children. I don't know how many she did have in all. I had eleven my own
self. Grandma was named Tempy and I heard them tell about when she was
sold. She and mama went together. They used to whoop the slaves when
they didn't work up peart.

"When the 'Old War' come on and the Yankees come they took everything
and the black men folks too. They come by right often. They would drive
up at mealtime and come in and rake up every blessed thing was cooked.
Have to go work scrape about and find something else to eat. What they
keer 'bout you being white or black? Thing they was after was filling
theirselves up. They done white folks worse than that. They burned their
cribs and fences up and their houses too about if they got mad. Things
didn't suit them. If they wanted a colored man to go in camp with them
and he didn't go, they would shoot you down like a dog. Ma told about
some folks she knowd got shot in the yard of his own quarters.

"Us black folks don't want war. They are not war kind of folks. Slavery
wasn't right and that 'Old War' wasn't right neither.

"When my children was all little I kept Aunt Mandy Buford till she died.
She was a old slave woman. Me and my husband and the biggest children
worked in the field. She would sit about and smoke. My boys made cob
pipes and cut cane j'ints for 'er to draw through. Red cob pipes was the
prettiest. Aunt Mandy said her master would be telling them what to do
in the field and he say to her, 'I talking to you too.' She worked right
among the men at the same kind of work. She was tall but not large. She
carried children on her right hip when she was so young she dragged that
foot when she walked. The reason she had to go with the men to the field
like she did was 'cause she wasn't no multiplying woman. She never had a
chile in all her lifetime. She said her mother nearly got in bad one