[HW: Escapes on Cow]

"I was born on the tenth of March in some year, I don't know what one. I
don't know whether it was in the Civil War or before the Civil War. I
forget it. I think that I was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi; I'm not
sure, but I think it was.

"My mother was a great shouter. One night before I was born, she was at
a meeting, and she said, 'Well, I'll have to go in, I feel something.'
She said I was walkin' about in there. And when she went in, I was born
that same night.

"My mother was a great Christian woman. She raised us right. We had to
be in at sundown. If you didn't bring it in at sundown, she'd whip
you,--whip you within an inch of your life.

"She didn't work in the field. She worked at a loom. She worked so long
and so often that once she went to sleep at the loom. Her master's boy
saw her and told his mother. His mother told him to take a whip and wear
her out. He took a stick and went out to beat her awake. He beat my
mother till she woke up. When she woke up, she took a pole out of the
loom and beat him nearly to death with it. He hollered, 'Don't beat me
no more, and I won't let 'em whip you.'

"She said, 'I'm goin' to kill you. These black titties sucked you, and
then you come out here to beat me.' And when she left him, he wasn't
able to walk.

"And that was the last I seen of her until after freedom. She went out