t
on niggers."

When asked if he has been happier since he was freed, he replied:

"In a sense the niggers is better off since freedom come. Ol' Marster
was good an' kind but I like to be free to go whar I please. Back then
we couldn't go nowhar 'less we had a pass. We don't have no overseer to
bother us now. It ain't that I didn't love my Marster but I jest likes
to be free. Jest as soon as Marster said I didn't b'long to nobody no
more I left an' went to Tallahassee. Mr. Charlie Pearce come an' wanted
some hands to work in orange groves an' fish for him so that's what I
done. He took a whole crew. While we was down thar Miss Carrie Standard,
a white lady, had a school for the colored folks. 'Course, my ol' Miss
had done taught me to read an' write out of the old blue back Webster
but I had done forgot how. Miss Carrie had 'bout fifteen in her class.

"I stayed in Tallahassee three years an' that's whar I married the first
time. I was jest romancin' about an' happened to see Ca'line Harris so I
married her. That was a year after the war. We never had no preacher but
after we been goin' together for such a long time folks say we married.
We married jest like the colored folks does now. When I left Tallahassee
I moved to another place in Florida, thirteen mile from Thomasville, Ga.
I stay thar 'bout thirty-seven year. My first wife died an' I married
another. The second one lived twenty-one year an' I married again. The
one what's livin' now is my third one. In 1905 she had a baby that was
born with two lower teeth. It never lived but a year. In all, I've had
twenty-three chillun. They most all lives in Florida an' I don't know
what they doin' or how many chillun they got. I got four gran'-chillun
livin' here."

Melvin was asked to tell what he knew of the Ku Klux Klan. He answered:

"I don't know nothin' 'bout that, I hear somethin' 'bout it but I never
b'lieved in it. I b'lieve in h'ants, though. I ain't never see'd one but
I'se heard 'em. When you walkin' 'long an' a twig snaps an' you feel
like you want to run an' your legs won't move an' your hair feels like
it's goin' to rise off your head, that's a ha'nt after you. That sho is
the evil sperrit. An' if you ain't good somethin' bad'll happen to you."

When asked why he joined the church, he replied:

"So many people is tryin' to live on flowery beds of ease that the world
is in a gamblin' position an' if it wasn't for the Christian part, the
world would be de