Father's Brother

"My father's brother belonged to Elijah. I had an auntie over in there
too. I don't know what become of them all. They were all in Kemper
county, Mississippi.

Churches

"The white people had churches in slavery times just like they have now.
The white people would have service one a month. But like these street
cars. White people would be at the front and colored would fill up back.
They'll quit that after a while. Sometimes they would have church in the
morning for the white folks and church in the evening for the colored.
They would baptize you just like they would anybody else.

"I'll tell you what was done in slave time. They'd sing and pray. The
white folks would take you to the creek and baptize you like anybody
else.

"Sometimes the slaves would be off and have prayer meetings of their
own--nothing but colored people there. They soon got out uh that.

"Sometimes they would turn a tub or pot down. That would be when they
were making a lot of fuss and didn't want to bother nobody. The white
people wouldn't be against the meeting. But they wouldn't want to be
disturbed. If you wanted to sing at night and didn't want nobody to hear
it, you could just take an old wash pot and turn it down--leave a little
space for the air, and nobody could hear it.

Amusement

"The grown folks didn't have much amusement in slavery times. They had
banjo, fiddle, melodian, and things like that. There wasn't no baseball
in those days. I never seed none. They could dance all they wanted to
their way. They danced the dotillions and the waltzes and breakdown
steps, all such as that. Pick banjo! U-umph! They would give corn
huskins; they would go and shuck corn and shuck so much. Get through
shucking, they would give you dinner. Sometimes big rich white people
would give dances out in the yard and look at their way of dancing, and
doing. Violin players would be colored.

"Have cotton picking too sometimes at night, moonshiney nights. That's
when they'd give the cotton pickings. Say you didn't have many hands,
then they'd go and send you one hand from this place and one from that
place. And so on. Your friends would do all that for you. Between 'em
they'd git up a big bunch of hands. Then they'd give the cotton picking,
and git your field clared up. They'd give you something to eat and
whiskey to drink.

How Freedom Came

"Notice was given to my father that he was free. White people in that
country g