3.	51



the anake‘8 head o~t with hla.big kulte and they carried him home bleeding. His master didn‘t whoop him, said he had no business off in the woode. He had run off. His master rubbed salt in the ~ashea. It nearly killed him. It burnt him so bad. That stopped the blood. They said sut ( soot ) would stopped tbe blood but it would left black mark. The salt left white mark. on him. The salt helped kill the piscrn. (poison). Some masters and overseers was cruel. When they was so bad. marked they didn‘t bring a good

~ price.. They thought they was hard to handle.

	“Aunt ~Tane Peterson, old friend ot mine, caine to visit me nearly every year after she got so old. She told me things tOok place in slavery times. She was in Virginia till after freedom. She had two 4rls and a boy with a white daddy. ~he told me all about how that ccme. She said no chance to run off or ever get off, you had to stay and take what come. She never got to marry till after treed~. Then she had three more black children by her husband. She said she was the cook. Old master say, ‘Yane, go to the lot and get the eggs.‘ She was scared to ~o and scared not to go. He ‚ d beat her out there, put her head between the slip gap where they let the hogs into the pasture from the lot do~n back of the barn. She say, ‘Old misais whip. .me. This sin‘ t right . ‚ ‘ d laugh. Said she bore three of his children in a roam in the same house his family lived in. ~he lived in the same house • She had a room so as she could build fires and cook break..

fast by tour o‘clock sometimes, she said. She was so glad freedom cc~e on and soon as she heard it she took her children and was gone, she said.

She had no use for him. She was scared to death of him. She learned to pray and prayed for freedom. She died in Cold Water, Mississippi. She was so glad freedom come on before her children come on old enough to sell.