Louisiana. We all worked on a farm there 'bout a year. Then
all 'cept me moved to Mandeville, Louisiana an' worked on a farm there.
I hired out to Mr. Charlie Duson, a baker. Then we moved to a farm above
Baton Rouge, Louisiana an' worked for Mr. Abe Manning. We jus'
travelled all over from one place to another.

"Then I got a letter from a frien' o' mine in Gainesville, Mississippi.
He had a job for me on a boat, haulin' lumber up the coast to Bay St.
Louis, Pass Christian, Long Beach, Gulfport, an' all them coast towns. I
worked out o' Gainesville on this boat for 'bout two year. I lost track
o' my family then an' never seen 'em no more.

"In the year 1870 I got the call from the Lord to go out an' preach. I
left Gainesville an' travelled to Summit, Mississippi where another
frien' o' mine lived. I preached the words of the Lord an' travelled
from one place to another.

"In 1873 I got married an' decided to settle in Brookhaven. I preached
an' all my flock believed in me. I bought up this house an' the two on
each side of it. Here I raised seven chillun in the way o' the Lord.
They is all in different parts of the country now, but I sees one of 'em
ever' now an' then. Las' April the Lord seen fit to put me a-bed an' I
been ailin' with misery ever since.

"The young folks now-a-days are happy an' don't know' bout war an'
slavery times, but I does. They don't know nothin' an' don't make the
mark in the worl' that the old folks did. Old people made the first
roads in Mississippi. The Niggers today wouldn' know how to act on a
plantation. But they are happy. We was miserable.

"Slavery days was bitter an' I can't forgit the sufferin'. Oh, God! I
hates 'em, hates 'em. God Almighty never meant for human beings to be
like animals. Us Niggers has a soul an' a heart an' a _min'_. We aint
like a dog or a horse. If all marsters had been good like some, the
slaves would all a-been happy. But marstars like mine ought never been
allowed to own Niggers.

"I didn' spec nothin' out of freedom 'ceptin' peace an' happiness an'
the right to go my way as I pleased. I prays to the Lord for us to be
free, always.

"That's the way God Almighty wants it."

Henri Necaise, Ex-Slave, Pearl River County
FEC
Mrs. C.E. Wells
Rewrite, Pauline Loveless
Edited, Clara E. Stokes

HENRI NECAISE
Nicholson, Mississippi

Henri Necaise, ex-slave, 105 years old, lives a half-mile south of
Nicholson on US 11. Uncle Henri lives in a smal