e bit before the War. He was a slave and she was too.

"He didn't go to the War; he went to the woods. He got to chasing
'round. His young mistress married. She married a Graves. That was the
name we was freed under. She was a Shane.

"She educated my father. When she come from school, she would teach him
and just carry him right on through the course that way. That was a good
while before the War. Her father gave him to her when she married
Graves. He was a little boy and she kept him and educated him. Graves
ran a farm. I don't know just what my father did when he was little. He
was raised up as a house boy. Very little he ever done in the field. I
don't know what he did after he grew up and before freedom came. After
peace was declared, he taught in night school. He preached too. His
first farming was done a little after he come out here. I was about
seven years old then. That was in the year 1873.

"My mother's full name was Adeline McAdoo. Before freedom she did
housework. She was a kind a pet with the white folks. She didn't do much
farming. My mother and father had six children--five boys and one girl.
All born after freedom. There were three ahead of me. The oldest was
born before the War, not afterward.

"In my country where I was raised the Negroes weren't freed until 1865.
My uncle, Jim Shane--that is the only name I ever knew him by--, he ran
away and come to this country and made money enough to come back and buy
his freedom. Just about time he got himself paid for, the War closed and
he would have been freed anyway. The money wouldn't have done him no
good anyhow because it was all Confederate money, and when the War
closed, that wasn't no good.

"My father ran away when the War broke out. His master wanted to carry
him to the army with him and he run off and stayed in the woods three
years. He stayed until his little mistress wrote him a letter and told
him she would set him free if he would come home. He stayed out till the
War closed. He wouldn't take no chances on it.

"The pateroles made my father do everything but quit. They got him about
teaching night school. That was after slavery, but the pateroles still
got after you. They didn't want him teaching the Negroes right after the
War. He had opened a night school, and he was doing well. They just kept
him in the woods then."

Ku Klux

"There was a bunch of Ku Klux that a colored man led. He was a fellow by
the name of Fount Howard. They wo