Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Mack Brantley, Brinkley, Arkansas
Age:  80

“I was born in Dallas County close to Selma, Alabama.  My mother’s owners was Miss Mary Ann Roscoe and her husband was Master Ephriam Roscoe.  They had a good size gin and farm.  We would gather ’round and tell ha’nt tales till we would be scared to go home in the dark.  The wind would turn the old-fashioned screw and make a noise like packing cotton.  We older children would run and make out we thought it was the spirits.  We knowed better but the little children was afraid.

“My parents was Lucindy Roscoe.  My pa belong to Warren Brantley.  His name was Silica Brantley.

“I was a stole chile.  Ma had a husband the master give her and had children.  My pa lived on a joining farm.  She wasn’t supposen to have children by my pa.  That is why I’m called Mack Brantley now.  Mama died and Green Roscoe, my older brother, took me to Howell’s so they would raise me.  They was all kin.  I was six months old when ma died.  My sister nursed me but Miss Mary Ann Roscoe suckled me wid Miss Minnie.  When Miss Minnie got grown and married she went to Mobile, Alabama to live.  Later Brother Silica give me to Master Henry Harrell.  They sent me to school.  I never went to colored school.  We went to Blunt Springs three months every year in the summer time.  When we come home one year Mr. Hankton was gone and he never come back.  He was my only teacher.  The white population didn’t like him and they finally got him away.

“They was good white people.  I had a pallet in the room and in the morning I took it up and put it away in a little room.  I slept in the house till I was good and grown.  I made fires for them in the winter time.  Mr. Walter died three years ago.  He was their son.  He had a big store there.  Miss Carrie married Charlie Hooper.  He courted her five years.  I bring her a letter and she tore it up before she read it.  He kept coming.  He lived in Kentucky.  The last I heard they lived in Birmingham.  Miss Kitty Avery Harrell was my mistress at freedom and after, and after boss died.  I had four children when I left.  If Mr. Walter was living I’d go to him now.  Mr. Hooper would cuss.  Old boss didn’t cuss.  I never liked Mr. Hooper’s ways.  Old boss was kinder.  All my sisters dead.  I reckon I got two brothers.  Charles Roscoe was where boss left him.  He was grown when I was a child.  Jack Roscoe lives at Forrest, Mississippi.  Brother Silica Roscoe had a wife and children when freedom come on.  He left that wife and got married to another one and went off to Mississippi.  Preachers quit their slavery wives and children and married other wives.  It wasn’t right.  No ma’am, it wasn’t right.  Awful lot of it was done.  Then is when I got took to my Miss Kitty.  After freedom is right.