"My mother's father was a free Indian named Washington. Her mother was a
slave. I don't know my father's father. He moved about so much and was
sold so many times he never did tell me his father. He got his name from
the white folks. When you're a slave you have to go by your owner's
name.

"My master's mother took me to the house after my mother died. And the
first thing I remember doing was cleaning up. Bringing water, putting up
mosquito-bars, cooking. My master's mother was Susan Reed. I have done
everything but saw. I never sawed in my life. The hardest work I did was
after slavery. I never did no hard work during slavery. I used to pack
water for the plow hands and all such as that. But when my mother died,
my mistress took me to the house.

"But Lawd! I've seen such brutish doin's--runnin' niggers with hounds
and whippin' them till they was bloody. They used to put 'em in stocks.
When they didn't put 'em in stocks, used to be two people would whip
'em--the overseer and the driver. The overseer would be a man named
Elijah at our house. He was just a poor white man. He had a whip they
called the BLACK SNAKE.

"I remember one time they caught a man named George Tinsley. They put
the dogs on him and they bit 'im and tore all his clothes off of 'im.
Then they put 'im in the stocks. The stocks was a big piece of timber
with hinges in it. It had a hole in it for your head. They would lift it
up and put your head in it. There was holes for your head, hands and
feet in it. Then they would shut it up and they would lay that whip on
you and you couldn't do nothin' but wiggle and holler, 'Pray, master,
pray!' But when they'd let that man out, he'd run away again.