SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

tell my mother. A girl I was raised up with went and told her
though.
"After freedom I worked for old Judge Jones on the half sys-
tem. He give me ever thing that was due me. When he was eighty
years old, he called all his old tenants up and give em a mule and
twenty-five dollars. He was pretty good to em after all.
r, I went to free school in the summertime after the crops was
laid by. 1 can read and write pretty good.
tf I came here to Jefferson County in f eighty-six and I put
in thirty-six years at the Cotton Belt Shops. When that strike
come on they told us colored folks to quit and 1 never went back.
1 worked for em .when she was a narrow gauge.
"I worked in the North three years. I nightwatchad all over
St. Louis and Madison, Illinois. I liked it fine up there - white
folks is more fairiiliar up there and seems like you can get favors.
If I don't get somethin 1 here, I r m goin 1 back up there.
"When I got big enough I voted the Republican ticket and af-
ter they got this primary. I think the colored people ought to
vote now cause they make em pay taxes.
"I'll tell you right now, the younger generation is goin !
to the dogs. We'll never make a nation of em as long as they go
out to these places at nighty They ought to be a law passed.
• lien nine o'clock comes they ought to be home in bed, but the?/ is
just gettin 1 started then.
"I belong to the Catholic Church. I think it f s a pretty
good church. We have a white priest and I'll tell you one thing -
you can't get a divorce and marry again and stay in the Catholic
Church. ff
2.
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