“I heard my mother talk about their dances and frolics then.  I never heard her speak of anything else.  They didn’t have much freedom.  They couldn’t go and come as they pleased.  You had to have a script to go and come.  Niggers ain’t free now.  You can’t do anything; you got nothin’.  This whole town belongs to white folks, and you can’t do nothin’.  If nigger get to have anything, white folks will take it.

“We raised our own food.  We made our own flour.  We wove our own cloth.  We made our clothes.  We made our meal.  We made our sorghum cane molasses.  Some of them made their shoes, made their own medicine, and went around and doctored on one another.  They were more healthy then than they are now.  This generation don’t live hardly to get forty years old.  They don’t live long now.

“I came to Arkansas about thirty-five years ago.  I got right into ditches.  The first thing I did was farm.  I farmed about ten years.  I made about ten crops.  Mississippi gave you more for your crops than Arkansas.”

Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Matilda Bass
                    1100 Palm Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  80

“Yes ma’am, I was eight years old when the Old War ceasted.

“Honey, I’ve lived here twenty years and I don’t know what this street is.

“I was born in Greenville, Mississippi.  They took my parents and carried ’em to Texas to keep ’em from the Yankees.  I think they stayed three years ’cause I didn’t know ’em when they come back.

“I ’member the Yankees come and took us chillun and the old folks to Vicksburg.  I ’member the old man that seed after the chillun while their parents was gone, he said I was eight when freedom come.  We didn’t know nothin’ ’bout our ages—­didn’t have ’nough sense.

“My parents come back after surrender and stayed on my owner’s place—­John Scott’s place.  We had three masters—­three brothers.

“I been in Arkansas twenty years—­right here.  I bought this home.

“I married my husband in Mississippi.  We farmed.

“The Lord uses me as a prophet and after my husband died, the Lord sent me to Arkansas to tell the people.  He called me out of the church.  I been out of the church now thirty-three years.  Seems like all they think about in the churches now is money, so the Lord called me out.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Emmett Beal, Biscoe, Arkansas
Age:  78

“I was born in Holloman County, Bolivar, Tennessee.  Master Dr. Jim May owned my set er folks.  He had two girls and two boys.  I reckon he had a wife but I don’t recollect seeing her.  Ma suckled me; William May with me.  Ely and Seley and Susie was his children.

“I churned for mama in slavery.  She tied a cloth around the top so no flies get in.  I better hadn’t let no fly get in the churn.  She take me out to a peach tree and learn me how to keep the flies outen the churn next time.