d it out.
That is what they use now, ain't it?

"Here is a book my husband give me. He bought it for me because I told
him I wanted a second reader. He said, 'Well, I'll go up to the store
and git you one.' Plantation store, you know. He had that charged to
his account.

"I used to study my lesson. I turned the whole class down once. It was
a class in spelling. I turned the class down on
'Publication'--p-u-b-l-i-c-a-t-i-o-n. They couldn't spell that. But
I'll tell the world they could spell it the next day.

"My teacher had a great big crocus sack, and when she got tired of
whipping them, she would put them in the sack. She never did put me in
that sack one time. I got a whipping mos' every day. I used to fight,
and when I wasn't fightin' for myself, I'd be fighting for other
children that would be scared to fight for theirselves, and I'd do
their fighting for them.

"That whippin' in your hand is the worst thing you ever got. Brother,
it hurts. I put a teacher in jail that'd whip one of my children in
the hand.

Occupational History and Family

"My mama said I was six years old when the War ended and that I was
born on the first day of October. During the War, I run up and down
the yard and played, and run up and down the street and played; and
when I would make too much noise, they'd whip me and send me back to
my mother and tell her not to whip me no more, because they had
already done it. I would help look after my mother's children. There
were five children younger than I was. Everywhere she went, the white
people would want me to nurse their children, because they said, 'That
little rawboneded one is goin' to be the smartest one you got. I want
her.' And my ma would say:

"'You ain't goin' to git 'er.' She had two other girls--Martha and
Sarah. They was older than me, and she would hire them out to do
nursing. They worked for their master during slave time, and they
worked for money after slavery.

"My mama's first husband was killed in a rasslin' (wrestling) match.
It used to be that one man would walk up to another and say, 'You
ain't no good.' And the other one would say, 'All right, le's see.'
And they would rassle.

"My mother's first husband was pretty old. His name was Myers. A young
man come up to him one Sunday morning when they were gettin'
commodities. They got sorghum, meat, meal, and flour; if what they got
wasn't enough, then they would go out and steal a hog. Sometime they'd
steal it