read out of a book to them. They didn't jump over no broom he said.

"They was the biggest kind of Methodist folks and when mama was five
years old Johnny Williams had all his slaves baptized into that church
by his own white preacher. Papa said some of them didn't believe niggers
had no soul but Johnny Williams said they did. (The Negroes must have
been christened--ed.)

"Papa said folks coming through the country would tell them about
freedom. Mama was working for Miss Sallie Ann and done something wrong.
Miss Sallie Ann says, 'I'm a good mind to whoop you. You ain't paying
'tention to a thing you is doing the last week.' Mama says, 'Miss Sallie
Ann, we is free; you ain't never got no right to whoop me no more care
what I do.' When Bill come home he say, 'How come you to sass my wife?
She so good to you.' Mama say, 'Master Bill, them soldiers say I'm
free.' He slapped her. That the first time he laid hands on her in his
life. In a few days he said, 'We going to town and see is you free. You
leave the baby with Sallie Ann.' It was the courthouse. They questioned
her and him both. Seemed like he couldn't understand how freedom was to
be and mama didn't neither. Then papa took mama on Johnny Williams'
place. He come out to Arkansas and picked cotton after freedom and then
he moved his children all out here.

"Uncle Albert and grandpa take nights about going out. Uncle Albert was
courting.

"They put potatoes on fire to cook when next morning they would be warm
ready to eat. The fire popped out on mama. She was in a light blaze. Not
a bit of water in the house. Her sisters and brothers peed (urinated) on
her to put out the fire. Her stomach was burned and scarred. They was