Eight years ago I couldn’t see, I wore specs 3 years.  I forgot my specs one morning, I prayed for my eyesight and it was restored that morning.

Our marster was a good man.  De overseers sometimes wuz bad, but dey did not let marsters know how dey treated their girl slaves.  My grandmother was whipped by de overseers one time, it made welts on her back.  My sister Mary had a child by a white man.

To get joy in de morning, get up and pray and ask Him to bless you.  God will feed all alike, he is no respector of persons.  He shows no extra favors twixt de rich and de poor.

Interviewer:  Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Marguerite Perkins
                    West Sixth and Catalpa Streets, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  81

“I was born in slavery times, Miss.  I was born in South Carolina, Union County.  I was born in May.

“I know I ‘member old Missy.  I just been washin’ her feet and legs when they said the Yankees was comin.  Old Miss’ name was Miss Sally.  Her husband was a colonel.  What is a colonel?

“I got some white cousins.  They tell me they was the boss man’s chillun.

“Yes’m, I reckon Miss Sally was good to me.  I’m a old nigger.  All us niggers belonged to Colonel Beatty.  I went to school a little while but I didn’t learn nothin’.

“I use to be a nurse girl and sleep right upstairs.

“Missus, you know people just walkin along the street droppin dead with heart trouble and white women killin men.  I tell you lady it’s awful.

“I been married just once.  The Lord took him out o’ my house one Sunday morning ’fore day.

“The thing about it is I got that high blood pressure.  Well, Missus, I had it five years ago and I went to Memphis and the Lord healed me.  All we got to do is believe in the Lord and He will put you on your feet.

“I had four sisters and three brothers and all of ’em dead but me, darlin.

“Now let me tell you somethin’.  Old as I is, I ain’t never been to but one picture show in my life.  Old as I is, I never was on a base ball ground in my life.  The onliest place I go now is to church.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Rachel Perkins, Goodwin, Arkansas
Age:  ?  Baby during the Civil War

“I was born in Greensboro, Alabama.  Sallie Houston and Peter Houston was my parents.  They had two girls and a boy.  They died when they was small, but me.  They always told me mother died when I was three days old in the cradle.  I don’t fur a fact know much about my own people.  Miss Agnes took me to raise me fur a house girl.  She nursed me wid her Mary.  My mother’s and father’s owners was Alonso Brown and Miss Agnes Brown.  Their two girls was Mary and Lucy and their three boys was Bobby, Jesse, and Frank.  Miss Agnes rocked the babies to sleep in a big chair out on the gallery.  We slept there all night.  Company come and say, ’Where the babies?’