all picked and sold, the cotton it would all go to him for what you owed him for furnishing you. You never saw how much cotton was ginned, nor how much he got for it, nor how much it was worth nor nothing. They would just tell you you wasn't due nothing. They did that to hold you for another year. You got nothing to move on so you stay there and take what he gives you.
"Of all the crying you ever heard, one morning we'd got up and the pigs and hogs in the lot that we had fattened to go on that winter, he was catching them. After we'd done fattened them with the corn that was our share, he took 'em and sold 'em. We didn't even know we owed him anything. We thought the crops had done settled things. Nobody told us nothin'. All we children cried. The old man and the old woman didn't say nothing, because they was scared. My mother would get up and go down and milk the cows and what she'd get for the milking would maybe be a bucket of buttermilk.
"We'd have a spoonful of black molasses and corn bread and buttermilk for breakfast. We got flour bread once a week. We would work hard all the week talkin' 'bout what good biscuits we'd have Sunday morning. Sack of flour would last two or three months because we wouldn't cook flour bread only once a week—Saturday night or Sunday morning.
"We had no skillet at that time. We would rake the fireplace and push the ashes back and then you would put the cake down on the hearth or on a piece of paper or a leaf and then pull the ashes over the cake to cook it. Just like you roast a sweet potato. Then when it got done, you would rake the ashes back and wash the cake and you would eat it. Sometimes you would strike a little grit or gravel in it and break your teeth. But then I'm tellin' you the truth about it.
"When our hogs was taken that time, we didn't have nothing to go on that winter. They would compel us to stay. They would allowance us some meat and make us split rails and clear up land for it. It was a cinch if he didn't give it to you you couldn't get nothin'. Wasn't no way to get nothing. Then when crop time rolled 'round again they would take it all out of your crops. Make you split rails and wood to earn your meat and then charge it up to your crop anyhow. But you couldn't do nothin' 'bout it.
"Sometimes a barrel of molasses would set up in the smokehouse and turn to sugar. You goin' hungry and molasses wastin'. They was determined not to give you too much of it.
"I made my way by farming. After I got to be some size, I started at it. I farmed all my life. While I could work, things was pretty good. Wisht I was on a farm now. Even when I'm 'round here sick, I can git these potatoes raised with a little help from the neighbors.
"I don't belong to church. I oughter, but I don't. Then again, I figure that a man can be just as good out of it as he can in it. I've got good desires, but I never confessed to the public.
"I have had three hundred dollars worth of stuff stolen from me. Everything I produced is stolen from me because I have no way to protect myself. What I raise if I don't get shet of it right away, the people get shet of it for me. I had eighty head of chickens in the barn out there runnin' 'round. When I got sick and was in the bed and couldn't help myself, the chickens went. In the daytime, they would fix traps and jerk a string and pull a board down on them and then go out in the weeds and get them. I never reported nothin' to the police. I wasn't able to report nothing. I was just batching, and now and then people would come in and report them to me. They would wait till they saw somebody come in and when they saw that I was talking and wouldn't notice them, they would steal anything they wanted. The police came by here and ran them once. But that didn't do no good.