“I remember when I was just learnin’ to plow, old mule knew five hundred times more than I did.  He was graduated and he learnt me.

“I made fifty-seven crops in my lifetime.  Me and Hance Chapman—­he was my witness when I married—­we made four bales that year.  That was in 1879.  His father got two bales and Hance and me got two.  I made money every year.  Yes ma’am, I have made some money in my day.  When I moved from Louisiana to Arkansas I sold one hundred eighty acres of land and three hundred head of hogs.  I come up here cause my chillun was here and my wife wanted to come here.  You know how people will stroll when they get grown.  Lost everything I had.  Bought a little farm here and they wouldn’t let me raise but two acres of cotton the last year I farmed and I couldn’t make my payments with that.  Made me plow up some of the prettiest cotton I ever saw and I never got a cent for it.

“Lady, nobody don’t know how old people is treated nowdays.  But I’m livin’ and I thank the Lord.  I’m so glad the Lord sent you here, lady.  I been once a man and twice a child.  You know when you’re tellin’ the truth, you can tell it all the time.

“Klu Klux?  The Lord have mercy!  In ’74 and ’75 saw em but never was bothered by a white man in my life.  Never been arrested and never had a lawsuit in my life.  I can go down here and talk to these officers any time.

“Yes ma’am, I used to vote.  Never had no trouble.  I don’t know what ticket I voted.  We just voted for the man we wanted.  Used to have colored men on the grand jury—­half and half—­and then got down to one and then knocked em all out.

“I never done no public work in my life but when you said farmin’ you hit me then.

“Nother thing I never done.  I bought two counterpins once in my life on the stallments and ain’t never bought nothin’ since that way.  Yes ma’am, I got a bait of that stallment buying.  That’s been forty years ago.

“I know one time when I was livin’ in Louisiana, we had a teacher named Arvin Nichols.  He taught there seventeen years and one time he passed some white ladies and tipped his hat and went on and fore sundown they had him arrested.  Some of the white men who knew him went to court and said what had he done, and they cleared him right away.  That was in the ’80’s in Marion, Louisiana, in Union Parish.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Carrie Bradley Logan Bennet, Helena, Arkansas
Age:  79 plus

“I was born not a great piece from Mobile but it was in Mississippi in the country.  My mother b’long to Massa Tom Logan.  He was a horse trader.  He got drowned in 1863—­durin’ of the War, the old war.  His wife was Miss Liza Jane.  They had several children and some gone from home I jus’ seed when they be on visits home.  The ones at home I can recollect was Tiney, John, Bill, and Alex.  I played wid Tiney and nursed Bill and Alex was a baby when Massa Tom got drowned.