“I was goin’ on seven when we come to Arkansas.  I know I’d walk a while and she’d tote me a while.  But we was lucky enough to get in with some white people that was movin’ to Arkansas.  We was comin’ to a place called ‘The Promised Land.’  We stayed there till ’92.

“I have farmed and done public work.  I worked nine years at that heading factory in the east end (of Pine Bluff).

“I used to vote.  When I was in north Arkansas, I voted in all kinds of elections.  But after I come down here to Jefferson County, I couldn’t vote in nothin’ but the presidential elections.

“I don’t think the young people are goin’ to amount to much.  They are a heap wilder than when I was young.  They got a chance to graduate now—­something I didn’t get to do.

“I never went to school a day in my life, but the white people where I worked learned me to read and write.”

Interviewer’s Comment

This man could easily pass for a white person.

Interviewer:  Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed:  Annie Parks
                    720 Pulaski Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age:  About 80
Occupation:  Formerly house and field work

“I was born and raised in Mer Rouge, Louisiana.  That is between here and Monroe.  I have been here in Little Rock more than twenty-five years.

“My mother’s name was Sarah Mitchell.  That was her married name.  I don’t know what her father’s name was.  My father’s name was Willis Clapp.  He was killed in the first war—­the Civil War.  My father went to the war from Mer Rouge, Louisiana.  I don’t remember him at all.  But that is what my mother told me about him.  My mother said he had very good people.  After he married my mother, old man Offord bought him.  Offord’s name was Warren Offord.  They buried him while I was still there in Mer Rouge.  He was a old-time Mason.  That was my mother’s master—­in olden days.

“His grandmother took my mother across the seas with her.  She (his grandmother) died on shipboard, and they throwed her body into the water.  There’s people denies it, but my mother told me it was so.  Young Davenport is still living.  He is a relative of Offords.  My mother never did get no pension for my father.

Slave House and Occupation

“I was born in a log house.  There were two doors—­a front and a back—­and there were two windows.  My mother had no furniture ’cept an old-time wooden bed—­big bed.  She was a nurse all the time in the house.  I heard her say she milked and waited on them in the house.  My father’s occupation was farming during slavery times.

“My mother always said she didn’t have no master to beat on her.  I like to tell the truth.  My mother’s master never let no overseer beat his slaves around.  She didn’t say just what we had to eat.  But they always give us a plenty, and there wasn’t none of us mistreated.