“I haven’t voted for a long time.  It used to be some fun votin’.  Din in Mississippi the whites vote one way and us the other.  My father was a Republican.  I was too.

“I have cataracts growing on my eyes.  That hinders my work now.  I got a little garden.  It help out.  I ain’t got no propety no kind.

“The young folks seem happy.  I guess they gettin’ long fine.  Some folks jes’ lucky bout gettin’ ahead and stayin’ ahead.  I can’t tell no moren nothin’ how times goiner serve this next generation they changein’ all time seems lack.  If the white folks don’t know what goiner become of the next generation, they need not be asking a fellow lack me.  I wish I did know.

“I ain’t been on the PWA.  I don’t git no help ceptin’ when I can work a little for myself.”

Interviewer:  Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed:  John Williams
                    County Hospital, ward 11, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age:  75

“I was born in 1863 in Texas right in the city of Dallas right in the heart of the town.  After the War our owners brought us back to Little Rock.  That is where they left from.  They left here on account of the War.  They run off their slaves to keep the Yankees from freeing them.  All the old masters were dead.  But the young ones were Louis Fletcher, John Fletcher, Dick Fletcher, Jeff Fletcher, and Len Fletcher.  Five brothers of them.  Their home was here in Little Rock.  The War was going on.  It went on four years and prior to the end of it I was born.

“My mother’s name was Mary Williams.  My father’s name was John Williams.  I was named after him.

“It is funny how they changed their names.  Now, his name was John Scott before he went into the army.  But after he went in, they changed his name into John Williams.

“His master’s name was Scott but I don’t know the other part of it.  All five of the brothers was named for their mother’s masters.  She raised them.  She always called all of them master.  ‘Cordin’ to what I hear from the old folks, when one of them come ’round, you better call him master.

“In slave time, my father was a field hand, I know that.  But I know more about my mother.  I heard her say she was always a cook.

“I heard her speak about having cruel treatment from her first masters; I don’t know who they were.  But after the Fletchers bought them, they had a good time.  They come all the way out of Louisiana up here.  My mother was sold from her mother and sister-sold some two or three times.  She never did get no trace of her sister, but she found her grandmother in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and brought her here.  Her sister’s name was Fannie and her grandmother’s name was Crecie Lander.  That is an Indian name.  I couldn’t understand nothing she would say hardly.  She was bright.  All my folks were bright but me.  My mother had hair way down her shoulders and you couldn’t tell my uncle from a dago.  My grandmother was a regular Indian color.  She spoke Indian too.  You couldn’t understand nothing she said.