ou don't find any colored
folks what think they get a fair deal. I don't, either. I don't think it
is right that any tax payer should be deprived of the right to vote.
Why, lady, even my children that pay poll tax can't vote. One of my
daughters is a teacher in the public school. She tells me they send out
notices that if teachers don't pay a poll tax they may lose their place.
But still they can't use it and vote in the primary. My husband always
believed in using your voting privilege. He has been dead over 30 years.
He had been appointed on the Grand Jury; had bought a new suit of
clothes for that. He died on the day he was to go, so we used his new
suit to bury him in. I have been getting his soldier's pension ever
since. Yes ma'am, I have not had it hard like lots of ex-slaves.

"Before you go I'd like you to look at the bedspread I knit last year.
My daughters was trying to learn to knit. This craze for knitting has
got everybody, it looks like. I heard them fussing about they could not
cast on the stitches. 'For land's sakes,' I said, 'hand me them
needles.' So I fussed around a little, and it all came back. What's
funny about it is, I had not knitted a stitch since I was about ten. Old
mistress used to make me knit socks for the soldiers. I remember I knit
ten pair out of coarse yarn, while she was doing a couple for the
officer out of fine wool and silk mixed. I used to knit pulse warmers,
and 'half-handers',--I bet you don't know what they was. Yes, that's
right; gloves without any fingers, 'cepting a thumb and it didn't have
any end. I could even knit on four needles when I was little. We used to
make our needles out of bones, wire, smooth, straight sticks,--anything
that would slip the yarn. Well, let me get back to this spread. In a few
minutes it all came back. I began knitting washrags. Got faster and
faster. Didn't need to look at the stitches. The girls are so scared
something will happen to me, they won't let me do any work. Now I had
found something I could do. When they saw how fast I work, they say:
'Mother, why don't you make something worth while? Why make so many
washrags?' So I started the bedspread. I guess it took me six months, at
odd times. I got it done in time to take to Ft. Worth to the big exhibit
of the National Federation of Colored Women's Clubs. My daughter
was the national president that year. If you'll believe it, this spread
took first prize. Look, here's the blue ribbon pinned on