Early Life
"I was ten years old when war was ended. I had to carry matches and
candles to the cotton pickers. It would be too dark for them to weigh
up. They couldn't see. They had tasks and they would be picking till
late to git their tasks done. Matches and candles come from the big
house, and I had to bring it down to them. That was two years before the
war.
"I wasn't big enough to do nothing else, only drive to the gin. I drove
horse-power to the gin.--drove mules to the gin. I would drive the cows
out to the pasture too. The milk women would milk them. Lawd, I could
not do no milking. I was too small. The milk women would milk them and I
would drive the cows one way and the calves another so that they
couldn't mix. And at night I would go git them and they would milk them
again. The milk women milked them. What would I know bout milkin.
"I never did any playin', 'cept plain marbles and goin' in swimmin'.
Schooling
"The white girls and boys learned us our A-B-C's after the war. They had
a free school in Kemper County there. My children I learnt them myself
or had it done. You couldn't hardly ever find one in Kemper Country that
could spell and go on. They didn't have no time for that. Some few of
them learned their A-B-C's before the war. But that is all. They learned
what they learned after the war in the free government schools mostly.
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