four years after I came here.

"After they was free and my father had gotten large enough to work and
didn't have no horse, my grandma was going 'round waiting on women--that
is all she did--all the rest of the people had gotten large and left
home. Papa made a crop with a hoe. He made three bales of cotton and
about twelve loads of corn with that hoe. He used to tell me, 'You don't
know nothin' 'bout work. You oughter see how I had to work.' After that
he bought him a horse. Money was scarce then and it took something to
buy the place and the horse both. They were turned loose from slavery
without anything. Hardly had a surname--just Katy, Maria, and Peter.

"I knew more about the slave-time history of my mother's folks than I
did about my father's but I'll tell you that some other time. My
grandmother on my mother's side was born in Richmond, Virginia. She was
owned by a doctor but I can't call his name. She gets her name from her
husband's owners. They came from Virginia. They didn't take the name of
their owners in Louisiana. They took the name of the owners in Virginia.
She was a twin--her twin was a boy named June and her name was Hetty.
Her master kept her brother to be a driver for him. She was sent from
Virginia to Louisiana to people that were related to her Virginia
people. She called her Louisiana mistress 'White Ma;' she never did call
her 'missis.' The white folks and the colored folks too called her
Indian because she was mixed with Choctaw. That's the Indian that has
brown spots on the jaw. They're brownskin. It was an Indian from the
Oklahoma reservation that said my mother belonged to the Choctaws.

"She rode from Virginia to Louisiana on a boat at the age of twelve
years. She was separated from her mother and brothers and sisters and
never did see them again. She was kept in the house for a nurse. She was