“I went to school a little bit a good piece after the war and learned to read and write.

“I’ve heard too much of the Ku Klux.  I remember when they was Ku Kluxin’ all round through here.

“Lord!  I don’t know how many times I ever voted.  I used to vote every time they had an election.  I voted before I could read.  The white man showed me how to vote and asked me who I wanted to vote for.  Oh Lord, I was might near grown when I learned to read.

“I been married just one time in my life and my wife’s been dead thirteen years.

“I tell you, Miss, I don’t know hardly what to think of things now.  Everything so changeable I can’t bring nothin’ to remembrance to hold it.

“I didn’t do nothin’ when I was young but just knock around with the white folks.  Oh Lord, when I was young I delighted in parties.  Don’t nothin’ like that worry me now.  Don’t go to no parades or nothin’.  Don’t have that on my brain like I did when I was young.  I goes to church all the place I does go.

“I ain’t never had no accident.  Don’t get in the way to have no accident cause I know the age I is if I injure these bones there ain’t anything more to me.

“My mother had eight childrun and just my sister and me left.  I can’t do a whole day’s work to save my life.  I own this place and my sister-in-law gives me a little somethin’ to eat.  I used to be on the bureau but they took me off that.”

Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Angeline Martin, Kansas City, Missouri
                    Visiting at 1105 Louisiana St., Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age 80

“Well, I was livin’ then.  I was born in Georgia.  Honey, I don’t know what year.  I was born before the war.  I was about ten when freedom come.  I don’t remember when it started but I remember when it ended.  I think I’m in the 80’s—­that’s the way I count it.

“My master was dead and my mistress was a widow—­Miss Sarah Childs.  She had a guardeen.

“When the war come, old mistress and her daughter refugeed to Mississippi.  The guardeen wouldn’t let me go, said I was too young.

“My parents stayed on the plantation.  My white folks’ house was vacant and the Yankees come and used it for headquarters.  They never had put shoes on me and when the Yankees shot the chickens I’d run and get em.  They didn’t burn up nothin’, just kill the hogs and chickens and give us plenty.

“I didn’t know what the war was about.  You know chillun in them days didn’t have as much sense as they got now.

“After freedom, my folks stayed on the place and worked on the shares.  I want to school right after the war.  I went every year till we left there.  We come to this country in seventy something.  We come here and stopped at the Cummins place.  I worked in the field till I come to town bout fifty years ago.  Since then I cooked some and done laundry work.

“I married when I was seventeen.  Had six children.  I been livin’ in Kansas City twenty-three years.  Followed my boy up there.  I like it up there a lot better than I do here.  Oh lord, yes, there are a lot of colored people in Kansas City.”