Ku Klux

“In 1868 I lived with John Welch one year.  I seen the going out and coming in.  I heard what they was doing.  I wasn’t afraid of them then.  I lived with one of ’em and I wasn’t afraid of ’em.  I learned a good deal about it.  They called it uprising and I found out their purpose was to hold down the nigger.  They said they wanted to make them submissive.  They catch ’em and beat ’em half to death.  I heard they hung some of ’em.  No, I didn’t see it.  I knew one or two they beat.  They took some of the niggers right out of the cotton patch and dressed them up and drilled ’em.  When they come back they was boastful.  Then they had to beat it out of ’em.  Some of ’em didn’t want to go back to work.  Since I growed up I thought it out that Mr. Spence was reasonably good to me but I didn’t think so then.  It was a restlessness then like it is now ’mong the young class of folks.  The truth is they don’t know what they want nor what to do and they don’t do nothing much no time.

“I went to see my mother.  I wrote and wrote, had my white folks write till I found my folks.  I went back several times.  Mother died in 1902.  We used to could beat rides on freight trains—­that was mighty dangerous.  We could work our way on the boats.  I got to rambling trying to do better.  I come to Phillips County.  They cut it up, named it Lee.  I got down in here and married.  I was jus’ rambling ’round.  I been in Lee County sixty-one years.  I married toreckly after I come here.  I been married twice, both wives dead.  I was about twenty-three years old when I married.  I had four children.  My last child got killed.  A limb fell on him twenty years ago in April.  He was grown and at work in the timber.

“I farmed all my life—­seventy years of it.  I like it now and if I was able I would not set up here in town a minute.  Jus’ till I could get out there is all time it would take for me to get back to farming.  I owned two little places.  I sold the first fifty acres when my wife was sick so I could do for her.  She died.  My last wife got sick.  I was no ’count and had to quit work.  Mr. Dupree built that little house for me, he said for all I had done for ’im.  He said it would be my home long as I live.  He keeps another old man living out there the same way.  Mr. Dupree is sick—­in bad health—­skin disease of some sort.  We lives back behind this house.  Mr. Dupree is in this house now. (Mr. Dupree has eczema.) I used to work for him on the farm and in the store.

“I never was a drunkard.  That is ruining this country.  It is every Saturday night trade and every day trade with some of them.  No, but I set here and see plenty.

“The present times is better than it used to be ’cause people are cleverer and considerate in way of living.  A sixteen-year-old boy knows a heap now.  Five-year-old boy knows much as a ten-year-old boy used to know.  I don’t think the world is going to pieces.  It is advancing way I see it.  The Bible says we are to get weaker and wiser.  Young folks not much ’count now to do hard work.  Some can.