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Laura Thompson, the subject of this story, is a stout woman of about eighty-five. She is medium brown in complexion, has short gray hair, and possesses a jovial disposition. She is able to do a limited amount of housework and cooking, and seems to enjoy the afternoons she spends sitting on the porch in an old fashioned rocker. Shortly after the Civil War, Mrs. Thompson left her home in Kentucky and moved to Indianapolis. She came to Minnesota with the McLaughlin family and settled in Deerwood, moving to St. Paul in 1919 to make her home with her daughter.
"I was born in Greensburg, Kentucky, eighty some odd years ago. My father belonged to the Straders' and my mother belonged to the Blakeman's. My father, his name was Gaines Strader, and my mother's was Annie Strader. I had so many brothers and sisters that I can't remember how many of us there was, but I have three brothers living now and one sister. As children we all played together, black and white - we did't know nothing 'bout prejudice down in Kentucky when I was a child. When it came time for us to go to bed, my father would take all of the white children up to the Master's house.
"Every Sunday morning we put on our best dress and all us children went barefooted up to the Master's house for church and Sunday school. Every one of us children would get a big sugar cookie after church was over. There were so-o-o many that the niggers looked like gnats.
"One day a week the Master would come to our house to spend the day. My mother would have fried chicken and biscuits. Master sure did love those biscuits. When he came we children had to be quiet. If we wasn't, we would git a crack on the head.
"We slept on corded beds made out of ropes. There were no mattresses in those days - jes' straw ticks. No chairs -jes' stools made out of benches and boards, and no carpets. We had to scrub the floors 'til they were white as biscuit boards.
"White and colored children played together, but colored knowed their place. We played stick horse nearly all day until we were big enough to work in the fields. Master would thrash us quicker than our mother would or father, so we had to obey. My grandmother took white domestic and dyed it blue and yellow for our Sunday dresses.
"When I was 'bout fifteen I nursed one of my Master's children that was ill, and after we were living in Indianapolis, he came to our house one day and asked for Laura. He said when he got married he was coming back to see me again with his wife and bring me something, but I never saw him again at all, 'cause after that we were all separated.
"I wasn't big enough to pick any cotton until after slavery days were over. I remember seeing big fields and fields of cotton and sugar cane when I was a child. My old grandmother would spin all day making goods and thread. Master's children and his wife would have white cotton suits made, and after they got tired of them they would give them to us. I git to studying 'bout them old times and jus' wonder. After slavery days was over, my father stayed on Master's plantation until he got money enough to buy a place of his own.
"My mother cooked all the time for the hands. My father stayed at Straders and my mother at Blakeman's. When folks married then (in slavery days) they had to live with the Master that owned them. I can remember 'jus as well when Abe Lincoln got killed. The Master called all his niggers together and said, 'Well, Abe Lincoln freed you all now, and you can go to yourselves.' We all got our things together right away and went over to the Straders where our father was. Master Strader gave our father some land and a shack, and he farmed and gave the Master about half what he made to pay for the land.
"We didn't have no stoves in those days. We cooked at the fireplace. On Easter we had Easter eggs, and on Christmas we had apples, dolls, and candy. Never knew what money was. We use to eat possums, rabbits, chickens, coons, and fresh fish out of the river. We had our own gardens with vegetables, and mother always made big biscuits. Master had hundreds and hundreds of acres of land and hundreds of slaves.
"The Master had church for the white people on Sunday morning and for the slaves in the afternoon. We were all up in the morning by time the sun was up - about five o'clock. Everybody quit work at sundown. The horses would git a rest, but the slaves never did. They had to work all day. We used to hear how they beat slaves and tied them to whipping posts, but that never happened on our plantation. The youngest Masters were more lenient on the slaves than the older ones were.
"One time a slave woman name Merica killed three other slaves, and she was hung. I remember the day we all went to her funeral. On the way we saw a big black snake on a fence, and everybody said it was Merica's spirit. We watched for that snake, but it disappeared in the ground, we never saw it no more.
"After slavery days was over, we all went to school in Kentucky to learn to read and write. I was married in Kentucky, and my mother made me a white dress. I wasn't no little girl when I was married, I was 'bout thirty years old. The niggers never had no babies by each other unless they were married, but they had them by the Masters.
"We used to play hide-and-Seek and stick horse all the time. We don't sing any of the songs now that we sung then. I can't remember any of those that we sung. We were baptized in the Green River down in old Kentucky. We went to our quarters at sundown and went straight to bed. None of us slaves worked after noon on Saturday until Monday morning except for the chores. We didn't know nothing 'bout any holidays except Saturday afternoons and Sundays. We had doctors when we got sick, but can't remember having hospitals, and I never heard of any operations in those days.
"After slavery days we moved to Greensboro, Kentucky, and I worked for the Lewis's. They were good people, but they were tight on you. Never allowed you to stay out after dark. I can remember when my father went away to the war to fight for freedom. Remember seein' so many soldiers. One regiment they told me was the Jeff Davis regiment.
"Sometimes I think it's still slavery times. All you git you work hard for it, and you don't get what you deserve at that. I think we're jus' naturally religious, 'cause we were oppressed so long that we were praying and looking to God for help. People weren't mean to one another like they are today. If you get along too good nowadays somebody will tell a lie on you.
"I remember when the poor white folks would come to our door begging, and my mother would give them some of our meal and flour. I kin remember seein' the soldiers on horses and the commander riding by the side. I used to remember lots of things 'bout them old days, but since my head's been bad, I don't seem to remember so well. I used to could name every president we had since the war.
"We were always taught and always believe in tellin' the truth. There ain't a person in this world or nobody I knows of that I got anything against. I always was taught to tell the truth because when judgment day comes you got to answer. Always went to church and Sunday school ever since I was fifteen. I can remember yet how we went to Sunday school barefooted and in our cotton dresses. We young ones didn't have shoes, but the older ones did. As long as the old Master lived he always seen to it that the older ones had shoes. My father was taken away from his mother and sold when he was a little boy, but he always said he could remember that his name was Craddock before he was sold to the Straders.
E. L. B."
