d over by him.

"He would whip me on one side till that was sore and full of blood and
then he would whip me on the other side till that was all tore up. I got
a scar big as the place my old mis' hit me. She took a bull whip
once--the bull whip had a piece of iron in the handle of it--and she got
mad. She was so mad she took the whip and hit me over the head with the
butt end of it, and the blood flew. It ran all down my back and dripped
off my heels. But I wasn't dassent to stop to do nothin' about it. Old
ugly thing! The devil's got her right now!! They never rubbed no salt
nor nothin' in your back. They didn't need to.

"When the war come, they made him serve. He would go there and run away
and come back home. One day after he had been took away and had come
back, he was settin' down talkin' to old mis', and I was huddled up in
the corner listenin', and I heered him tell her, 'Tain't no use to do
all them things. The niggers'll soon be free.' And she said, 'I'll be
dead before that happens, I hope.' And she died just one year before the
slaves was freed. They was a mean couple.

"Old mars used to strip my sister naked and make her lay down, and he
would lift up a fence rail and lay it down on her neck. Then he'd whip
her till she was bloody. She wouldn't get away because the rail held her
head down. If she squirmed and tried to git loose, the rail would choke
her. Her hands was tied behind her. And there wasn't nothin' to do but
jus' lay there and take it.

"I am almost a stranger here in Little Rock. My father was named Lewis
Hogan and I had one sister named Tina and one named Harriet. His white
folks what he lived with was Mrs. Thomas. He was a carriage driver for
her. Pleas Collier bought him from her and took him to Louisiana. All
the people on my mother's side was left in Georgia. My grandmother's
name was Rachel. Her white folks she lived with was named Dardens. They
all lived in Atlanta, Georgia. I remember the train we got on when we
left Georgia. Grandma Rachel had one daughter named Siney. Siney had a
son named Billie and a sister named Louise. And my grandmother was free
when I first got big enough to know myself. I don't know how come she
was free. That was a long time before the war. The part of Georgia we
lived in was where chestnuts grow, but they wasn't no chinkapins. All my
grandmother's people stayed in Atlanta, and they were living at the time
I left there.

"My mother's name was Dinah Hogans