“I get eight dollars welfare help.  And I do get some commodities.  Anna does all right but she got hit on the shoulder and about lost use of her arm.  One of the railroad hands up here got mad and hit her.  I had doctors.  They done it a little good.  It’s been hurt three years or more now.

“I wisht I knowd where to find a bed of mullen.  Boil it down to a syrup and add some molasses, boil that down.  It makes a good syrup for coughs and colds.

“I never went to white folks’ church none hardly.  Miss Agnes sent me along with her cook to my own color’s church.

“My husband sure was good to me.  We never had but one fight.  Neither one whooped.

“This young generation is going backward.  They tired of training.  They don’t want no advice.  They don’t want to work out no more.  They don’t know what they want.  I think folks is trifling than they was when I come on.  The times is all right and some of the people.  I’m talking about mine and yo’ color both.”

Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Dinah Perry
                    1800 Ohio Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  78

“Yes ma’am, I lived in slavery times.  They brought me from Alabama, a baby, right here to this place where I am at, Mr. Sterling Cockril.

“I don’t know zackly when I was born but I member bout the slave times.  Yes ma’am, I do.  After I growed up some, I member the overseer—­I do.  I can remember Mr. Burns.  I member when he took the hands to Texas.  Left the chillun and the old folks here.

“Oh Lord, this was a big plantation.  Had bout four or five hundred head of niggers.

“My mother done the milkin’ and the weavin’.  After free times, I wove me a dross.  My mother fixed it for me and I wove it.  They’d knit stockin’s too.  But now they wear silk.  Don’t keep my legs warm.

“I member when they fit here in Pine Bluff.  I member when ‘Marmajuke’ sent word he was gain’ to take breakfast with Clayton that mornin’ and they just fit.  I can remember that was ‘Marmajuke.’  It certainly was ‘Marmajuke.’  The Rebels tried to carry me away but the wagon was so full I didn’t get in and I was glad they didn’t.  My mother was runnin’ from the Rebels and she hid under the cotehouse.  After the battle was over she come back hero to the plantation.

“I had three brothers and three sisters went to Texas and I know I didn’t know em when they come back.

“I member when they fit here a bum shell fell right in the yard.  It was big around as this stovepipe and was all full of chains and things.

“After free time my folks stayed right here and worked on the shares.  I was the baby chile and never done no work till I married when I was fifteen.

“After the War I went to school to white teachers from the North.  I never went to nothin’ but them.  I went till I was in the fifth grade.

“My daddy learned me to spell ‘lady’ and ‘baker’ and ‘shady’ fore I went to school.  I learned all my ABC’s too.  I got out of the first reader the second day.  I could just read it right on through.  I could spell and just stand at the head of the class till the teacher sent me to the foot all the time.