“Chambers make you work.  I worked in the field.  I come wid a crowd to Helena.  I come on a boat.  I been a midwife to black and white.  I used to cook some.  I am master hand at ironin’.  I have no children as I knows of.  I never born none.  I help raise some.  I come on a fine big steamboat wid a crowd of people.  I married in Arkansas.  My husband died ten or twelve years ago.  I forgot which years it was.  I been livin’ in this bery house seben years.

“The Government give me $10 a month.  I would wash dishes but I can’t see ‘bout gettin’ ’round no more.

“Don’t ax me ’bout the young niggers.  They too fast fo me.  If I see ’em they talkin’ a passel of foolish talk.  Whut I knows is times is hard wid me shows you born.

“You come back to see me.  If you don’t I wanter meet you all in heaben.  By, by, by.”

Interviewer:  Watt McKinney
Person interviewed:  Dock Wilborn
                    A mile or so from Marvell, Arkansas
Age:  95

Dock Wilborn was born a slave near Huntsville, Alabama on January 7, 1843, the property of Dan Wilborn who with his three brothers, Elias, Sam, and Ike, moved to Arkansas and settled near Marvell in Phillips County about 1855.

According to “Uncle Dock” the four Wilborn brothers each owning more than one hundred slaves acquired a large body of wild, undeveloped land, divided this acreage between them and immediately began to erect numerous log structures for housing themselves, their Negroes, and their stock, and to deaden the timber and clear the land preparatory to placing their crops the following season.  The Wilborns arrived in Arkansas in the early fall of the year and for several months they camped, living in tents until such time that they were able to complete the erection of their residences.  Good, substantial, well constructed and warm cabins were built in which to house the slaves, much better buildings “Uncle Dock” says than those in which the average Negro sharecropper lives today on Southern cotton plantations.  And these Negroes were given an abundance of the same wholesome food as that prepared for the master’s family in the huge kettles and ovens of the one common kitchen presided over by a well-trained and competent cook and supervised by the wife of the master.

During the period of slavery the more apt and intelligent among those of the younger Negroes were singled out and given special training for those places in which their talents indicated they would be most useful in the life of the plantation.  Girls were trained in housework, cooking, and in the care of children while boys were taught blacksmithing, carpentrying, and some were trained for personal servants around the home.  Some were even taught to read and to write when it was thought that their later positions would require this learning.

According to “Uncle Dock” Wilborn, slaves were allowed to enjoy many pleasures and liberties thought by many in this day, especially by the descendants of these slaves, not to have been accorded them, were entirely free of any responsibility aside from the performance of their alloted labors and speaking from his own experience received kind and just treatment at the hands of their masters.