didn't pay you nothing in slavery time. But what meat the Yankees didn't
take for themselves, they give to the niggers.

"My folks never got anything for their work that I know of. I heard my
mother say that nobody got paid for their work. I don't know whether
they had a chance to make anything on the side or not.

"The Yankees, when they come in the yard that morning, told my father he
was free. I remember that myself. They come up riding horses and
carryin' long old guns with bayonets on them, and told him. They rode
all over the country from one place to another telling the niggers they
were free. Master didn't get a chance to tell us because he left when he
saw them comin'.

"When my mother and father were living on the plantation, they lived in
an old frame building. A portion of it was log. My father stayed with
the Calverts--his wife's white folks. At first old man Webb sold him to
them; then he bought him back and bought my mother too. They were
together when freedom came. You know they auctioned you off in slavery
time. Every year, they would, they put you up on the auction block and
buy and sell. That was down in Georgia. We was in Georgia when we was
freed--in Atlanta. My father and mother had fourteen children
altogether. My mother died the year after we came out here. That would
be about 1875. I never had but three children because my wife died
early. Two of them are dead.

"Right after freedom, my father plaited baskets and mats. He shucked
mops, put handles on rakes and did things like that in addition to his
farming. He was a blacksmith all the time too. He used to plait collars
for mules. He farmed and got his harvests in season. The other things