“The Yankees camped close to where they lived, close to West Point, Mississippi, but in the country close to an artesian well.  The well was on their place.  The Yankees stole grandma and kept her at their tent.  They meant to take her on to wait on them and use but when they started to move old master spicioned they had her hid down there.  He watched out and seen her when they was going to load her up.  He went and got the head man to make them give her up.  She was so glad to come home.  Glad to see him cause she wanted to see him.  They watched her so close she was afraid they would shoot her leaving.  She lived to be 101 years old.  She raised me.  She used to tell how the overseer would whip her in the field.  They wasn’t good to her in that way.

“I have three living children and eleven dead.  I married twice.  My first husband is living.  My second husband is dead.  I married in day time in the church the last time.  All else ever took place in my life was hard work.  I worked in the field till I was too old to hit a tap.  I live wid my children.  I get $8 and commodities.

“I come to Arkansas because they said money was easy to get—­growed on bushes.  I had four little children to make a living for and they said it was easier.

“I think people is better than they was long time ago.  Times is harder.  People have to buy everything they have as high as they is, makes money scarce nearly bout a place as hen’s teeth.  Hens ain’t got no teeth.  We don’t have much money I tell you.  The Welfare gives me $8.”

Interviewer:  Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed:  Joseph Samuel Badgett
                    1221 Wright Avenue, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age:  72

[HW:  Mother was a Fighter]

“My mother had Indian in her.  She would fight.  She was the pet of the people.  When she was out, the pateroles would whip her because she didn’t have a pass.  She has showed me scars that were on her even till the day that she died.  She was whipped because she was out without a pass.  She could have had a pass any time for the asking, but she was too proud to ask.  She never wanted to do things by permission.

Birth

“I was born in 1864.  I was born right here in Dallas County.  Some of the most prominent people in this state came from there.  I was born on Thursday, in the morning at three o’clock, May the twelfth.  My mother has told me that so often, I have it memorized.

Persistence of Slave Customs

“While I was a slave and was born close to the end of the Civil War, I remember seeing many of the soldiers down here.  I remember much of the treatment given to the slaves.  I used to say ‘master’ myself in my day.  We had to do that till after ’69 or ’70.  I remember the time when I couldn’t go nowhere without asking the ‘white folks.’  I wasn’t a slave then but I couldn’t go off without asking the white people.  I didn’t know no better.