mistresses used to teach the pickaninnies to read the Bible. Yes'm we
was free to go to see the niggers on other plantations but we had to
have a pass an' we was checked in an' out. No'm, I ain't never seen no
slaves sold, nor none in chains, and I ain't never seen no Ku Kluxers.

"I live with the Wakefiel's till I was 'leven and then Marse Wakefiel'
give me to my young mistress when she married and went to North Carolina
to live. And 'twas in North Carolina that I seed Sherman, 'deed I did!
I seed Sherman and his sojers, gathering up all the hogs and all the
hosses, and all the cows and all the little cullud chillen. Them was
drefful days! These is drefful days, too. Old man Satan, he sure am on
earth now.

"Yes'm, I believes in ghos'ses. I ain't never seed 'em but I is feel
'em. I live once in a house where a man was killed. I lie in my bed and
they close in on me! No'm, I ain't afraid. The landlord say when I move
out, 'you is stay there longer than anybody I ever had.' 'Nother house
I live in (this was in North Carolina too), it had been a gamblin'
house and it had hants. On rainy nights, I'd lie awake and hear "drip,
drip ... drip, drip...." What was that? Why, that was the blood a
dripping ... Why on rainy night? Why, on rainy nights, the blood gets
a little fresh...!"




Maryland
Sept. 4, 1937
Rogers