“I haven’t voted since 1927 except I voted in favor of the Cotton Control Saturday before last.

“Times has come up to a most deplorable condition.  Craving exists.  Ungratefulness.  People want more than they can make.  Some don’t work hard and some won’t work at all.  I don’t know how to improve conditions except by work except economical living.  Some would work if they could.  Some can work but won’t.  Some do work hard.  I believe in bread by the sweat of the brow, and all work.

“The slaves didn’t expect anything.  They didn’t expect war.  It was going on a while before my parents heard of it.  I was a little boy.  They didn’t know what it was for except their freedom.  They didn’t know what freedom was.  They couldn’t read.  They never seen a newspaper like I take the Commercial Appeal now.  I went to school a little in Arkansas.  My father being old man Pettus’ son as he was may have been given something by Miss Sarah or Dr. Palmer or by his white son, but the old man was dead and I doubt that.  Father was killed and mother left.  Mother knew she had a home on Dr. Palmer’s land as long as she needed one but she left to do better.  In some ways we have done better but it was hard to live in these bottoms.  It is a fine country now.

“I own eighty acres of land and this house. (Good house and furnished well.) We made six bales of cotton last year.  My son lives here and his wife—­a Chicago reared mulatto, a cook.  He runs my farm.  I live very well.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Dolly Phillips, Clarendon, Arkansas
Age:  67

“I ain’t no ex-slave.  I am 67 years old.  I was born out here on the Mullins place.  My mother’s master was Mr. Ricks and Miss Emma Ricks.

“My mother named Diana and my father Henry Mullins.  I never saw my grand fathers and I seen one grandma I remembers.  My mother had ten children.  My father said he never owned nuthin’ in his life but six horses.  When they was freed they got off to their selves and started farming.  See they belong to different folks.  My father’s master was a captain of a mixed regiment.  They was in the war four years.  I heard ’em say they went to Galveston, Texas.  The Yankees was after ’em.  But I don’t know how it was.

“I heard ’em say they put their heads under big black pot to pray.  They say sing easy, pray easy.  I forgot whut all she say.

“I lives wid my daughter.  I gets commodities from the Welfare some.  The young folks drinks a heap now.  It look lack a waste of money to me.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person Interviewed:  Tony Piggy
                    Brinkley, Ark. 
Age:  75

“I was born near Selma, Alabama, but I was raised in Mississippi.  My grandpa was sold from South Carolina to Moster Alexander Piggy.  He didn’t talk plain but my papa didn’t nother.  Moster Piggy bought a gang of black folks in South Carolina and brought em into the state of Alabama.  My papa was mighty near full-blood African, I’ll tell you.  Now ma was mixed.