fter the niggers was freed. The niggers has got
on since them old days. They has gone from nothin' to a fair educated
folks. We has been kind of slow, 'cause we was turnt loose without
nothin', and couldn't read and write.

"I's worked for fifteen and thirty cents a day, but Lawd, blessed to our
president, we gits a li'l pension now and that's kep' me from plumb
starvin' to death. Times is hard and folks had to do away with
everything when they had that Hoover for president, but they will be
straightened out by and by if they'll listen to the president now.
'Course, some wants to kill him, 'cause he helps the poor, but it do
look like we ought to have a li'l bread and salt bacon without upsettin'
'em, when they has so much.

420162

ELIGE DAVISON was born in Richmond, Virginia, a slave of George
Davison. Elige worked in the field for some time before he was
freed, but does not know his age. He lives with one of his
grandsons, in Madisonville, Texas.

"My birth was in Richmond. That's over in old Virginny, and George
Davison owned me and my pappy and mammy. I 'member one sister, named
Felina Tucker.

"Massa and Missus were very good white folks and was good to the black
folks. They had a great big rock house with pretty trees all round it,
but the plantation was small, not more'n a hunerd acres. Massa growed
tobaccy on 'bout 30 of them acres, and he had a big bunch of hawgs. He
waked us up 'bout four in the mornin' to milk the cows and feed them
hawgs.

"Our quarters was good, builded out of pine logs with a bed in one
corner, no floors and windows. Us wore old loyal clothes and our shirt,
it open all down the front. In winter massa gave us woolen clothes to
wear. Us didn't know what shoes was, though.

"Massa, he look after us slaves when us sick, 'cause us worth too much
money to let die jus' like you do a mule. He git doctor or nigger mammy.
She make tea out of weeds, better'n quinine. She put string round our
neck for chills and fever, with camphor on it. That sho' keep off
diseases.

"Us work all day till jus' 'fore dark. Sometimes us got whippin's. We
didn't mind so much. Boss, you know how stubborn a mule am, he have to
be whipped. That the way slaves is.

"When you gather a bunch of cattle to sell they calves, how the calves
and cows will bawl, that the way the slaves was then. They didn't know
nothin' 'bout they kinfolks. Mos' chillen didn't know who they pappy was
and