8

7.

to work colored men. It seems like this attitude toward colored
workmen has developed since the government took over public build-
ing work. Down at Macon they have let the colored men work on PWA
jobs, but not in Athens. I think Mr. Roosevelt is the best President
we ever had. He had the money put down here for us, and he don't
know that we colored folks sure ain't allowed to get the benefit of
it. I'll just bet he don't.

"One time, when I was making $25 a week, building a stable
for Dr. Jago on the lower end of Clayton Street, a scaffold broke
and the brick and mortar fell on us. While we were all terribly
bruised up, we were thankful that no bones were broken.

"Not long after that, I was called out on a fifty-five-
dollar-a-week job at Barnett Shoals by an Athens construction
company that had a contract to build some seventy-five or a hundred
houses for mill hands to live in. They were all plain little four-
room houses owned by the mill. My job was to build the pillars
after the frame work had been set up. One day when I was bending
over to put up a corner pillar, some careless person at the far side
of the little house pulled a brace and the house gave way and fell
on my back. It took a hundred or more men to lift the corner of that
house off of me. When they did get me out I was drawn almost double,
and I was in the hospital nine long weeks. They kept me packed in
ice all that time. They would have kept me in the hospital longer,
but I begged so hard to be taken home to my family that they finally
gave their consent. After that I had to pay our family physician

1865