"When my parents lived with Judge Drennon they had a house in the yard quarters. The Drennon home was the most beautiful house I ever have seen. It was a big, brick mansion with tall, white pillars reaching up to the second story. The yards and grounds were so beautiful the white folks used to come from long ways off to see them.
"After the surrendering we lived with the Drennons four or five years. They paid my parents for their work and I had an easy time of it. I was youngest of eight children and there was ten years or more between me and the next older child. My mother wanted to make something special out of me.
"I went to three different schools down in the woods before I was nine. White people would come and put up schools for the colored children but the white people in Mississippi said they were not good people and would criticize them. Sometimes the schools would get busted up. We studied out of the Blue Back speller and an arithmetic and a dictionary. I could spell and give the meaning of most nigh every word in that dictionary.
"When I was thirteen they held an examination at Lexington for colored children to see who'd get a scholarship at Tuckaloo University, eight miles from Jackson. I was greatly surprised when I won from my county and I went but didn't finish there. Then I went a little while to a small university near Lexington, called Allcorn University. I loved to go to school and was considered bookish. But my people died and I had to earn a living for myself and I couldn't find any way to use so much what I learned out of books, as far as making money was concerned. So I came to Texas, doing any kind of labor work I could find. Finally I married and went to farming 35 or 40 years and raised five children.
"I'm the only one left now of my brothers and sisters and it won't be long until I'm gone, too, but I don't mind that. We lived a long time. Some of it was hard and some of it was good. I tried all the time to live according to my lights and that is as far as I know how to do. I don't feel resentful of anything, anymore.
"When there is sun, I just sit in the sun."
MARY JOHNSON does not know her age but is evidently very old. Paralytic strokes have affected mind and body. Her speech, though impaired, is a swift flow of words, often profane. A bitter attitude toward everything is apparent. Mary is homeless and owes the necessities of life to the kindness of a middle aged Negress who takes care of several old women in her home in Pear Orchard, in Beaumont, Texas.
"Now, wait, white folks, I got to scratch my head so's I kin 'member. I's been paralyze so I can't git my tongue to speak good. It git all twist up.