ame of them both.

"I got one of her pictures with her young master's kids--three of
'em--in there with her. Anybody that bothered that picture would git in
it with me, 'cause I values it.

"Mother farmed right after the surrender. She married after freedom but
went back to her old name when her husband left. He was named Richard
Hill. He was supposed to be a bishop down there in Arkadelphia. But he
wasn't no bishop with mama. All them Hills in Arkadelphia are kin to me.
She had four children--one boy and three girls. The boy died before I
was born. She was just married the one time that I know about.

"Her white folks were good to her. You know there was so many of them
that weren't. And you know they bound to be because they were always
good to her. They would be looking for her and sending her something to
eat and sending her shoes and clothes and things like that, and she'd go
to them and stay with them months at a time so they bound to 've been
good to her. All the young kids always called her their Black Mammy.
They thought a heap of her. That is since freedom. Since I been born.
That is somethin' I seen with my own eyes.

"I spect my mother's white folks is mad at me. They come to see her just
before she died and they knew she couldn't live long. They told me to
let them know when there was a chance.

"That was about three days before she died. There come a storm. It broke
down the wire so we couldn't let them know. My boy was too small; I
couldn't send him. He was only nine years old. And you know how it is
out in the country, you can't keep them long. You have to put them away.
You can't keep no dead person in the country. So I had to bury her
without letting 'em know it.

"I do laundry work for a living when I can get any to do. I am living
with my boy but I do laundry work to help myself. It is so good, and
nice to kinda help yourself. I'll do for self as long as I am able and
when I can't, the children can help me more. I have heard and seen so
many mothers whose children would do things for them and it wouldn't
suit so well up the road. You see me hopping along; I'm trying to work
for Annie.

"My mother told me about seein' the pateroles before the War and the Ku
Klux Klan afterwards. She knowed them all right. She never talked much
about the pateroles. It was mostly the Ku Klux. Neither of them never
got after her. She said the Ku Klux used to come in by droves. She said
the Ku Klux were dressed al