“I live alone.  I get $8 and commodities from the Sociable Welfare.

“The young folks would do better, work better, if they could get work all time.  It is hard at times to get work right now.  The times is all right.  Better everything but work.  I know colored folks is bad managers.  That has been bad on us always.

“I worked on boats from Evansville, St. Louis, Memphis to New Orleans mostly.  It was hard work but a fine living.  I was stout then.”

Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Jesse Meeks
                    707 Elm Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  76
Occupation:  Minister

“I am seventy-six.  ’Course I was young in slavery times, but I can remember some things.  I remember how they used to feed us.  Put milk and bread or poke salad and corn-meal dumplin’s in a trough and give you a wooden spoon and all the children eat together.

“We stayed with our old master fourteen years.  They were good folks and treated us right.  My old master’s name was Sam Meeks—­in Longview, Drew County, Arkansas, down here below Monticello.

“I got a letter here about a month ago from the daughter of my young mistress.  I wrote to my young mistress and she was dead, so her daughter got the letter.  She answered it and sent me a dollar and asked me was I on the Old Age Pension list.

“As far as I know, I am the onliest one of the old darkies living that belonged to Sam Meeks.

“I remember when the Ku Klux run in on my old master.  That was after the War.  He was at the breakfast table with his wife.  You know in them days they didn’t have locks and keys.  Had a hole bored through a board and put a peg in it, and I know the Ku Klux come up and stuck a gun through the auger hole and shot at old master but missed him.  He run to the door and shot at the Ku Klux.  I know us children found one of ’em down at the spring bathin’ his leg where old master had shot him.

“Oh! they were good folks and treated us right.”

Folklore subjects
Name of Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Subject:  Superstitions
Story:—­Information

This information given by:  Jesse Meeks
Place of residence:  707 Elm Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Occupation:  Minister
Age:  76
[TR:  Information moved from bottom of first page.]

“I remember there was on old man called Billy Mann lived down here at Noble lake.  He said he could ‘give you a hand.’  If you and your wife wasn’t gettin’ along very well and you wanted to get somebody else, he said he could ‘give you a hand’ and that would enable you to get anybody you wanted.  That’s what he said.

“And I’ve heard ’em say they could make a ring around you and you couldn’t get out.

“I don’t believe in that though ’cause I’m in the ministerial work and it don’t pay me to believe in things like that.  That is the work of the devil.”