A woman named Susan Merritt of Rusk County, Texas, reported that “lots of Negroes were killed after freedom …bushwhacked, shot down while they were trying to get away. You could see lots of Negroes hanging from trees in Sabine bottom right after freedom. They would catch them swimming across Sabine River and shoot them.” Merritt also described how one day a man representing the government showed up and told all of the Black workers that they were free. Still, after the “man read the paper telling us we were free … massa made us work several months after that. He said we got 20 acres land and a
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