“We had a captain on that steamboat that never called any man by his name.  We rolled cotton down the hill to the boat and loaded it on, and if you weren’t a good man, that cotton got wet.  I never wetted my cotton.  But jus’ the same, I heard what the others heard.  One day after we had finished loading, I thought I’d tell him something.  The men advised me not to.  He was a rough man, and he carried a gun in his pocket and a gun in his shirt.  I walked up to him and said, ’Captain, I don’t know what your name is, but I know you’s a white man.  I’m a nigger, but I got a name jus’ like you have.  My name’s Webb.  If you call Webb, I’ll come jus’ as quick as I will for any other name and a lot more willing.  If you don’t want to say Webb, you can jus’ say “Let’s go,” and you’ll find me right there.’  He looked at me a moment, and then he said, ‘Where you from?’ I said, ’I’m from Georgia, but I came on this boat from Little Hock.’  He put his arm around my shoulder and said, ‘Come on upstairs.’  We had two or three drinks upstairs, and he said, ‘You and your pardner are the only two men I have that is worth a damn.’  Then he said, ’But you are right; you have a name, and you have a right to be called by it.’  And from then on, he quit callin’ us out of our names.

“But I only stayed on the boat six months.  It wasn’t because of the captain.  Them niggers was bad.  They gambled all the time, and I gambled with them.  But they wouldn’t stop at that.  They would argue and fight and cut and shoot.  A man would shoot a man down, and then kick him off into the river.  Then when there was roll call, nobody would know what became of him.  I didn’t like that.  I knew that I was goin’ to kill somebody if I stayed on that boat ’cause I didn’t intend for nobody to kill me.  So I stopped.

“After that, I went back to the man that I worked for the month for and stayed with him till I married.  I took care of the stock.  I was only married once.  My wife died the fourteenth of October.  We had three children, and I have one daughter living.

“I have voted often.  I never had no trouble.  I am a colored man and I ain’t got nothin’ but my character, but I take care of that.  I let them know I am in Arkansas.  I ain’t been out of Arkansas but to Memphis and Vicksburg, and I took them trips on the boat I was working on.  I was a good man then.

“I can’t say nothing about these wild-headed young people.  They ain’t got no sense.  Take God to handle them.

“Some parts of politics are all right and some are all wrong.  It is like Grant.  He was straddled the fence part of the time.  I believe Roosevelt wants eight more years.  Of course, he did a great deal for the people but the working man isn’t getting enough money.  Prices are so high and wages so low that a man keeps up to the grindstone and never gets ahead.  They don’t mean for a colored man to prosper by money.  Senator Robinson said a nigger wasn’t worth but fifty