“The first thing I remember was work.  You weren’t allowed to remember nothing but work in slave times and you got whipped about that.  You weren’t allowed to go nowhere but carry the mules out to the pasture to eat grass.  Sometimes they jump the fence and go over in the field and eat corn.  Me and another fellow named Sandy used to watch them all day Sunday.  Watching the mules and working in the fields through the week was the first work I remember.  Me and my sister worked on one row.  The two of us made a hand.  She is down in Texas somewheres now.  They taken her from old lady Sterling’s place.  She give them to her son and he carried them down in Texas.  He had a broken leg and never did go to the war.  If he did, I never knowed nothing about it.

“None of the masters never give me anything.  None of them as I knows of never give anything to any of the slaves when they freed ’em.  Never give a devilish thing.  Told them that they was free as they was and that they could stay there and help them make crops if they wanted to.  The biggest part of them stayed.  The rest went away.  Their husbands taken them away.

“Right after the war my mother married an old fellow who used to be old Holbert’s nigger driver.  He stayed on Sterling’s place one night.  He stayed there a year.  Then he married my mother and went to old Holbert’s place and of course, we had to go too.  I stayed there and worked for him.  And my mama too and the two youngest sisters and the youngest brother stayed with me.  I run away from him in ’86.  I went down the railroad about five miles and an old colored fellow give me a job.  He used to belong to the railroad boss.

“I worked nearly two years on that railroad; then I left and come on down to Arkansas.  I have been right here on this spot about forty years.  I don’t know how long it is been since I first come here, but it is been a long time ago.  I paid fire insurance on this place for thirty-nine years.  I lived over the river before I came to North Little Rock.  I worked for the railroad company thirty-eight years.  It’s been fifteen years since I was able to work—­maybe longer.

“I belong to Little Bethel Church (A.M.E.) here in North Little Rock.  I been a member of that church more than thirty-five years.

“I have been married twice, and I am the father of three children that are living and two that dead—­Tommy, Jim, Ewing, Mayzetta, and the baby.  He was too young to have a name when he died.

“I think things is worse than they ever was.  Everything we get we have to pay for, and then pay for paying for it.  If it wasn’t for my wife I could hardly live because I don’t get much from the railroad company.”

Interviewer:  Mary D. Hudgins
Person Interviewed:  Aunt Clara Walker Aged:  111
              Home:  “Flatwoods” district, Garland County.  Own property.

Story by Aunt Clara Walker