SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

fore the darkies and turning them loose with the clothes they had on and
what they could tote away* Ho land* no home* no place; they roamed around*
"When it was freedom the thing papa done was go to a place and start
out share croppin 1 * ]?olks had no horses or miles* They had to plough new
ground with oxen* I ploughed when I was a girl, ploughed oxen* If you had
horses or mules and the Yankees come along three or four years after the war,
they would swap horses, ride a piece, and if they had a chance swap horses
again* Stealing went on during and long after the war*
"The Ku Klux was awful in South Carolina* The colored folks had no
church to go to* They gather around at folks* houses to have preaching and
prayers* One night we was having it at our house, only I was the oldest
and was in another room sound asleep on the bed* There was a crowd at our
house* The Kh Klux come, pulled off his robe and door face, hung it up on
a nail in the room, and said, t Where f s that Jim Jesus? 1 He pulled him out
the room* The crowd run off* Mama took the three little children but forgot
me and run off too* They beat papa till they thought he was dead and
thro wed him in a fence corner* He was beat nearly to death, just cut all to
pieces* Ee crawled to my bed and woke me up and back to the steps* I thought
he was dead — bled to death -- on the steps* Mama come back to leave and
found he was alive* She doctored him up and he lived thirty years after that*
We left that morning*
"The old white woman that owned the place was rich -— big rich* She
been complaining about the noise — singing and preaching* She called him
Praying Jim Jesus till he got to be called that around* He prayed in the
field* She said he disturbed her* Mama said one of the Ku KLux she knowed
been raised up there close to Master Barton f s but papa said he didn't know
one of them that beat on him*
3. 224