“My mother was owned by Bill Mitchell.  He came from Alabama.  I can’t call the name of the town, just now.  Yes, I can; it was Tuscaloosa.  My father came from South Carolina.  McCoy was his owner.  But how come him to leave South Carolina he was sold after his master died and the property was divided.  He was sold away from his family.  He had a large family—­about nine children.  My mother was sold away from her mother too.  She was little and couldn’t help herself.  My grandma didn’t want to come.  And she managed not to; I don’t know how she managed it.

“Before freedom my father was a farmer.  My mother was a farmer too.  My mother wasn’t so badly treated.  She was a slave but she worked right along with the white children.  She had two brothers.  The other sister stayed with her mother.  She was sold—­my mother’s mother.  But I don’t know to whom.

“My father was a preacher.  He could word any hymn.  How could he do it, I don’t know.  On his Sunday, when the circuit rider wasn’t there, he would have me read the Bible to him and then he could get up and tell it to the people.  I don’t know how he managed it.  He didn’t know how to read.  But he had a wonderful memory.  He always had his exhorting license renewed and he exhorted the people both Methodists and Baptists.  After freedom, when I went to school I knew and always helped him.

“My father voted on the election days all the time.  Be was a Republican, and he rallied to them all the time.  Before the war, my father farmed.  He commenced in the early fall hauling the cotton from Abbeville, South Carolina to Augusta, Georgia.  That was his business—­teamster, hauling cotton.  He never did talk like his owners were so mean to him.  Of course, they weren’t mean.  When her master died and the property had to be sold, his master bought her and her babies.

“My father met my mother before the war started.  Colored people were scarce in the locality where she lived.  These white people saw my father and liked him.  And they encouraged her to marry him.  She was only seventeen.  My father was much older.  He remembered the dark day in May and when the stars fell.

“He didn’t show his age much though till he came to Little Rock.  He had been used to farming and city life didn’t agree with him.  He left about seven years after coming here.

“My father and mother met and married in Mississippi.  He came from South Carolina and she came from Alabama.  They had nine children.  All of them were born after the war.  I am the oldest.  Lee McCoy is my youngest brother.  You know him, I’m sure.  He is the president of Rust College.  I was born right after the war.  Don’t put me down as no ex-slave.  I was born right after the war.

“Right after the war, my father farmed in Mississippi.  He took a notion to come to Arkansas in 1891.  He brought his whole family with him.  And I have been out here ever since.