the niggers got
anything. They didn't give them anything. The slaves were hired and
allowed to work the farms on shares. That is where the system of share
cropping came from. I was hired for fifty dollars a year, but was paid
only five. The boss said he owed me fourteen dollars but five was all
I got. I went down town and bought some candy. It was the first time I
had had that much money.

I couldn't do anything about the pay. They didn't give me any land.
They hired me to work around the house and I ate what the boss ate.
But the general run of slaves got pickled pork, molasses, cornmeal and
sometimes flour (about once a week for Sunday). The food came out of
the share of the share cropper.

You can tell what they did by what they do now. It (share cropping)
hasn't changed a particle since. About Christmas was the time they
usually settled up. Nobody was forced to remain as a servant. I know
one thing,--Negroes did not go to jail and penitentiary like they do
now.

KU KLUX KLAN

The Ku Klux Klan to the best of my knowledge went into action about
the time shortly after the war when the amendments to the Constitution
gave the Negroes the right to vote. I have seen them at night dressed
up in their uniform. They would visit every Negro's house in the
comunity [TR: community]. Some they would take out and whip, some they
would scare to death. They would ask for a drink of water and they had
some way of drinking a whole bucketful to impress the Negroes that
they were supernatural. Negroes were very superstitious then. Colonel
Patterson who was a Republican and a colonel or general of the
militia, white and colored, under the governorship of Powell Clayton,
stopped the operation of the Klan in this state. After his work, they
ceased terrorizing the people.

POLITICAL OFFICIALS

Many an ex-slave was elected sheriff, county clerk, probate clerk,
Pinchback[A] was elected governor in Louisiana. The first Negro
congressman was from Mississippi and a Methodist preacher Hiram
Revells[B]. We had a Nigger superintendent of schools of the state of
Arkansas, J. C. Corbin[C]--I don't remember just when, but it was in
the early seventies. He was also president of the state school in Pine
Bluff--organized it.

SUFFRAGE

The ex-slave voted like fire directly after the war. That was about
all that did vote then. If the Niggers hadn't voted they never would
have been able to elect Negroes to office.

I was elected Alderma