“Now I have a poor way of making a living because they have taken away everything from me.  I prays and lives by the Bible.  I can’t get nothin’ from my husband’s endowment.  He was an old soldier in the Civil War on the Confederate side and I used to get $30 a month from Pine Bluff.  He was freed there.  Wilson was President at the time I put in for an increase for him in the days of his sickness.  He was down sick thirty years and only got $30 a month.  The pension was increased to $60 for about one year.  He died in 1917, March 10, and was in his ninetieth year or more from what he told me.  The picture shows it too.

Voting

“Paying my taxes was the votin’ I ever done.  They never could get me to gee nor haw.  There wasn’t any use voting when you can see what’s on the future before you.  I never had many colored friends.  None that voted.  And very few Indians and just a few others.  And them that stood by me all the while, they’re sleeping.

Thoughts of Young People

“Don’t know nothin’ bout these young folks today.  Don’t nothin’ spoil a duck but his bill.  I have had a hard time.  I am heavy and I’m jus’ walkin’ bout.  A little talk with Jesus is all I have.  I’ll fall on my knees and I’ll walk as Jesus says.  My heart’s bleeding.  I know I’m not no more welcome than a dog.

“I pays for this little shack and when you come to see me, you might as well come to that kitchen door.  I ain’t going to use no deceit with nobody.  I’ll show you the hole I have to go in.”

Interviewer’s Comment

I understand that Sister Butler gets a pension of $5 a month.  Although her voice is vigorous, her mental powers are somewhat weak.  She cannot remember the details of anything at all.

She evidently had heard something about Nat Turner, but it would be hard to tell what.  The Nat Turner Rebellion, so called, a fanatical affair which was as much opposed by the Negroes as by the whites, took place in Southampton County, Virginia, in August and September 1831, the same year in which Jennie Butler claims birth.  She would naturally hear something about it, but she does not remember what.

She had a newspaper clipping undated and minus the reading matter showing her husband’s picture, and another showing herself, February 10, 1938, The Arkansas Democrat.

Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  E.L.  Byrd
                    618 N. Cedar, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  76

“I was born in 1862.  I just can remember the Yankees.  They come through there and got horses and money and anything else they wanted.  To my reasoning that’s the reason the North has got more now.  They got all the money they could find.  And they took one fellow belonged to the same man I did.

“My owner’s name was Jack Byrd.  We stayed with him about a year and then we farmed for ourselves.