“The women chewed for their children after they weaned em.  They don’t none of em do that way now.  Women wouldn’t cut the baby’s finger nails.  They bite em off.  They said if you cut its nails off he would steal.  They bite its toe nails off, too.  And if they wanted the children to have long pretty hair, they would trim the ends off on the new of the moon.  That would cause the hair to grow long.  White folks and darkies both done them things.

“I been doin’ whatever come to hand—­farmin’, cookin’, washin’, ironin’.

“I never expects to vote neither.  I sure ain’t voted.

“Conditions pretty bad sometimes.  I don’t know what cause it.  You got beyond me now.  I don’t know what going become of the young folks, and they ain’t studyin’ it.  They ain’t kind.  Got no raisin’ I call it.  I tried to raise em to work and behave.  They work some.  My son is takin’ care of me now.”

Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Caroline Matthews
                    812 Spruce Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  79

“Yes’m, I was born in slavery times in Mississippi.  Now, the only thing I remember was some soldiers come along on some mules.  I remember my mother and father was sittin’ on the gallery and they say, ’Look a there, them’s soldiers.’

“And I remember when my parents run off.  I was with ’em and I cried for ’em to tote me.

“My mother’s first owner was named Armstrong.  She said she was about eleven years old when he bought her.  I heard her say they just changed around a lot.

“Freedom was comin’ and her last owners had carried her to a state where it hadn’t come yet.  That’s right—­it was Texas.

“Her first owners was good.  She said they wouldn’t ’low the overseer to ’buke the women at all.

“But her last owners was cruel.  She said one day old missis was out in the yard and backed up and fell into a pan of hot water and when her husband come she told him and he tried to ’buke my mother.  You know if somebody tryin’ to get the best of you and you can help yourself, you gwine do it.  So mama throwed up her arm and old master hit it with a stick and cut it bad.  So my parents run off.  That was in Texas.

“She said we was a year comin’ back and I know they stopped at the Dillard place and made a crop.  And they lost one child on the way—­that was Kittie.

“I heard mama say they got back here to Arkansas and got to the bureau and they freed ’em.  I know the War wasn’t over yet ’cause I know I heard mama say, ‘Just listen to them guns at Vicksburg.’

“When I was little, I was so sickly.  I took down with the whoopin’ cough and I was sick so long.  But mama say to the old woman what stayed with me, ’This gal gwine be here to see many a winter ’cause she so stout in the jaws I can’t give her no medicine.’

“When I commenced to remember anything, I heered ’em talkin’ ’bout Grant and Colfax.  Used to wear buttons with Grant and Colfax.