"Grandma was sold in South Carolina to Mississippi and sold again to Dr.
Shelton. Now that was my father's father and mother. She said they rode
and walked all the way. They came on ox wagons. She said on the way they
passed some children. They was playing. A little white boy was up in a
persimmon tree settin' on a limb eating persimmons. He was so pretty and
clean. Grandma says, 'You think you is some pumpkin, don't you, honey
child.' He says, 'Some pumpkin and some 'simmon too.' Grandma was a
house girl. She got to keep her baby and brought him. He was my father.
Uncle was born later. Then they was freed. Grandma lived to be
ninety-five years old. Mrs. Dolphy Wooly and Mrs. Shelton was her young
mistresses. They kept her till she died. They kept her well.

"Grandma told us about freedom. She was hired out to the Browns to make
sausage and dry out lard. Five girls was in the field burning brush.
They was white girls--Mrs. Brown's girls. They come to the house and
said some Blue Coats come by and said, 'You free.' They told them back,
'That's no news, we was born free.' Grandma said that night she melted
pewter and made dots on her best dress. It was shiny. She wore it home
next day 'cause she was free, and she never left from about her own
white folks till she died and left them.

"Times seem very good on black folks till hard cold winter and spring
come, then times is mighty, mighty bad. It is so hard to keep warm fires
and enough to eat. Times have been good. Black folks in the young
generation need more heart training and less book learning. Times is so
fast the young set is too greedy. They is wasteful too. Some is hard
workers and tries to live right.

"I wash and irons and keep a woman's little chile so she can work. I
owns my home."