“I couldn’t say what I think of the young folks now.  They is different from what we was.  Yes, Lord, they is different.  Sometimes I think they is better and sometimes wuss.  I just thanks the Lord that I’m here—­have come this far.

“When I bought this place from Mr. R.M.  Knox he said, ’When I’m in my grave you’ll thank me that you took my advice and put your savings in a Home.’  I do thank him.  I been here thirty years and I get along.  God bless you.”

Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Ivory Osborne
                    Route 5, Box 158, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  85

“Know about slavery?  Sho I do—­I was born in ’52.  Born in Arkansas?  No ma’m, born in Texas.

“Oh yes, indeed, I had a good master.  Good to me, indeed.  I was that high when the war started.  I member everything.  Take me from now till dark to tell you everything I know bout slavery.

“I put in three years and five months, choppin’ cotton and corn.  I member the very day, on the 10th of May, old mistress blowed the conk and told us we was free.

“Oh Lord, I had a good time.

“I never was whipped.

“Ku Klux used to run me.  Run me clear from the plum orchard bout a mile from the house.  Run to my mistress at the big house.

“Miss Ann had eight darkies and told her stepmother, ’Don’t you put your hand on em.’  She didn’t either.

“I went to school since ’mancipation in Nacitosh.  Learned to read and write.  Was in the eighth grade when I left.  Stood at the head of every class.  They couldn’t get me down.  I done got old and forgot now.

“I didn’t know the difference between slavery and free, I never was whipped.

“Did I ever vote?  You know I voted, old as I am.  Ain’t voted in over forty years.  I ain’t nobody.  My wife’s eighty.  I’ve had her forty years. Cose I voted the Republican ticket.  You never seed a colored person a Democrat in your life.

“In slavery days we killed seventy-five or eighty hogs every year.  And I don’t mean shoats, I mean hogs.  I ain’t lost my membrance.”

Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Jane Osbrook
                    602 E. 21st Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  90

“Yes ma’m, I was livin’ in slavery days.  I was borned in Arkansas I reckon.  I was borned within three, miles of Camden but I wasn’t raised there.  We moved to Saline County directly after peace was declared.

“I don’t know what year I was born because you see I’m not educated but I was ninety the 27th of this last past May.  Yes ma’m, I’m a old bondage woman.  I can say what a heap of em can’t say—­I can tell the truth bout it.  I believe in the truth.  I was brought up to tell the truth.  I’m no young girl.

“My old master was Adkison Billingsly.  My old mistress treated us just like her own children.  She said we had feelin’s and tastes.  I visited her long after the war.  Went there and stayed all night.