nted to kill him.
They killed Tom Ivory. He was the leader of the Republicans--he was a
colored man. His father was white but his mother was a Negro. His father
educated him in slavery time. He had been up North and was coming back.
They knew he was coming back, so they went up the creek and waited for
him--his train. They flagged it down, and some one on the train
commenced hollering, 'Look yonder.' Ivory stepped out on the platform to
see what they were hollering about, and all them guns started popping
and Ivory fell over the end of the platform and down on the ground. He
was already leaning over the gate when they fired. Then they come up and
cut his tongue out before he died. They said if they got him that would
stop all the rest of the niggers. You see, he was a leader.

"Niggers was voting the Republican ticket 'long about that time. They
just went in gangs riding every night--the Ku Klux did. Ku Kluxing and
killing them they got hold of.

"The police arrested all the men that had anything to do with Tom
Ivory's killing. The leader of the killers was a white man they called
Captain Hess. I never knowed how the trial came out because we left
there while they was still in jail."

How Freedom Came

"I heard my mother say that when the Refugees came through Sumter
County, Alabama, she wasn't free but was 'sot' free later. The refugees
came through along in February. Then the papers was struck and it went
out that the niggers all was free. Mother's master and my oldest brother
who had stayed in the War with his master four years came home. The
refugees was in there when he got home. They went on through. They
didn't tarry long there. Then the papers came out and the next day,
master called all the hands up to the big house and told them they was
free. Mother was set free in the latter part of February and I was born
June 5, 1865, so I was born free."

Leaving Alabama

"We left Alabama in the same year Tom Ivory got killed. More than fifty
colored people left on the train and come off when we did. People was
leaving Alabama something terrible. I never did know what happened to
Tom's killers. I heard afterwards that Alabama got broke, they had to
pay for so many men they killed."

Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Cornelia Ishmon
3319 W. Second Avenue
Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 78

"I was born in Mississippi and I can member seei