“I couldn’t guarantee you about the eight younger children, but there ain’t a speck of no kind of blood about me and Lulu Violet but African.  We are slick black Negroes. (She is very black, large and bony.)

“Miss Jennie Brawner had one son—­Gus Brawner—­and he may be living now in Atlanta.

“My uncle said he seen the Yankees come through Thomasville, Georgia.  I never seen an army of them.  I seen soldiers, plenty of em.  None of the Brooks or Brawners went to war that I heard of.  I was kept close and too young to know much of what happened.  I heard about the Ku Klux but I never seen them.

“I know Miss Jennie Brawner come from Virginia but I don’t brought grandma with her or bought her.  She never did say.

“I don’t vote.  My husband voted, I don’t know how he voted.

“Since I been sick, I get a check and commodities.”

Interviewer:  Miss Sallie C. Miller
Person interviewed:  Pete Newton, Clarksville, Arkansas
Age:  83 [TR:  85?]
Occupation:  Farmer and day laborer

“My white folks was as good to me as they could be.  I ain’t got no kick to make about my white people.  The boys was all brave.  I was raised on the farm.  I staid with my boss till I was nearly grown.  When the war got so hot my boss was afraid the ‘Feds’ would get us.  He sent my mammy to Texas and sent me in the army with Col.  Bashom, to take care of his horses.  I was about eleven or twelve years old.  Col.  Bashom was always good to me.  He always found a place for me to sleep and eat.  Sometimes after the colonel left the folks would run as off and not let me stay but I never told the colonel.  I went to Boston, Texas with the colonel and his men and when he went on the big raid into Missouri he left me in Sevier County, Arkansas with his horses ‘Little Baldy’ and ‘Orphan Boy’.  They was race horses.  The colonel always had race horses.  He was killed at Pilot Knob, Missouri.  After the colonel was killed his son George (I shore did think a lot of George) come after me and the horses and brough’ us home.

“While I was in Arkadelphia with Col.  Bashom’s horses, I went down to the spring to water the horses.  The artillery was there cleaning a big cannon they called ‘Old Tom’.  Of course I went up to watch them.  One of the men saw me and hollered, ‘Stick his head in the cannon.’  It liked to scared me to death.  I jumped on that race horse and run.  I reconed I would have been killed but my uncle was there and saw me and stopped the horse.

“Another time we went to a place and me and another colored boy was taking care of the horses while our masters eat dinner.  I saw some watermelons in the garden with a paling fence around it.  I said if the other boy would pull a paling off I would crawl through and get us a watermelon.  He did but the man who owned the place saw me just as I got the melon and whipped us and told us if we hollered he would kill us.  We didn’t holler and we never told Col.  Bashom either.