"Asa Brown used to rent out his niggers, sometimes. You know, they
used to rent them. But he never rented my mother though. He needed her
all the time. She was the cook. He needed her all the time and he kept
her all the time. He let her go to see grandmother and he let her go
to church.
"Sometimes my mother went to the white church and sometimes she went
to the colored folks church. When we went to the white folks church,
we took and sat down in the back and behaved ourselves and that was
all there was to it. When they'd have these here big
meetings--revivals or protracted meetings they call them--she'd go to
the white and black. They wouldn't have them all at the same time and
everybody would have a chance to go to all of them.
"They wouldn't allow the colored to preach and they wouldn't even call
on them to pray but he could sing as good as any of them.
"Generally all colored preachers that I knowed of was slaves. The
slaves attended the churches all right enough--Methodists and Baptists
both white and black. I never heard of the preachers saying anything
the white folks did not like.
"The Methodists' church started in the North. There was fourteen or
fifteen members that got dissatisfied with the Baptist church and went
over to the Methodist church. The trouble was that they weren't
satisfied with our Baptism. The Baptists were here before the
Methodists were thought of. These here fourteen or fifteen members
came out of the North and started the Methodist church going.