Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Jake Walker, Wheatley, Arkansas
Age:  68

“I was born seven or eight miles from Hernando, Mississippi.  My pa was a slave over twenty years.  He belong to Master Will Walker, and his white mistress was Ann.  They brought him from ’round Athens, Georgia.  He was heired through his master.  His own mother died at his birth and he was the son of a peddler through the country.  He was a furriner but pa never could tell.  His young master never told him.  His ma was the nurse about the place.  The peddler was a white man of some kind.  He kept coming about selling goods.  The dogs made a bad racket.  They never bought nothing much.  Old master suspicioned him trying to get away with something about the place.  He come right out and accused him to being up to something.  He denied it.  He told the peddler not to come back.  He never.  After it was over she told her mistress.  He wanted her to go on off with him.  That made them mad.  But he never was seen about there.

“When Will Walker got married he wanted my pa and he was give to him, a horse and buggy, two mules, a lamb, and five young cows.  He had some money and he come to Mississippi.  I reckon he did buy some land.  He got to be a slave owner before freedom.  Pa said he drove the horse to the buggy and his master rode a mule, led a mule and brought his cows, and they kept the lamb in the buggy with them nearly all the way.

“I think they was good to him.  His young mistress cried so much they all went back once before freedom.  They went on Christmas time.  Only time he ever was drunk.  He got down and nearly froze to death.  The white folks heard he was somewhere down.  They went and got him one Sunday morning in a two-horse wagon.  He was nearly dead.  That was his first and last spree.

“Pa said he nursed three of his young mistress’ babies, Alfred, Tom, and Kenneth.

“After freedom pa went to Texas with Alfred Walker.  He owned a ranch out on the desert and raised Texas ponies and big horn cows.  They sent a carload of young cattle to St. Louis and pa stopped back in Mississippi and married ma.  She was a Walker too, Libbie Walker.  There was fourteen of us children.  They nearly all went to Louisiana to work in the timber.  I come to Clarendon.  I been married three times.  My last wife left me and took my onliest child.  Only child I ever had.  They was at Hot Springs last account I had of them.  She was cooking for a woman over there.  My girl is up ’bout grown now.  She come to Clarendon to see me three years ago.  I sent for her but she wouldn’t stay.  She writes to me, but I have to get somebody to write for me and somebody to read her letters.  I can read print real good.  I never went to school a day in my whole life.  We had to work early and late when I come up.

“I farmed, sawmilled, worked in the timber.  I do public work, haul wood, cut wood, and work in the field by day labor.