“When white lady find baby, I used to go hep draw the breas’.”

“Heap a people.”

“Bawn.”

The Welfare Department gives Rachel $8.00 a month.  She pays $2.00 a month for two rooms with no drinking water.  With the help of her white friends she manages to exist and says she is “pendin on the Lord” to help her get along.

She sang for me in a quavering voice the following songs reminiscent of the war: 

  “Homespun dresses plain I know. 
   And the hat palmetto too. 
   Hurrah!  Hurrah! 
   We cheer for the South we love so dear,
   We cheer for the homespun dresses
   The Southern ladies wear!”

  “Who is Price a fightin’? 
   He is a fightin’, I do know. 
   I think it is old Curtis. 
   I hear the cannons roa’”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Elizabeth Brannon, Biscoe, Arkansas
                    (Packed to move somewhere else)
Age:  40 plus

“I was born in Helena, Arkansas.  Grandma raised me mostly.  She was born up in Virginia.  Her name was Mariah Bell.

“Grandmother was sold more than once.  When she was small she and her mother were sold together to different buyers.  The morning she was sold she could see her mother crying through the crowd, and the last she ever seen her mother she was crying and waving to her.  She never could forget that.  We all used to sit around her and we would all be crying with her when she told that so many, many times.  Grandmother said she was five years old then and was sold to a doctor in Virginia.  He made a house girl of her and learned her to be a midwife.

“She told us about a time when the stars fell or a time about like it.  Her master got scared in Virginia.  His niece killed herself ’cause she thought the world was coming to on end.  Mama of the baby was walking, crying and praying.  Grandmama had the baby.  She said it was a terrible morning.

“When grandmama was sold away from her own mother she took the new master’s cook for her mother.  I live to see her.  Her name was Charity Walker.  She was awful old.  Grandmama didn’t remember if her mother had other children or not.  She was the youngest.

“Grandmama was sold again.  Her second master wasn’t good as her doctor master.  He didn’t feed them good, didn’t feed the children good neither.  He told his slaves to steal.  Grandmama had two children there.  She was pregnant again.  Grandpa stole a shoat.  She craved meat.  Meat was scarce then and the War was on.  Grandpa had it cut up and put away.  Grandmama had the oldest baby in the box under her bed and the youngest child asleep in her bed.  She was frying the meat.  She seen the overseer across the field stepping that way.  Grandpa left and grandmama put the skillet of meat in the bed with the baby and threw a big roll of cotton in the fire.  The overseer come in and looked around, asked what he smelled burning.  She told him it was a sack of motes (cotton lumps).  Grandpa was Jim Bell.  His master learnet him to steal and lie.  He got better after freedom.