Father had a great big pot they
called the wash pot and we would cook the chit'lins in it. You could
smell 'em all over the country. I didn't have no sense. Whenever we had
a big hog killin', I would say to the other kids, 'We got plenty of meat
at our house.'
"They would say back, 'Where you got it?'
"I would tell 'em. And they would say, 'Give us some.'
"And I would say to them, 'No, that's for us.'
"So they called us 'big niggers.'
Marriages Since Freedom
"My first baby was born to my husband. I didn't throw myself away. I
married Mr. Cragin in 1867. He lived with me about fifteen years before
he died. He got kicked. He was a baker. During the War, he was the cook
in a camp. He went to get some flour one morning. He snatched the tray
too hard and it kicked him in his bowels. He never did get over it. The
tray was full of flour and it was big and heavy. It was a sliding tray.
It rolled out easy and fast and you had to pull it careful. I don't know
why they called it a kick.
"I married a second husband--if you can call it that--a nigger named
Jones. He had a spoonful of sense. We didn't live together three months.
He came in one day and I didn't have dinner ready.
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