n.

"Massa didn't like his niggers to marry off the place, but sometimes
they'd do it, and massa tell his neighbor, 'My nigger am comin' to you
place. Make him behave.' All the niggers 'haved then and they wasn't no
Huntsville and gallows and burnin's then.

"Old massa went to war with his boy, Billie. They's lots of cryin' and
weepin' when they sot us free. Lots of them didn't want to be free,
'cause they knowed nothin' and had nowhere to go. Them what had good
massas stayed right on.

"I 'members when that Ku Klux business starts up. Smart niggers causes
that. The carpet-baggers ruint the niggers and the white men couldn't do
a thing with them, so they got up the Ku Klux and stirs up the world.
Them carpet-baggers come round larnin' niggers to sass the white folks
what done fed them. They come to pa with that talk and he told them,
'Listen, white folks, you is gwine start a graveyard if you come round
here teachin' niggers to sass white folks." Them carpet-baggers starts
all the trouble at 'lections in Reconstruction. Niggers didn't know
anythin' 'bout politics.

"Mos' the young niggers ain't usin' the education they got now. I's been
here eighty years and still has to be showed and told by white folks.
These young niggers won't git told by whites or blacks either. They
thinks they done knowed it all and that gits them in trouble.

"I stays with the Cavins mos' twenty years after the war. After I
leaves, I allus farms and does odd jobs round town here. I's father of
ten chillen by one woman. I lives by myself now and they gives me $13.00
a month. I'd be proud to git it if it wasn't more'n a dollar, 'cause
they ain't nothin' a old man can do no more.

420055

[Illustration: William Adams]

WILLIAM ADAMS, 93, was born in slavery, with no opportunity for an
education, except three months in a public school. He has taught
himself to read and to write. His lifelong ambition has been to
become master of the supernatural powers which he believes to
exist. He is now well-known among Southwestern Negroes for his
faith in the occult.

"Yous want to know and talk about de power de people tells you I has.
Well, sit down here, right there in dat chair, befo' we'uns starts. I
gits some ice water and den we'uns can discuss de subject. I wants to
'splain it clearly, so yous can understand.

"I's born a slave, 93 years ago, so of course I 'members de war period.
Like all de other