rid of me and
she left about a month after I got there. When he saw she warn't comin'
back 'til he got rid of me, he brought me back to the Nigger Trader's
Office.

"As long as you warn't sold, your marster was 'sponsible for you, so
whenever they put you on the market you had to praise yourself in order
to be sold right away. If you didn't praise yourself you got a beatin'.
I didn't stay in the market long. A dissipated woman bought me and I
done laundry work for her and other dissipated women to pay my board
'til freedom come. They was all very nice to me.

"Whenever you was sold your folk never knowed about it 'til afterwards,
and sometimes they never saw you again. They didn't even know who you
was sold to or where they was carryin' you, unless you could write back
and tell 'em.

"The market was in the middle of Broad and Center Streets. They made a
scaffold whenever they was goin' to sell anybody, and would put the
person up on this so everybody could see him good. Then they would sell
him to the highest bidder. Everybody wanted women who would have
children fast. They would always ask you if you was a good breeder, and
if so they would buy you at your word, but if you had already had too
many chillun, they would say you warn't much good. If you hadn't ever
had any chillun, your marster would tell 'em you was strong, healthy,
and a fast worker. You had to have somethin' about you to be sold. Now
sometimes, if you was a real pretty young gal, somebody would buy you
without knowin' anythin' 'bout you, just for yourself. Before my old
marster died, he had a pretty gal he was goin' with and he wouldn't let
her work nowhere but in the house, and his wife nor nobody else didn't
say nothin' 'bout it; they knowed better. She had three chillun for him
and when he died his brother come and got the gal and the chillun.

"One white lady that lived near us at McBean slipped in a colored gal's
room and cut her baby's head clean off 'cause it belonged to her
husband. He beat her 'bout it and started to kill her, but she begged so
I reckon he got to feelin' sorry for her. But he kept goin' with the
colored gal and they had more chillun.

"I never will forget how my marster beat a pore old woman so she
couldn't even get up. And 'cause she couldn't get up when he told her
to, he hit her on the head with a long piece of iron and broke her
skull. Then he made one of the other slaves take her to the jail. She
suffered in jail al