u folks am now free
and can go where you wants to go. You can stay here and pick cotton and
git fifty cents de hunerd.' But only two families stayed. De rest pulled
out.

"After freedom we rented land on de halves. Some niggers soon got ahead
and rented on de third or fourth. When you rent that-a-way you git three
bales and de boss git one. But you has to buy you own teams and seed and
all on dat plan.

"Its a fac' we was told we'd git forty acres and a mule. Dat de talk
den, but we never did git it.

"De Ku Klux made a lot of devilment round-about dat county. Dey allus
chasin' some nigger and beatin' him up. But some dem niggers sho' 'serve
it. When dey gits free, dey gits wild. Dey won't work or do nothin' and
thinks dey don't have to. We didn't have no trouble, 'cause we stays on
de farm and works and don't have no truck with dem wild niggers.

"In 1877 I marries Fannie Black at de town of Sprinkle. It wasn't sech a
town, jes' a li'l place. Me and her stayed married fifty-two years and
four months. She died and left me eight year ago. We had seven chillen
and they is all livin'. Four is here in Austin and two in California and
one in Ohio.

"I gits a li'l pension, $9.00 de month, and my gal, Susie, takes care of
me. I ain't got long to go now 'fore de Lawd gwine call me.

420076

[Illustration: Green Cumby]

GREEN CUMBY, 86, was born a slave of the Robert H. Cumby family, in
Henderson, Texas. He was about 14 at the close of the Civil War. He
stayed with his old master four years after he was freed, then
married and settled in Tyler, Texas, where he worked for the
compress 30 years. He lives with his daughter at 749 Mesquite St.,
Abilene, Texas.

"Durin' slavery I had purty rough times. My grandfather, Tater Cumby,
was cullud overseer for forty slaves and he called us at four in de
mornin' and we worked from sun to sun. Most of de time we worked on
Sunday, too.

"De white overseers whupped us with straps when we didn't do right. I
seed niggers in chains lots of times, 'cause there wasn't no jails and
they jus' chained 'em to trees.

"Spec'lators on hosses drove big bunches of slaves past our place from
one place to another, to auction 'em at de market places. De women would
be carryin' l'il ones in dere arms and at night dey bed 'em down jus'
like cattle right on de ground 'side of de road. Lots of l'il chillun
was sold 'way from de mammy when dey seven or eight