“Pateroles!!  Oh, my God!!!  I know ’nough ’bout them.  Child, I’ve heard ’em holler, ‘Run, nigger, run!  The pateroles will catch you.’

“The jayhawkers would catch people and whip them.

“I would be back home yet if they hadn’t made me come away.

“They didn’t have no church in slavery time.  They jus’ had to hide around and worship God any way they could.

“I used to live in Laconia.  I ain’t been back there since the war.  I want to go back to my folks.”

Interviewer’s Comment

Frank Williams is like a man suffering from amnesia.  He is the first old man that I have interviewed whose memory is so far gone.  He remembers practically nothing.  He can’t tell you where he was born.  He can’t tell you where he lived before he came to Little Rock.  Only when his associates mention some of the things he formerly told them can he remember that little of his past that he does state in any remote approach to detail.

There is a strong emotional set which relates to his slave time experiences.  The emotion surges up in his mind at any mention of slave time matters.  But only the emotion remains.  The details are gone forever.  Names, times, places, happenings are gone forever.  He does not even recall the name of his father, the name of his mother, or the name of any of his relatives or masters, or old-time friends.  No single definite thing rises above the horizon of his mind and defines itself clearly to him.

And always after every sentence he utters, there rises the old refrain:  “I want to go back home.  I wouldn’t be in this condition if I was back home.  I live in Laconia.  They made me come away.”  And that is the substance of the story he remembers.

Interviewer:  Thomas Elmore Lucy
Person interviewed:  Gus Williams, Russellville, Arkansas
Age:  80

“Was you lookin’ for me t’oder day?  Sure, my name’s Williams—­Gus Williams—­not Wilson.  Dey gits me mixed up wid dat young guy, Wilson.

“Yes, I remembers you—­sure—­talks to yo’ brother sometimes.

“I was born in Chatham County, Georgia—­Savannah is de county seat.  My marster’s name was Jim Williams.  Never seen my daddy cause de Yankees carried him away durin’ de War, took him away to de North.  Old marster was good to his slaves, I was told, but don’t ricollect anything about em.  Of course I was too young.  Was born on Christmas day, 1857—­but I don’t see anything specially interestin’ in bein’ a Christmas present; never got me nothin’, and never will.

“Was workin’ on WPA—­this big Tech. buildin’—­but got laid off t’other day.

“My mamma brought us to Arkansas in 1885, but we stopped and lived for several years in Tennessee.  Worked for twelve years out of Memphis on the old Anchor Line steamboats on de Mississippi, runnin’ from St. Louis to N’Orleans.  Plenty work in dem days.