"Massa Cavin had 'bout four hunerd acres and builded us all good quarters with chimnies and fireplaces, and good beds and plenty food. I's too little to know all this 'fore the war, but my folks stayed with massa ten years after freedom and things was jus' the same as in slave times, only they got a little money, so I can 'member.
"My grandma was cook and there was plenty wild game, turkey and deer and pigeon and rabbits and squirrels. I 'member once they's grumblin' 'bout what they have to eat and old massa comes to the quarters and say, 'What you fussin' 'bout? They's a gallon good potlicker in the pot." I's raise on greens and pork and potlicker and 'taters and ash-cake. Dat am good food, too. I ain't never hope to see no better food dan dat.
"Massa give he slaves two sets clothes a year and one pair 'bachelor' brogan shoes with brass toes. The white folks larnt us Negroes to read and write, at night and on Sunday, and we could go to church. We had our own preacher, and massa let us have fun'rals when a slave died. They wasn't no undertakers then. They jus' made the coffin and planed the boards and lined it with black cloth. The white folks and the cullud folks, too, was put 'way nice on our place.
"They was a overseer a while, but massa fires him for cuttin' and slashin' he niggers. He made my uncle Freeman overlooker. We is heared slaves on farms close by hollerin' when they git beat. Some the neighbors works they hands till ten at night and weighed the last weighin' by candles. If the day's pickin' wasn't good 'nough, they beat them till it a pity.
"Christmas was the big time. Massa kilt the hawg or beef and sometimes a mutton, and give the slaves the big dinner. Us all hang the stockin' up on massa's gallery and it was a run to see what we'd git. He give the chillen toys and apples and the big folks somethin' to wear. He'd 'low the chillen to have candy pullin' Saturday nights and the growed folks parties. My cousin, Tom, was songster and call the plays at all the dances, and they turned 'cordin' to what he'd sing.
"When young massa went to war they calls all the slaves to tell him good-bye. They blowed the horn. He come home two times on a furlough and says, 'I's smellin' and seein' the Devil.' Then the nex' time he come home he say, 'Las' time I tells you 'bout smellin' the Devil. I's smellin' and seein' Hell now.' When the war am over, he come home and say to old massa, 'Ain't you read the 'lamation to you niggers yet?' Massa say he hasn't, and young massa blowed the horn and calls us all up and tells us we's free as he is and could work for who we please, but he like us to stay till the crop am out. He say he'd hire us and make a contrac'. Me and my mammy stays ten years, 'cause they so good it ain't no use to leave. One of the young massas am livin' here now, Mr. Tom, and I goes to see him.
Bert Strong
"I stays with mammy till I marries and then farms for myself. That all I ever done and I'd be doin' it now if I was able. I raises two boys but they am both dead now.
"I votes once in the county 'lection and once in the president 'lection. I think any man should vote, but it ain't 'tended for women to vote.