I never chanced to go to school because where we lived there wasn’t no school.  I worked all of the time.  In fact that was all we knew.  White people did not see where negroes needed any learning so we had to work.  We lived on a place with some white people by the name of Dunn.  They were good people but they taken all that was made because we did not know.  I ain’t never been sick in my life and I have never had a doctor in my life.  I am in good health now.

We traveled horseback in the years of 1800.  We did not ride straddle the horse’s back we rode sideways.  The old folks wore their dreses dragging the ground.  We chaps called everybody old that married.  We respected them because they was considered as being old.  Time has made a change.

—­Dina Beard, Douglas Addition.

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Annie Beck, West Memphis, Arkansas
Age:  50

“I was born in Mississippi.  Mama was born in Alabama and sold to Holcomb, Mississippi.  Her owner was Master Beard.  She was a field woman.  They took her in a stage-coach.  Their owner wanted to keep it a secret about freedom.  But he had a brother that fussed with him all the time and he told the slaves they was all free.  Mama said they was pretty good always to her for it to be slavery, but papa said his owners wasn’t so good to him.  He was sold in Richmond, Virginia to Master Thomas at Grenada, Mississippi.  He was a plain farming man.”

Interviewer:  Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  J.H.  Beckwith
                    619 North Spruce Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  68

“No ma’m I was not born in the time of slavery.  I was sixty-eight last Friday.  I was born November 18, 1870 in Johnson County, North Carolina.

“My mother was born in Georgia and her name was Gracie Barum.  Father was born in North Carolina.  His name was Rufus Beckwith.  He belonged to Doctor Beckwith and mother, I think, belonged to Tom Barum.  Barum was just an ordinary farmer.  He was just a second or third class farmer—­just poor white folks.  I think my mother was the only slave he owned.

“My father had to walk seven miles every Saturday night to see my mother, and be back before sunrise Monday.

“My parents had at least three or four children born in slavery.  I know my father said he worked at night and made shoes for his family.

“My father was a mulatto.  He had a negro mother and a white father.  He had a mechanical talent.  He seemed to be somewhat of a genius.  He had a productive mind.  He could do blacksmithing, carpenter work, brick work and shoe work.

“Father was married twice.  He raised ten children by each wife.  I think my mother had fifteen children and I was the the thirteenth child.  I am the only boy among the first set, called to the ministry.  And there was one in the second set.  Father learned to read and write after freedom.