“I’m most too young to recollect the war.  Right after the war we had small pox.  My uncle died and there was seven children had em at one time.  The bushwhackers come in and kicked us around—­kicked my uncle around.  We lived at Union Town, Alabama then.

“Aunt Connie used to whip us.  Mama had no time; she was a chambermaid (housewoman).  The only thing I recollect bout slavery time to tell is Old Mistress pour out a bushell of penders (peanuts) on the grass to see us pick em up and set out eating em.  When they went to town they would bring back things like cheese good to eat.  We got some of what they had most generally.  She wasn’t so good; she whoop me with a cow whip.  She’d make pull candy for us too.  I got a right smart of raisin’ in a way but I growed up to be a wild young man.  I been converted since then.

“Well, one day pa come to our house and told mama, ’We free, don’t have to go to the house no more, git ready, we all goin’ to Mississippi.  Moster Piggy goiner go.  He goner rent us twenty acres and we goner take two cows and a mule.’  We was all happy to be free and goin’ off somewhere.  Moster Piggy bought land in Mississippi and put families renters on it.  Moster Piggy was rough on the grown folks but good to the children.  The work didn’t let up.  We railly had more clearin’ and fences to make.  His place in Alabama was pore and that was new ground.

“There was all toll nine children in my family.  Ma was named Matty Piggy.  Papa was named Ezra Piggy.  Moster Alexander Piggy’s wife named Harriett.  I knowed Ed, Charley, Bowls, Ells, and Liza.  That’s all I ever knowd.

“I have done so many things.  I run on a steamboat from Cairo to New Orleans—­Kate Adams and May F. Carter.  They called me a Rouster—­that means a working man.  I run on a boat from Newport to Memphis.  Then I farmed, done track work on the railroad, and farmed some more.

“The young generation ain’t got respect for old people and they tryin’ to live without work.  I ain’t got no fault to find with the times if I was bout forty years younger than I is now I could work right ahead.”

Interviewer:  Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Ella Pittman
                    2409 West Eleventh Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  84

“Yes ma’m, I was born in slavery days.  I tell you I never had no name.  My old master named me—­Just called me ’Puss? and said I could name myself when I got big enough.

“My old master was named Mac Williams.  But where I got free at was at Stricklands.  Mac Williams’ daughter married a Strickland and she drawed me.  She was tollable good to me but her husband wa’nt.

“In slavery times I cleaned up the house and worked in the house.  I worked in the field a little but she kept me busy in the house.  I was busy night and day.

“No ma’m, I never did go to school—­never did go to school.

“After I got grown I worked in the farm.  When I wasn’t farmin’ I was doin’ other kinds of work.  I used to cut and sew and knit and crochet.  I stayed around the white folks so much they learned me to do all kinds of work.  I never did buy my children any stockins—­I knit ’em myself.