a colored man on the place come over.  Her husband was gone somewhere and hadn’t got home.  She was cooking supper.  They heard somebody but thought it was a pig come around.  Hogs run out all time.  The step was a big limestone rock.  She opened the door and put the hot lid of the skillet on it to cool.  Stood it up sideways.  Then they heard a noise at that door.  It was pegged.  So she went along with the cooking.  It wasn’t late.  He found a crack at the side of the stick and dirt chimney, put the muzzle of the gun in there and shot her through her heart.  The man flew.  She struggled to the edge of the bed and fell.  The children was asleep and I was afraid to move.  The moon come up.  I couldn’t get her on the bed.  I put a pillow under her head and a quilt over her, but I didn’t think she was dead.  The baby cried in the night.  I was so scared I put the eight-months-old baby down under there to nurse.  It nursed.  She was dead then, I think now.  When four o’clock come it was daylight.  The little brother said, ’I know what’s the matter, our mama’s dead.’  I went up to Mr. Bob Young’s.  He brought the coroners.  I was so young I was afraid they was going to take us to jail.  I asked little brother what they said they was going to do.  He said, ’They are going to bury mama in a heep (deep) hole.  They set out after her husband and chased him clear off.  They thought he shot her by him not coming home that night and her cooking supper for him.

“This white man left and went to Texas.  His wife said the best woman in Decatur had been killed.  They put him on the gallows for killing his daughter’s babies, three of them and put them in the loft.  He told how he killed mother.  He had murdered four.  He was afraid mother would tell about him.  She knowd so much.  She didn’t tell.  Indians don’t tell.  She was with his girl when the first baby was born, but she thought it died and she thought the girl come home visiting, so his wife said she had told her to keep her from telling.  It was a bad disgrace.  His wife was a good, humble, kind woman.

“Master Bob Young sent for Ben Pitts after they’d run him off, and he let him have his pick of us.  He took the boy and lived on the place.  Her other husband come and got his two children.  Miss Nippy took our baby girl and the other little girl.  I was raised up at her house, so she kept me on.  Kept us all till we married off.

“I’d feel foolish to go try to vote.  I’m too old now.

“I don’t get help from the government yet.  We are having a hard time to scratch around and not go hungry.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Ida Bryant, Hazea.  Arkansas
                    (Very very black Negro woman)
Age:  61