She cooked some but wasn't the
regular white folks' cook. Another black woman was the regular cook. I
heard her say she was a field hand mostly durin' slavery.
"Folks was free two or three years fore they knowed it. Nobody told em.
"I used to have to go up the road to get milk for the old mistress. She
boxed my ears. That when I was a child reckly after the war.
"They had a latch and a hart bar cross the door. I never was out but
once after dark. I never seen no Ku Klux. My folks didn't know they was
free.
"Dr. Washington lived in Somerville, Tennessee and brought us to
Arkansas to farm. He owned acres and acres of land here. I was grown and
had a house full of children. I got five living now.
"I don't vote. I don't know who to vote for. I would vote for the worst
kinder officers maybe and I wouldn't wanter make times harder on us all
'an they is.
"I been cookin' and farmin' all my life. Now I get $10 a month from the
Sociable Welfare.
"I used to pick up chips at Mrs. Willforms--pick up a big cotton basket
piled up fore I quit. I seen the Yankees, they camped at the fair
grounds. I thought they wore the prettiest clothes and the brass buttons
so pretty on the blue suits. I hear em beat the drum. I go peep out when
they come by.
"My old mistress slapped me till my eye was red cause one day I says
'Ain't them men pretty?' They camped at what is now the Fair Grounds at
Somerville, Tennessee, at sorter right of town.
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