only nigger here who wasn't bothered by no one--by no colored person.
Dr. Smith was the leading colored dentist once, and the leading dentist
of the city in his day. Almost all the white people went to him. Colored
people had the barber shops. McNair had a barber shop on Main between
Second and Third. His boy killed him--no good reason. His boy went to
school with us; he was always stubborn and mean.

"Henry Powell was jailer here once. Sam Wilkins, a man that weighed
about three hundred pounds, was the turnkey at the penitentiary. He
lived in one of the finest houses in the town at that time. Nigger bands
had all the music then. I have seen white organizations like the Odd
Fellows and Masons follow Negro bands. Nigger orchestras played here
all the big to-dos among white people. White people used to get nigger
dancers to come here to dance and show them so that they could learn the
late steps.

"Colored caterers had the big jobs. Henry Miller was one of them. He's
going pretty strong still. You get some smart niggers 'round the Marion
Hotel right now. We used to have some smart cooks. But they did too much
peddling out of the back door. Dishonesty put them back. White people
have taken all that work now. The nigger ruined himself in this town.
They are paying white men now for what they know. They used to pay
niggers for what they knowed.

Opinions

"If the government would give you a job today, niggers would be up to
take you out of it tomorrow. Niggers are dirty, and these 'round here
are ignorant.

"The parents don't teach the children, and the children can't amount
too anything. If children are not taught to work, they will never have
nothing. A bunch of these young people don't mean to work. They just lay
'round waiting for the old people to die so they can get what little the
old folks accumulated and run through it. But a man never keeps what he
himself doesn't earn. He can't.

"The children are raised now without manners. When I have to go past
Capitol Hill School, I have to get off the sidewalk. Ain't nothin' but
these graduates teachin' now, young graduates that don't know nothin'
but runnin' about. When I come along, the carpetbaggers were teaching
and they knew their business. Mrs. Stephens went to Fisk and finished
there. Mrs. Spight graduated from Union High School. We had all white
teachers at first. Miss Sarah Henley used to teach with old ex-slaves
where the Bethel A.M.E. Church is now. Ther