Amusement
"The grown folks didn't have much amusement in slavery times. They had
banjo, fiddle, melodian, and things like that. There wasn't no baseball
in those days. I never seed none. They could dance all they wanted to
their way. They danced the dotillions and the waltzes and breakdown
steps, all such as that. Pick banjo! U-umph! They would give corn
huskins; they would go and shuck corn and shuck so much. Get through
shucking, they would give you dinner. Sometimes big rich white people
would give dances out in the yard and look at their way of dancing, and
doing. Violin players would be colored.
"Have cotton picking too sometimes at night, moonshiney nights. That's
when they'd give the cotton pickings. Say you didn't have many hands,
then they'd go and send you one hand from this place and one from that
place. And so on. Your friends would do all that for you. Between 'em
they'd git up a big bunch of hands. Then they'd give the cotton picking,
and git your field clared up. They'd give you something to eat and
whiskey to drink.
How Freedom Came
"Notice was given to my father that he was free. White people in that
country give it to him. I don't know what they said to my father. Then
the last gun was fired. I don't know where peace was declared. Notice
come how that everybody was free. Told my daddy, 'You're just as free as
I am.
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