was waving his arms and singing:

'Ha, ha, ha! Trabble all the day!
I'm in the Rebel's Happy Land of Caanan.
Needn't mind the weather,
Jump over double trouble,
I'm in the Rebel's Happy Land of Caanan.'

"The Yankee captain, Captain Brown, gathered all us negroes in the fair
ground, July or August after freedom, and he made a speech. Lawsy! I can
see that crowd yet, a-yelling and a-stomping! And the captain waving his
arms and shouting!

"'We have achieved the victory over the South. Today you are all free
men and free women!'

"We had everybody shouting and jumping, and my father and mother shouted
along with the others. Everybody was happy."

Janie Satterwhite's memories were very vivid about freedom. "Oh yas'm,"
she said, "my brudder comed fer me. He say, 'Jane, you free now. You
wanna go home and see Papa?' But old Mars say, 'Son, I don' know you and
you don' know me. You better let Jane stay here a while.' So he went
off, but pretty soon I slip off. I had my little black bonnet in my
hand, and de shoes Papa give me, and I started off 'Ticht, ticht; crost
dat bridge.

"I kept on till I got to my sister's. But when I got to de bridge de
river wus risin'. And I hadder go down de swamp road. When I got dere,
wus I dirty? And my sister say, 'How come you here all by yourself?' Den
she took off my clo'es and put me to bed. And I remember de next mornin'
when I got up it wus Sunday and she had my clo'es all wash and iron. De
fus' Sunday atter freedom."

FOLK LORE

As most of the ex-slaves interviewed were mere children during the
slavery period they remembered only tales that were told them by their
parents. Two bits of folk lore were outstanding as they were repeated
with many variations by several old women. One of these stories may be a
relic of race memory, dating back to the dawn of the race in Africa.
Several negroes of the locality gave different versions of this story of
the woman who got out of her skin every night. Hannah Murphy, who was
once a slave and now lives in Augusta gives this version:

"Dere was a big pon' on de plantation, and I yeared de ole folks tell a
story 'bout dat pon', how one time dere was a white Mistis what would go
out ev'y evenin' in her cay'age and mek de driver tak her to de pon'.
She would stay out a long time. De driver kep' a wonderin' whut she do
here. One night he saw her go thu' de bushes, and he crep' behin' her.
He saw her step out o' her skin. Da