“That was the first place I went to school.  Lottie Stephens, Robert Lacy, and Gus Richmond were the teacher.  Hollins was the principal.  That was in the Sons of Ham’s Hall.

“I was born in Dallas County, Arkansas.  It must have been ’long ’bout in eighty-fifty-nine, ’cause I was sixteen years old when I come here and I been here sixty-three years.

“During the War, I was quite small.  My mother brought me here after the War and I went to school for a while.  Mother had a large family.  So I never got to go to school but three months at a time and only got one dollar and twenty-five cents a week wages when I was working.  My father drove a wagon and hoed cotton.  Mother kept house.  She had—­lemme see—­one, two, three, four—­eight of us, but the youngest brother was born here.

“My mother’s name was Millie Stokes.  My mother’s name before she was married was—­I don’t know what.  My father’s name was William Stokes.  My father said he was born in Maryland.  I met Richard Weathers here and married him sixty-three years ago.  I had six children, three girls and three boys.  Children make you smart and industrious—­make you think and make you get about.

“I’ve heard talk of the pateroles; they used to whip the slaves that was out without passes, but none of them never bothered us.  I don’t remember anything myself, because I was too small.  I heard of the Ku Klux too; they never bothered my people none.  They scared the niggers at night.  I never saw none of them.  I can’t remember how freedom came.  First I knowed, I was free.

“People in them days didn’t know as much as the young people do now.  But they thought more.  Young people nowadays don’t think.  Some of them will do pretty well, but some of them ain’t goin’ to do nothin’.  They are gittin’ worse and worser.  I don’t know what is goin’ to become of them.  They been dependin’ on the white folks all along, but the white folks ain’t sayin’ much now.  My people don’t seem to want nothin’.  The majority of them just want to dress and run up and down the streets and play cards and policy and drink and dance.  It is nice to have a good time but there is something else to be thought of.  But if one tries to do somethin’, the rest tries to pull him down.  The more education they get, the worse they are—­that is, some of them.”

Interviewer:  Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed:  Ishe Webb
                    1610 Cross Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age:  78, or more

“I was born October 14.  That was in slavery time.  The record is burnt up.  I was born in Atlanta, Georgia.  My father’s master was a Webb.  His first name was Huel.  My father was named after him.  I came here in 1874, and I was a boy eleven or twelve years old then.

“My father was sold to another man for seventeen hundred dollars.  My mother was sold for twenty hundred.  I have heard them say that so much that I never will forget it.  Webb sold my father and bought him back.  My mother’s folks were Calverts.  The Calverts and the Webbs owned adjoining plantations.