~x~e1ave Stories	Page 8ix
(Texas) ~







t Let them go they way, t c~rns e that ~ s what they‘ re go Ing t o d o ‚ anyway. ‚ iVe waS scareder of thera than we was of the deb1bt]~ Bat they spoke right kindly to us cullud. folks . They said ‚ ‚ If‘ you got a good. master and. want t o st~r ‚ well, you can do that ‚~ bu~t now you can go where you want to ‚ ~ c~.ise aintt nobody going t o stop you.t

	“The niggers cantt hardly git used to the idea. When they wants to 1e~re the place, th«~ still go up to the big house for a pass* They jus‘ can‘t under— stand ‘bout the freedom. Old Marse of Missue say, ‘You don~t need no pass. All yoa got to do is just take yo~i foot In you. hand and go. ‚ •

t‘ It seem like the war jus ‚ plumb broke 0il4 Marss up. It wasn1 ~ long t Ill he

..	moved into T~.er and left my paw r~nnin1 the farm on a half~nce With him and. the niggere workers. He didn‘t ‘live long, but I forgite jus‘ how long. But when Mr. . Bob he fred the old place, he ‚ lowed we ‚ d jus ‚ go ‚ long the w~y his paw has

.~ made the tr~e with my paw.	.

‚ ~‘TOung Mr. Bob ‘pi~rently done the first rascality I ever heard of a

~	Goodman dom‘, The first year we worked for him we raised lote of grain and other things and fifty—seven bales of cotton. Cotton was fifty-two cents a pound and he shipped it all aww ‚ but all he ever gave us was a box of candy and a sack of store tobacco and a sack of sug~‘ • He said the ‚ eignm~nt done got lost • Paw said to let it go, t cause we had. al lus t ived by what the Goodm~ had said.

“I got married. and. lived on the old place t il I I was in my lat e fift les. ~:‘. i~ had seven c~hiflun~ but if I got any livin‘ now, I dOfl‘tj know where they is now.

)iy paw aM maw got to own a little piece of land not far from the old pl~ce, and paw lived to be 102 and maw 106. Ita the last one of any of my folks.


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