I'm tellin' de truth. We got everythin' give to us. If you gets anythin' out of it from people nowdays, you got to slave worse than we did. Dats what I says. I tells de niggers dat. First, they just looks at me and den they laughs and calls me 'an old time slavery nigger'. But they don't know nothin'. We got plenty to eat. My mother had many chillen and maybe she got more than de rest of 'em. But nobody I see ever was hungry. We didn't have to buy clothes. We got good clothes and shoes. We got clothes for Sunday and clothes for all de time. My missus never whipped me once. Some time she give me a little slap. She give de same little slap to de white chillen when day need it. My master, Mr. Tippen , would sometime lick de niggers. But we didn't belong to him. He would string 'em up on a limb of a tree wid the rope around de waist and he would whip 'em bad some time.  I was raised to work and I was happy all de time. Sunday I didn't do nothin but a little work around de house. In de week I worked on a loom. My missus made all her own cloth. She would make all kinds of colors, red, blue and yellow. She would make her own colors. Yellow she made out of de roots of a current bush. She made a most black out of pecans. She liked to see us dress up. We all wears hanches (handkerchiefs) on our heads. We had all colors. My sister only wore white on her head. De white folks would say, 'I wishes I could wear hanches on my head 'cause they looks so pretty'. What do niggers now know about all dat? They don't know nothin'. I tells 'em they don't. They isn't even friendly. I likes de Mexican folks better. They is friendly, and niggers call me a slavery nigger. My grand chillen thinks it is smart caus dey can read. Dats all dey can do  dat and dance. There's other things they don't know and when I tells 'em what it is they laughs and have no manners.

Laura could give no sustained story about her life. She would jump from one subject to another. However, little by little, some sort of a picture of her early life was pieced together: Her mistress lived in a large house about a block from the "Shanties" occupied by slaves. The shanties were of log construction, and her mother had her own garden "at de door and in de back". Here grew roses, hollyhocks and larkspur. The houses were "furnished all right", kept warm in the winter, and Laura had a bed and mattress that had been slept in by a white child. She brought out that the slaves who worked hard were given a little patch of ground to work for themselves". A fiddle and a guitar would accompany singing at night  outside de far shanty" and they would dance and "had no more of no kind 'til de next day.  Laura knew nothing about the war until it was over. This is the way she found out about her freedom: One day I comes along and sees my master sitting wid his head down between his hands. I thought he was sick and I says, 'Missus, what am de matter wid master? Is he ailin'? 'No,' says my missus, 'he is grievin' caus de war is over and de slaves is free.' Den my missus tells me about de fightin' and how all of us niggers was to be turned loose. I says I didn't want to go no place, and she tells me dat it was goin' to be happy for me. My mother cried and cried, but there was a lot of hollerin' and all de niggers was glad because dey was free. Here are a few examples of Laura's disconnected dialogue;

Yes, sir, we went to church. It was a white church. I used to go to Sunday school, too. I would go with de white chillen. I loved my missus' chillen and would watch over em like a hen. 'Safe as wid a great big chicken', my missus would say when I was watchin' over 'em. I'd pretend I was the white chillen's mother, and den I'd come home and get in a rocking chair and rock myself to sleep. When de day comes dat I had thirteen chillen of my own, I wasn't as happy. My baby boy died. He had spasoms and de doctor give him too strong medicine. The interviewer had a hard time getting Laura to pose for a photograph. She said,  Once I was fat and pretty and I don't like to be seen in old clothes. However, Laura , with a gray felt hat covering her wooley hair, was accomodating and stepped out in the sunshine to have her picture taken. In her hand she held a pipe she had been smoking, and when she noticed it, too late, she said;  I won't be gettin' to heaven if they sees dat picture. [Editor's Note: The following letter was attached to the Laura Moore interview in the field worker's handwriting.] Mr. Olive,This is a pretty jerky interview, but it was impossible to get anything resembling a running story from this old darkey.