“Another thing I remember was a agent was going through the country settin’ fire to all the cotton.  Mr. McNeill had his cotton—­all our crop we made.  That man set it afire.  It burned more than a week big.  He burned some left at the gin not Mr. McNeill’s.  It was fun to us children but I know my grandma cried and all the balance of the slaves.  Cause they got some Christmas money and clothes too when the cotton was sold.

“The slaves hated the Yankees.  They treated them mean.  They was having a big time.  They didn’t like the slaves.  They steal from the slaves too.  Some poor folks didn’t have slaves.

“After freedom my mother come back after me and we come here to De Valls Bluff and I been here ever since.  The Yankee soldiers had built shacks and they left them.  They would do.  Some was one room, log, boxed and all sorts.  They give us a little to eat to keep us from starvin’.  It sho was a little bit too.  My mother got work about.

“The first schoolhouse was a colored school.  We had two rooms and two teachers sent down from the North to teach us.  If they had a white school I didn’t know it.  They had one later on.  I was bout grown.  Mr. Proctor and Miss Rice was the first teachers.  We laughed bout em.  They was rough looking, didn’t look like white folks down here we’d been used to.  They thought they sho was smart.  Another teacher come down here was Mr. Abner.  White folks wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with em.  We learned.  They learned us the ABC’s and to write.  I can read.  I learned a heap of it since I got grown just trying.  They gimme a start.

“Times is hard in a way.  Prices so high.  I never had a hard time in my life.  I get $40 a month.  It is cause my husband was a soldier here at De Valls Bluff.

“I do not vote.  I ain’t goiner vote.

“I don’t know what to think of the young generation.  They are on the road to ruin seems like.  I speakln’ of the real young folks.  They do like they see the white girls and boys doin’.  I don’t know what to become of em.  The women outer stay at home and let the men take care of em.  The women seems like taking all the jobs.  The colored folks cookin’ and making the living for their men folks.  It ain’t right—­to me.  But I don’t care how they do.  Things ain’t got fixed since that last war.”  (World War).

Interviewer:  Mrs. Rosa B. Ingram
Person interviewed:  Lizzie Barnett; Conway, Arkansas
Age:  100?

“Yes; I was born a slave.  My old mammy was a slave before me.  She was owned by my old Miss, Fanny Pennington, of Nashville, Tennessee.  I was born on a plantation near there.  She is dead now.  I shore did love Miss Fanny.

“Did you have any brothers and sisters, Aunt Liz.?”

“Why, law yes, honey, my mammy and Miss Fanny raised dey chillun together.  Three each, and we was jes’ like brothers and sisters, all played in de same yard.  No, we did not eat together.  Dey sot us niggers out in de yard to eat, but many a night I’se slept with Miss Fanny.