“I was freed endurin’ the Civil War.  We was in at dinner and my old mars had been to town.  Old man Pleas Collier, our mean mars, called my daddy out and then he said, ‘All you come out here.’  I said to myself, ’I wonder what he’s a goin’ to do to my daddy,’ and I slipped into the front room and listened.  And he said, ‘All of you come.’  Then I went out too.  And he unrolled the Government paper he had in his hand and read it and told us it meant that all of us was free.  Didn’t tell us we was free as he was.  Then he said the Government’s going to send you some money to live on.  But the Government never did do it.  I never did see nobody that got it.  Did you?  They didn’t give me nothin’ and they didn’t give my father nothin’.  They just sot us free and turned us loose naked.

“Right after they got through reading the papers and told us we was free, my daddy took me to the field and put me to work.  I’d been workin’ in the house before that.

“Then they wasn’t payin’ nobody nothin’.  They just hired people to work on halves.  That was the first year.  But we didn’t get no half.  We didn’t git nothin’.  Just time we got our crop laid by, the white man run us off and we didn’t get nothin’.  We had a fine crop too.  We hadn’t done nothin’ to him.  He just wanted all the crop for hisself and he run us off.  That’s all.

“Well, after that my daddy took and hired me out up here in Arkansas.  He hired me out with some old poor white trash.  We was livin’ then in Louisiana with a old white man named Mr. Smith.  I couldn’t tell what part of Louisiana it was no more than it was down there close to Homer, about a mile from Homer.  My mother died and my father come and got me and took me home to take care of the chillen.

“I have been married twice.  I married first time down there within four miles of Homer.  I was married to my first husband a number of years.  His name was Wesley Wilson.  We had eight children.  My second husband was named Lee somepin or other.  I married him on Thursday night and he left on Monday morning.  I guess he must have been taking the white folks’ things and had to clear out.  His name was Lee Hardy.  That is what his name was.  I didn’t figure he stayed with me long enough for me to take his name.  That nigger didn’t look right to me nohow.  He just married me ’cause he thought I was a working woman and would give him money.  He asked me for money once but I didn’t give ‘im none.  What I’m goin’ to give ’im money for?  That’s what I’d like to know.

“After my first husband died, I cooked and went on for them white folks.  That was the only thing I could do.  I was cooking before he died.  I can’t do no work now.  I ain’t worked for more than twenty years.  I ain’t done no work since I left Magnolia.

“I belong to the Collins Street Baptist Church—­Nichols’ church.

“I don’t git no pension.  I don’t git nothin’.  I been down to see if I could git it but they ain’t give me nothin’ yit.  I’m goin’ down ag’in when I can git somebody to carry me.”