the world was going to
Texas. When we would be going down the road we would have to walk
along the side all the time to let the wagons go past, all loaded with
folks going to Texas.

Pretty soon old Master say git the wagons loaded again, and this time
we start out with some other people, going north. We go north a while
and then turn west, and cross the Sabine River and go to Nachedoches,
Texas. Me and my brother Joe and my sister Adeline walked nearly all
the way, but my little sister Harriet and my mammy rid in a wagon.
Mammy was mighty poorly, and jest when we got to the Sabine bottoms
she had another baby. Old Master didn't like it 'cause it was a girl,
but he named her Texana on account of where she was born and told us
children to wait on Mammy good and maybe we would get a little brother
next time.

But we didn't. Old Master went with a whole bunch of wagons on out to
the prairie country in Coryell County and set up a farm where we just
had to break the sod and didn't have to clear off much. And the next
baby Mammy had the next year was a girl. We named her Betty because
Mistress jest have a baby a little while before and its name was
Betty.

Old Master's place was right at the corner where Coryell and McLennan
and Bosque Counties come together, and we raised mostly cotton and
jest a little corn for feed. He seem like he changed a lot since we
left Mississippi, and seem like he paid more attention to us and
looked after us better. But most the people that already live there
when we git there was mighty hard on their Negroes. They was mostly
hard drinkers and hard talkers, and they work and fight jest as hard
as they talk, too!

One day Old Master come out from town and tell us that we all been set
free, and we can go or stay jest as we wish. All of my family stay on
the place and he pay us half as shares on all we make. Pretty soon the
whitefolks begin to cut down on the shares, and the renters git only a
third and some less, and the Negroes begin to drift out to other
places, but old Master stick to the halves a year or so after that.
Then he come down to a third too.

It seem like the white people can't git over us being free, and they
do everything to hold us down all the time. We don't git no schools
for a long time, and I never see the inside of a school. I jest grow
up on hard work. And we can't go 'round where they have the voting,
unless we want to ketch a whipping some night, and we have to jest