Now you wants to know about this voting business.  I voted for Genral Grant.  Army men come around and registered you before voting time.  It wasn’t no trouble to vote them days; white and black all voted together.  All you had to do was tell who you was vote for and they give you a colored ticket.  All the men up had different colored tickets.  Iffen you’re voting for Grant, you get his color.  It was easy.  Yes Mam!  Gol ’er mighty.  They was colored men in office, plenty.  Colored legislaturs, and colored circuit clerks, and colored county clerks.  They sure was some big officers colored in them times.  They was all my friends.  This here used to be a good county, but I tell you it sure is tough now.  I think it’s wrong—­exactly wrong that we can’t vote now.  The Jim Crow lay, it put us out.  The Constitution of the United States, it give us the right to vote; it made us citizens, it did.

You just keeps on asking about me, lady.  I ain’t never been axed about myself in my whole life!  Now you wants to know after railroading and steamboating what.  They was still work the Yankee army wanted done.  The war had been gone for long time.  All over every place was bodies buried.  They was bringing them to Little Rock to put in Govmint graveyard.  They sent me all over the state to help bring them here.  Major Forsythe was my quartemaster then.  After that was done, they put me to work at St. John’s hospital.  The work I done there liked to ruin me for life.  I cleaned out the water closets.  After a while I took down sick from the work—­the scent, you know—­but I keep on till I get so for gone I can’t stay on my feets no more.  A misery got me in the chest, right here, and it been with me all through life; it with me now.  I filed for a pension on this ailment.  I never did get it.  The Govmint never took care of me like it did some soldiers.  They said I was not a ’listed man; that I was a employed man, so I couldn’t get no pension.  But I filed, like they told me.  I telled you my number, didnft I? 1,115,827, Boston Blackwell.  I give my whole time to the Govmint for many years.  White and black bofe always telling me I should have a pension.  I stood on the battlefield just like other soldiers.  My number is in Washington.  Major Forsythe was the one what signed it, right in his office.  I seed him write it.

Then what did I do?  You always asking me that.  I was low er long time.  When I finally get up I went to farming right here in Pulaski county.  Lordy, no, miss, I didn’t buy no land.  Nothing to buy with.  I went share cropping with a white man, Col.  Baucum.  You asking me what was the shares?  Worked on halvers.  I done all the work and fed myself.  No’um, I wasn’t married yit.  I took the rheumatiz in my legs, and got short winded.  Then I was good for nothing but picking cotton.  I kept on with that till my eyes, they got so dim I couldn’t see to pick the rows clean.  Heap o’ times I needed medicine—­heap o’ times I needed lots of things I never could get.  Iffen I could of had some help when I been sick, I mought not be so no account now.  My daughter has taked keer of me ever since I not been able to work no more.