OCCUPATIONS

I came to Brinkley, Arkansas, March 4, 1900, and have been in Arkansas ever since.  Why I came, the postmaster where I was rented farm on which I was farming.  In March he put hands in my field to pick my cotton.  All that was in the field was mine.  I knew that I couldn’t do anything about it so I left.  A couple of years before that I rented five acres of land from him for three dollars as acre (verbal agreement) sowed it down in cotton.  It done so well I made five bales of cotton on it.  He saw the prospects were so good that he went to the man who furnished me supplies and told him that I had agreed to do my work on a third and fourth (one-third of the seed and one-fourth of the cotton to go to the owner).  He get this although if he had stuck to the agreement he would not have gotten but fifteen dollars.  So he dealt me a blow there, but I got over it.

Before this I had bought a piece of timber land in Moorehouse parish (Louisiana) and was expecting to get the money to finish paying for it from my cotton.  The cost was $100.00.  So when he put hands in my field, it made me mad, and I left. (Brooks would have lost most of his cotton if the hands had picked it.)

At Brinkley, I farmed on halves with Will Carter, one of the richest men in Monroe County (Arkansas).  I done $17.50 worth of work for Carter and he paid me for it.  Then he turned around and charged me up with it.  When we came to settle up, we couldn’t settle.  So finally, he said, “Figures don’t lie.” and I said, “No, figures don’t lie but men do.”  When I sed that I stepped out and didn’t get scared until I was half way home.  But nobody did anything.  He sent for me but I wouldn’t go back because I knew what he was doing.

After that I went to Wheatley, Arkansas, about five miles west of Brinkley.  I made a crop for Goldberg.  Jake Readus was Goldberg’s agent.  The folks had told the white folks I wasn’t no account, so I couldn’t get nothing only just a little fat meat and bread, and I got as naked as a jaybird.  About the last part of August, when I had done laid by and everything.  Jake Readus came by and told me what the Niggers had said and said he knowed it was a lie because I had the best crop on the place.

When Goldberg went to pay me off, he told Dr. Beauregard to come and get his money.  I said.  “You give me my money; I pay my own debts.  You have nothing to do with it.”  When I said that you could have heard a pin drop.  But he gave it to me.  Then I called the Doctor and gave him his money and he receipted me.  I never stayed there but one year.

I moved then down to Napel[TR:  Possibly Kapel] Slough on Dr. West’s place.  I wanted to rent but Dr. West wouldn’t advance me anything unless he took a mortgage on my place; so I wouldn’t stay there.  I chartered a car and took my things back to Brinkley at a cost of ten dollars.  I stayed around Brinkley all the winter.