"Honey, there is no use to ask me about Raw Head and Bloody Bones. When folks started talking about that, I always left the room. It is a shame how folks do frighten children trying to make them get quiet and go to sleep. I don't believe in ha'nts and ghosts. Since I have been grown, I have been around so many dead folks I have learned that the dead can't harm you; its the living that make the trouble.
"When his slaves were taken sick, Marse John always called in a doctor. An old woman, who was known as 'Aunt Fannie,' was set aside to nurse sick slaves. Dr. Joe Carlton was Marse John's doctor. What I am going to tell you is no fairy tale. Once I was so sick that Marse John called in Dr. Carlton, Dr. Richard M. Smith, Dr. Crawford Long, and Dr. James Long, before they found out what was wrong with me. I had inflammatory rheumatism and I wore out two and a half pairs of crutches before I could walk good again. Now, Dr. Crawford Long is a great and famous man in history, but it is sure true that he doctored on this old Negro many years ago.
"Honey, don't flatter me. Don't you know a little girl 10 years old can't remember everything that went on that far back. A few things they dosed the slaves with when they were sick was horehound tea, garlic mixed with whiskey, and the worm-few (vermifuge?) tea that they gave to Negro children for worms. That worm-few dose was given in April. Asafetida was used on us at all times and sage tea was considered a splendid medicine.
"When news came that Negroes had been freed there was a happy jubilee time. Marse John explained the new freedom to his slaves and we were glad and sorry too. My mother stayed with Marse John until he died. I was still a child and had never had to do anything more than play dolls, and keep the children in the yard. Lord, Honey! I had a fine time those days.
"It wasn't so long after the surrender before schools for Negroes were opened. It looked like they went wild trying to do just like their white folks had done. As for buying homes, I don't know where they would have gotten the money to pay for homes and land.
"At the time I married I was a washerwoman for the white folks. My first husband was Isaac Dixon, who came from some place in Alabama and had been owned by Dr. Lipscomb, the chancelor of the university. Dr. Lipscomb married us in the colored Methodist Church, and that night the church was crowded to overflowing. I wore a white dress made with a long train; that was the style then. After the ceremony, my mother served cake and wine at her house. Our six children were prettier than you, but only three of them lived to get grown. Our white friends named our children. My first husband died and then I married Jones Colbert, who belonged to Marse Fletcher Colbert of Madison County. We just went around to the preacher's house and got married. Jones was an old man when I married him. He was a preacher. He is dead now and so are all my children except one. I have one grandson, and this is the shameful part about him; his mother won't married when he was born, but of course she married later.
"Now I am going to tell you the truth as I see it. Abraham Lincoln was an instrument of God sent to set us free, for it was God's will that we should be freed. I never did hitch my mind on Jeff Davis; like the children of Israel, he had his time to rule. Booker T. Washington! Well, now I didn't give him a thought. He had to do his part. His mistress had taught him to read.
"Why did I join the church? Well, when the white folks sent their help off to Mississippi trying to keep them slaves, my sister and I went with Miss Rosa Crawford to Jackson. Before I left home my mother gave me an alabaster doll and told me to be a good girl and pray every night. Well, I never saw so many slave-houses in my life as I saw in Mississippi. Every night when I heard a colored man named Ben praying in his room that made me think of what my mother had told me and I grew more and more homesick for her. Finally one night I crept into Uncle Ben's room and asked him to tell me about God, and he did. After that, every night I went into his room and we prayed together. Yes, Honey, I found God in Jackson, Mississippi, and I joined the church just as soon as I could after I got back to my mother and dear old Athens.
"Yes, Honey, I was raised and loved by my own white folks and, when I grew to be old enough and large enough, I worked for them. I have been with, or worked for, white folks all my life and, just let me tell you, I had the best white folks in the world, but it was by God's plan that the Negroes were set free."