“I just went to school a week and mammy said they needed me at the house.

“Then my daddy put me in the field to plow.  Old missis come out one day and say, ‘Bill, how come you got Hannah plowin’?  I don’t like to see her in the field.’  He’d say, ’Well, I want to learn her to work.  I ain’t gwine be here always and I want her to know how to work.’

“They had me throwin’ the shickles (shuttles) in slavery times.  I used to handle the cyards (cards) too.  Then I used to help clean up the milk dairy.  I’d be so tired I wouldn’t know what to do.  Old missis would say, ‘Well, Hannah, that’s your job.’

“We used to have plenty to eat, pies and cakes and custards.  More than we got now.

“I own this place if I can keep payin’ the taxes.

“Old missis used to say, ‘You gwine think about what I’m tellin’ you after I’m dead and gone.’

“Young folks call us old church folks ‘old ism folks,’ ‘old fogies.’  They say, ‘You was born in slavery times, you don’t know nothin.’  You can’t tell ’em nothin’.

“I follows my mind.  You ain’t gwine go wrong if you does what your mind tells you.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Tom Yates, Marianna.  Arkansas
Age:  66

“I was born in 1872 in Mississippi, on Moon Lake.  Mama said she was orphan.  She was sold when she was a young woman.  She said she come from Richmond, Virginia to Charleston, South Carolina.  Then she was brought to Mississippi and married before freedom.  She had two husbands.  Her owners was Master Atwood and Master Curtis Burk.  I don’t know how it come about nor which one bought her.  She had four children and I’m the youngest.  My sister lives in Memphis.

“My father was sold in Raleigh, North Carolina.  His master was Tom Yeates.  I’m named fer some of them.  Papa’s name was William Yeates.  He told us how he come to be sold.  He said they was fixing to sell grandma.  He was one of the biggest children and he ask his mother to sell him and let grandma raise the children.  She wanted to stay with the little ones.  He said he cried and cried long after they brought him away.  They all cried when he was sold, he said.  I don’t know who bought him.  He must have left soon after he was sold, for he was a soldier.  He run away and want in the War.  He was a private and mustered out at DeValls Bluff, Arkansas.  That is how come my mother to come here.  He died in 1912 at Wilson, Arkansas.  He got a federal pension, thirty-six dollars, every three months.  He wasn’t wounded, or if he was I didn’t hear him speak of it.  He didn’t praise war.”

Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Annie Young, 913 West Scull Street,
                    Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  76

“My old master’s name was Sam Knox.  I ’members all my white people.  My mother was the cook.

“We had a good master and a good mistress too.  I wish I could find some of my master’s family now.  But after the war they broke up and went up North.