"I think our home was on the plantation. We lived in a cabin and there must have been at least six or eight cabins.
"Uncle Simon, who boarded with me in later years, was a kind of overseer. Whenever he told his master the slaves did something wrong, the slaves were whipped, and Uncle Simon was whipped, too. I asked him why he should be whipped, he hadn't done anything wrong. But Uncle Simon said he guessed he needed it anyway.
"I think there was a jail on the plantation, because Mamma said if the slaves weren't in at a certain hour at night, the watchman would lock them up if he found them out after hours without a pass.
"Uncle Simon used to tell me slaves were not allowed to read and write. If you ever got caught reading or writing, the white folks would punish you. Uncle Simon said they were beaten with a leather strap cut into strips at the end.
"I think the colored folks had a church, because Mamma was always a Baptist. Only colored people went to the church.
"Mamma used to sing a song:
"Don't you remember the promise that you made,
To my old dying mother's request?
That I never should be sold,
Not for silver or for gold.
While the sun rose from the East to the West?
"And it hadn't been a year,
The grass had not grown over her grave.
I was advertised for sale.
And I would have been in jail,
If I had not crossed the deep, dancing waves.
"I'm upon the Northern banks
And beneath the Lion's paw,
And he'll growl if you come near the shore.
"The slaves left the plantation because they were sold and their children were sold. Sometimes their masters were mean and cranky.
"The slaves used to get together in their cabins and tell one another the news in the evening. They visited, the same as anybody else. Evenings, Mamma did the washing and ironing and cooked for my father.
"When the slaves got sick, the other slaves generally looked after them. They had white doctors, who took care of the families, and they looked after the slaves, too, but the slaves looked after each other when they got sick.