ter, what you got to tell us"?
My mother said, "Shut your mouth fool. He'll whip you!" And Old
Marster say,--"No I wont whip you. Never no more. Sit down thar all of
you and listen to what I got to tell you. I hates to do it but I must.
You all aint my niggers no more. You is free. Just as free as I am.
Here I have raised you all to work for me, and now you are going to
leave me. I am an old man, and I cant get along without you. I dont
know what I am going to do." Well sir, it killed him. He was dead in
less than ten months."

"Everybody left right now, but me and my brother and another fellow.
Old Marster fooled us to believe we was duty-bound to stay with him
till we was all twenty-one. But my brother, that boy was stubborn.
Soon he say he aint going to stay there. And he left. In about a year,
maybe less, he come back and he told me I didnt have to work for Old
Goforth, I was free, sure enough free, and I went with him and he got
me a job railroading. But the work was too hard for me. I couldnt
stand it. So I left there and went to my mother. I had to walk. It was
forty-five miles. I made it in a day. She got me work there where she
worked."

"I remember so well, how the roads was full of folks walking and
walking along when the niggers were freed. Didnt know where they was
going. Just going to see about something else somewhere else. Meet a
body in the road and they ask, 'Where you going'? 'Dont know.' 'What
you going to do'? 'Dont know.' And then sometimes we would meet a
white man and he would say, 'How you like to come work on my farm'?
And we say, 'I dont know.' And then maybe he say, "If you come work
for me on my farm, when the crops is in I give you five bushels of
corn, five gallons of molasses, some ham-meat, and all your clothes
and vittals whils you works for me." Alright! That's what I do. And
then something begins to work up here, (touching his forehead with his
fingers) I begins to think and to know things. And I knowed then I
could make a living for my own self, and I never had to be a slave no
more."

"Now, Old Marster Goforth, had four sisters what owned slaves, and
they wasnt mean to them like our Old Marster and Mistress. Some of the
old slaves and their folks are still living on their places right to
this day. But they never dispute none with their brother about how
mean he treat his slaves. And him claiming to be such a Christian!
Well, I reckon he's found out something about slave driving