me Master, Mister McCray, all the way thoo'.

We live in log huts and when I left home grown, I left my folks living
in the same log huts. Beds was put together with ropes and called rope
beds. No springs was ever heard of by white or cullud as I knows of.

All the work I ever done was pick up chips for my grandma to cook
with. I was kept busy doing this all day.

The big boys went out and got rabbits, possums and fish. I would sho'
lak to be in old Alabama fishing, 'cause I am a fisherman. There is
sho' some pretty water in Alabama and as swift as cars run here. Water
so clear and blue you can see the fish way down, and dey wouldn't bite
to save your life.

Slaves had their own gardens. All got Friday and Sadday to work in
garden during garden time. I liked cornbread best and I'd give a
dollar to git some of the bread we had on those good old days and I
ain't joking. I went in shirt tail all the time. Never had on no pants
'til I was 15 years old. No shoes, 'cept two or three winters. Never
had a hat 'til I was a great big boy.

Marriage was performed by getting permission from Master and go where
the woman of your choice had prepared the bed, undress and flat-footed
jump a broom-stick together into the bed.

Master had a brick house for hisself and the overseer. They was the
only ones on the place. The overseer woke up the slaves all the way
from 2 o'clock till 4 o'clock of mornings. He wasn't nothing but white
trash. Nothing else in the world but that. They worked till they
couldn't see how to work. I jest couldn't jedge the size of that big
place, and there was a mess of slaves, not less'n three hundred.

I doesn't have no eggycation, edgecation, or ejecation, and about all
I can do is spell. I jest spell till I get the pronouncements.

We had church, but iffen the white folks caught you at it, you was
beat most nigh to death. We used a big pot turned down to keep our
voices down. When we went to hear white preachers, he would say, "Obey
your master and mistress." I am a hard shell-flint Baptist. I was
baptised in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Our baptizing song was mostly "On
Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand" and our funeral song was "Hark From The
Tomb."

We had some slaves who would try to run off to the North but the white
folks would catch 'em with blood hounds and beat 'em to death. Them
patrollers done their work mostly at night. One night I was sleeping
on cotton and the patrollers come to our house and ask f