The Rebels was hot after us then.  Another one we used to sing was: 

  ’My old mistress promised me
   When she die, she’d set me free.’

“After the war I continued to work around the white folks and yes ma’m, I seen the Ku Klux many a time.  They bothered me sometimes but they soon let me alone.  They was a few Yankees about and they come together and made the Ku Klux stay in their place.

“One time after the war I went to Ohio and stayed three months but it was too cold for me.  Man I worked for was named Harper and as good a man as ever broke a piece of bread.

“I come back South and learned how to farm.  I been here in this country of Arkansas a long time.  I hoped clean up this place (Pine Bluff) and make a town of it.

“I got a daughter and two sisters alive in Africa today—­in Liberia.  I went there after we was free.  I liked it.  Just the thoughts of bein’ where Christ traveled—­that’s the good part of it.  They furnished us transportation to go to Africa after the war and a lot of the colored folks went.  I come back cause I had a lot of kin here, but I sent my daughter and two sisters there and they’re alive there today.”

FOLKLORE SUBJECTS
Interviewer:  Bernice Bowden
Subject:  Apparitions

This information given by:  Tom Windham
Place of Residence:  723 Missouri St. Pine Bluff, Ark. 
Occupation:  None (Age 92)
[TR:  Information moved from bottom of first page.]

“Yes ma’m, I believe in spirits—­you got two spirits—­one bad and one good, and when you die your bad spirit here on this earth.

Now my mother comes to see me once in awhile at night.  She been dead till her bones is bleached, but she comes and tells me to be a good boy.  I always been obedient to old and young.  She tell me to be good and she banish from me.

My grandmother been to see me once.

Old Father Abraham Lincoln, I’ve seen him since he been dead too.  I got a gun old Father Abraham give me right out o’ his own hand at Vicksburg.  I’m goin’ to keep it till I die too.

Yes ma’m, I know they is spirits.”

Pine Bluff District
FOLKLORE SUBJECTS
Name of interviewer:  Martin — Barker
Subject:  Ex-Slave
Story.

Information by:  Tom Windham
Place of residence:  1221 Georgia St.
Age:  87
[TR:  Information moved from bottom of second page.]

My master was an Indian.  Lewis Butler of Oklahoma.  I was born and raised in Muskogee, Okla.

All of marse Butler’s people were Creek Indians.  They owned a large plantation and raised vegetables.  They lived in tepees, had floors and were set on a lot and a wall boarded up around them.  This was done so that they could hide the slaves they had stolen.

I was twelve or thirteen years old, when the Indians had a small war.  They wouldn’t allow us to fight.  If we did, we were punished.  They had a place and made us work.  I went to school two months also a little at night.  Cant read nor write.  I am all alone now here in America.  I have a daughter in Ethiopia, teaching school, also two sisters.