them turn me loose. She said, 'They are our darkies; turn them loose.'

"One of them got after me one night. I ran through a gate and he
couldn't get through. Every time I looked around, I would see through
the trees some bush or other and think it was him gaining on me. God
knows! I ran myself to death and got home and fell down on the floor.

"The slaves weren't expecting nothing. It got out somehow that they were
going to give us forty acres and a mule. We all went up in town. They
asked me who I belonged to and I told them my master was named Banner.
One man said, 'Young man, I would go by my mama's name if I were you.' I
told him my mother's name was Banner too. Then he opened a book and told
me all the laws. He told me never to go by any name except Banner. That
was all the mule they ever give me.

"I started home a year after I got free and made a crop. I had my gear
what I had saved on the plantation and went to town to get my mule but
there wasn't any mule.

"Before the war you belonged to somebody. After the war you weren't
nothin' but a nigger. The laws of the country were made for the white
man. The laws of the North were made for man.

"Freedom is better than slavery though. I done seed both sides. I seen
darkies chained. If a good nigger killed a white overseer, they wouldn't
do nothin' to him. If he was a bad nigger, they'd sell him. They raised
niggers to sell; they didn't want to lose them. It was just like a mule
killing a man.

"Yellow niggers didn't sell so well. There weren't so many of them as