"I stayed with the Fosters till peace was declared and ever'thing was declared free. Then my father come after me.
"I can just sketch things. I try to forget it. My mother and father was pretty agreeable when they was set free.
"In Tennessee we stayed at the foot of Lookout Mountain and I can remember seein' the cannon balls.
"Here's the way I want to tell you. Some of the white people are as good to the colored people as they could be and some of em are mean. My own folks do so bad I'm ashamed of em.
"So many of the colored of the South have emigrated to the North. I have lived there and I don't know why I'm here now.
"Some of my color don't like that about the Jim Crow Law, but I say if they furnish us a nice comfortable coach I would rather be with my own people. And I don't care to go to the white folks' church.
"My mother used to tell me how they used to hide behind trees so the boss man couldn't see em when they was prayin' and at night put out the light and turn the pot down.
"I went to school in Tennessee. I never will forget it. I had a white teacher. He was in the War and he had a leg shot off. I went through the sixth grade and was ready for the seventh Ray's Arithmetic. I walked four miles there and four miles back—eight miles a day.
"I can remember too when my mother and father was baptized. I know mama come out of the water a shoutin'. Oh, that was good times then. I felt better when I was under my mother cause when I married my life was over. I raised about ten children.
"I remember when the Ku Klux come to my sister's house lookin' for her husband. I know I was in the bed and I raised up. I was scared you know.