I would go to
school from July to September, and also about six weeks in January.
They had public school taught by some of the people. I went to a white
man once. An old white woman taught there before him. I went to a Negro
woman, Old Lady Abbie Lindsay. She lives here now down on State Street.
She is about ninety years old. I went to Jube Williams (white), Current
Lewis, Abbie Lindsay, and A.G. Mertin. They did n't paas you by grades
then. I got through the fourth reader. If you got through, they would go
back and carry you through again. They had the old Blue Back Speller. I
got ready for the fifth reader but I quit. I had just begun to cipher,
in arithmetic, but I had to quit because they could n't spare me out of
the field. In fact they put me into the field when I was eight years
old, but I managed to go to school until I was about twelve years old or
something like that. I never got a year's schooling all put together. My
mother was a widow and had five or six children, none of them able or
big enough to work but my oldest sister. She raised five of us.
If I had done as she told me, I might have been a good scholar. But I
played around and went off with the other children. I learnt way
afterwards when I was grown how to write my name. I could work addition
and I could work some in multiplication, but I couldn't work division
and couldn't work subtraction.
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