“I ’member well the day my old master’s son got killed.  My mother was workin’ in the field and I know she come to the house a cryin’.  I ’member well when we was out in the plum nursery and could hear the cannons.  My white girl Nannie told me ’Now listen, that’s the war a fightin’.’

“The soldiers used to come along and sometimes they were in a hurry and would grab something to eat and go on and then sometimes they would sit down to a long table.

“I could hear my great grandmother and my mother talkin’ ’We’ll be free after awhile.’

“After the war my stepfather come and got my mother and we moved out in the piney woods.  My stepfather was a preacher and sometimes he was a hundred miles from home.  My mother hired out to work by the day.  I was the oldest of seven chillun and when I got big enough to work they worked me in the field.  When we cleaned up the new ground we got fifty cents a day.

“I was between ten and twelve years old when I went to school.  My first teacher was white.  But I tell you the truth, I learned most after my children started to school.

“I worked twenty-three years for the police headquarters.  I was janitor and matron too.  I washed and ironed too.  I been here in Pine Bluff about fifty or sixty years.

“If justice was done everybody would have a living.  I earned the money to buy this place and they come and wanted me to sign away my home so I could get the old age pension but I just had sense enough not to do it.  I’m not goin’ sign away my home just for some meat and bread.”

Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  John Young
                    925 E. 15th Ave., Pine Bluff, Ark. 
Age:  92

“Well, I don’t know how old I is.  I was born in Virginia, but my mother was sold.  She was bought by a speculator and brought here to Arkansas.  She brought me with her and her old master’s name was Ridgell.  We lived down around Monticello.  I was big enough to plow and chop cotton and drive a yoke of oxen and haul ten-foot rails.

“Oh Lord, I don’t know how many acres old master had.  He had a territory—­he had a heap a land.  I remember he had a big old carriage and the carriage man was Little Alfred.  The reason they called him that was because there was another man on the place called Big Alfred.  They won’t no relation—­just happen to be the same name.

“I remember when the Yankees come and killed old master’s hogs and chickens and cooked ’em.  There was a good big bunch of Yankees.  They said they was fightin’ to free the niggers.  After that I runned away and come up here to Pine Bluff and stayed awhile and then I went to Little Rock and jined the 57th colored infantry.  I was the kittle drummer.  We marched right in the center of the army.  We went from Little Rock to Fort Smith.  I never was in a big battle, just one little scrummage.  I was at Fort Smith when they surrendered and I was mustered out at Leavenworth, Kansas.