times they would have five and six spinning wheels
running before they would get to the weaving.

"I don't know who made the clothes. But you know them Niggers made them.
They used to learn some slaves how to do some things,--the right way.
Jus' like they learned themselves. There was plenty of nice
seamstresses. The white folks used to make them make clothes for their
children. The white folks wouldn't do nothin'. They wouldn't even turn
down the bed to get in it."

Ages

"Colored folks in slavery times didn't know how old they was. When you
would buy a drove of darkies, you would go by what they would tell you,
but they didn't know how old they was. Some of those Niggers they bought
from Africa wouldn't take nothin' neither.

"They would say: 'Me goin' do what you say do, but me aint goin' to get
no whipping.' And when they whipped them, there was trouble.

"The masters kept records of ages of those born in their care. Some of
them did. Some of them didn't keep nothin'. Jus' like people nowadays.
Raised them like pigs and hogs. Jus' didn't care."

Amusements

"There used to be plenty of colored folk fiddlers. Dancing, candy
pulling, quilting,--that was about the only fun they would have. Corn
shucking, too. They used to enjoy that. They would get on top of that
pile and start singing--the white folks used to like that--sometimes
they would shuck corn all night long. And they would sing and eat too.

"They had what they called the old-fashioned cotillion
dance--partners--head, foot, and two sides--four men and four
women--each man danced with his partner. Music by the fiddlers. I used
to dance that.

"At the quilting, they'd get down and quilt. The boys and young men
would be there too and they would thread the needles and laugh and talk
with the girls, and the women would gossip.

"The masters would go there too and look at them and see what they'd do
and how they'd do and make them do. They would do that at the candy
pullin' too, and anything else.

"The candy pulling--there they'd cook the candy and a man and a girl
would pull candy together. Look to me like they enjoyed the corn
shucking as much as they did anything else."

Christmas

"They'd give time to celebrate Christmas time. They'd dance and so on
like that. But they worked them from New Year's day to Christmas Eve
night the next year. The good white people would give them a pig and
have them make merry. They'd make merry over it like w