Plenty to Eat

"My father would kill a hog and keep the meat in a pit under the house.
I know what it is now. I didn't know then. He would clean the hog and
everything before he would bring him to the house. You had to come down
outside the house and go into the pit when you wanted to get meat to
eat. If my father didn't have a hog, he would steal one from his
master's pen and cut its throat and bring it to the pit.

"My folks liked hog guts. We didn't try to keep them long. We'd jus'
clean 'em and scrape 'em and throw 'em in the pot. I didn't like to
clean 'em but I sure loved to eat 'em. Father had a great big pot they
called the wash pot and we would cook the chit'lins in it. You could
smell 'em all over the country. I didn't have no sense. Whenever we had
a big hog killin', I would say to the other kids, 'We got plenty of meat
at our house.'

"They would say back, 'Where you got it?'

"I would tell 'em. And they would say, 'Give us some.'

"And I would say to them, 'No, that's for us.'

"So they called us 'big niggers.'


Marriages Since Freedom

"My first baby was born to my husband. I didn't throw myself away. I