Slaveowners, as a rule, arranged for their Negroes to have all needed pleasure and enjoyment, and in the late summer after cultivation of the crops was complete it was the custom for a number of them to give a large barbecue for their combined groups of slaves, at which huge quantities of beef and pork were served and the care-free hours given over to dancing and general merry-making.  “Uncle Dock” recalls that his master, Dan Wilborn, who was a good-natured man of large stature, derived much pleasure in playing his “fiddle” and that often in the early summer evenings he would walk down to the slave quarters with his violin remarking that he would supply the music and that he wished to see his “niggers” dance, and dance they would for hours and as much to the master’s own delight and amusement as to theirs.

Dock Wilborn’s “pappy” Sam was in some respects disobedient, prompted mainly so it seems by his complete dislike for any form of labor and which Dan Wilborn due to their mutual affection appeared to tolerate for long periods or until such time that his patience was exhausted when he would then apply his lash to Sam a few times and often after these periodical punishments Sam would escape to the dense forests that surrounded the plantation where he would remain for days or until Wilborn would enlist the aid of Nat Turner and his hounds and chase the Negro to bay and return him to his home.

“Uncle Dock” Wilborn and his wife “Aunt Becky” are among the oldest citizens of Phillips County and have been married for sixty-seven years.  Dan Wilborn performed their marriage ceremony.  The only formality required in uniting them as man and wife was that each jump over a broom that had been placed on the floor between them.  This old couple are the parents of four children, the eldest of whom is now sixty-three.  They live alone in a small white-washed cabin only a mile or so from Marvell being supported only by a small pension they receive each month from the Social Security Board.  They have a garden and a few chickens and a hog or two and are happy and content as they dip their snuff and recall those days long past during which they both contend that life was at its best, “Aunt Becky” is religious and a staunch believer, a long-time member of Mount Moriah Baptist Church while “Uncle Dock” who has never been affiliated with any religious organization is yet as he terms himself “a sinner man” and laughingly remarks that he is going to ride into Heaven on “Aunt Becky’s” ticket to which comment she promptly replies that her ticket is good for only one passage and that if he hopes to get there he must arrange for one of his own.

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Bell Wilks, Holly Grove, Arkansas
Age:  80

“I was raised in Pulaski, Tennessee, Giles County.  The post office was at one end of the town, bout half mile was the church down at the other end.  Yes’m, that way Pulaski looked when I lived there.  My father’s master was Peter or Jerry Garn—­I don’t know which.  They brothers?  Yes’m.