"My mother was always right in the house with the white people and I was
fed just like I was one of their children. They even done put me to bed
with them. You see, this discrimination on color wasn't as bad then as
it is now. They handled you as a slave but they didn't discriminate
against you on account of color like they do now. Of course, there were
brutal masters then just like there are brutal people now. Louisiana and
Alabama and Mississippi always were tough states on colored people.
South Carolina and Georgia got that way after people from those places
came in and taught them to mistreat colored people. Yet in Alabama and
Louisiana where they colored people were worse treated, it seems that
they got hold of more property and money. Same way it was in
Mississippi."