would fire four and five
overseers to keep their slaves from being mistreated.

Mean Masters

"But there were some mean masters. I have heard that right there in
Georgia there was one white planter--I think it was Brantley---who put
one of his slaves that had been unruly in a packing screw and ran it
down on him till he mashed him to death. The cotton screw was the thing
they pressed cotton bales in. They run it down by steam now, but then,
they used to run it down with two mules. They tell a lot of things like
that on Brantley. Of course, I couldn't personally know it, but I know
he was mighty mean and I know the way he died.

Bushwhacking the Ku Klux

"He belonged to the paterole gang and they went out after the Negroes
one night after freedom. The Negroes bushwhacked them and killed four or
five of them. They give it out that the men that was killed had gone to
Texas. Brantley was one of the killed ones. The pateroles was awful bad
at that time. Ku Klux they called them after the War, but they was the
same people. I never heard of the Klan part till this thing come up
that they have now. They called them Ku Klux back when I was a boy. My
stepmother carried me over to Brantley's house the night he got killed.
So I know the Texas he went to. That was in '69 or '70. He lived about a
mile from us and when he got killed, she carried me over to see him just
like we would have gone to see any other neighbor.

"The Negroes were naturally afraid of the Ku Klux but they finally got
to the place where they were determined to break it up. They didn't have
no ropes, but they would take grapevines and tie them across the road
about breast high when a man would be on horseback. The Ku Klux would
run against these vines and be knocked off their horses into the road
and then the bushwhackers would shoot them. When Ku Klux was killed in
this manner, it was never admitted; but it was said that they had gone
to Texas. There was several of them went to Texas one night.

Amusements

"There weren't many amusements in slave times. They had dances with
fiddle music. There was mighty few darkies could get out to go to dances
because the pateroles was so bad after them. I don't know of any other
amusements the slaves had. They were playing baseball when I was born.
There were boys much older than I was already playing when I was old
enough to notice, so I think they must have known about it in slave
time. They didn't play much in