“I put in about one month schooling when I was a boy about six or seven years old.  Then I moved into St. Francis County and went two weeks to a subscription school a few miles below Forrest City.  Later I went back and took the examination in Cross County and passed it, and taught for a year.  I got the bulk of my education by lamp light reading.  I have done some studying in other places—­three years in Shorter College where I got the degreee of B.D. and D.D. at the age of fifty-five.  I have preached for fifty-seven years and actually pastored for forty-four years.  I followed farming in my early days.  When I first married my wife, we farmed there for ten or twelve years before I entered the ministry.  I have been married fifty-seven years.

Marriage

“I was married January 15, 1882.  I am now in the fifty-seventh year of marriage.  My wife was named Mary Ellen Stubbs.  She was from Baldwyn, Mississippi.  They moved from Mississippi about the winter of 1880 and they made one crop in Arkansas before we married.  They stopped in our county and attended our church.  I met her in that way.  The most remarkable thing was that during the time I was acquainted with her our pastor became incapacitated and I took charge of the church.  I ran a revival and she was converted during the revival.  But she joined the C.M.E.  Church.  I belong to the A.M.E.

Slave Sales

“I remember my mother carrying the children from the Bill Neely place to the Pope place.  That Saturday evening after we got there, there came along some slave traders.  They had with them as I remember some ten or twelve boys and girls and some old folks that were able to work.  They had them chained.  I asked my mother what they were going to do with them and she said they were carrying them to Louisiana to work on a cane farm.  One boy cried a lot.  The next morning they put those slaves in the road and drove them down to Wittsbarg the same as you would drive a drove of cattle, Wittsburg was where they caught the boat to go down to Louisiana.  That was the best mode of travel in those days.

Opinions

“In a few words, my opinion of the present is that our existence as Democrats and Republicans is about played out.

“If Mr. Roosevelt is elected for a third term, I think we will go into a dictatorship just as Russia, Germany, and Italy have already done.  I think we are nearer to that now than we heve ever been before.  I do not think that Mr. Roosevelt will become a dictator, but I do believe that his being elected a third time will cause some one else to become dictator.  My opinion is that he is neither Democrat nor Republican.