“Well, good-bye—­if I don’t see you again I’ll meet you in Heaven.”

Interviewer:  Beulah Sherwood Hagg
Person interviewed:  [HW:  Henry Kirk] H.K.  Miller
                    1513 State Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age:  86

“No ma’am, it will not bother me one bit if you want to have a long visit with me....  Yes, I was a little busy, but it can wait.  I was getting my dishes ready for a party tomorrow night.

“Yes ma’am, I was born during slavery.  I was born at a little place called Fort Valley in Georgia, July 25, 1851.  Fort Valley is about 30 miles from Macon.  I came to Little Rock in 1873.  My old mistress was a widow.  As well as I can remember she did not have any slaves but my father and mother and the six children.  No ma’am, her name was not Miller, it was Wade....  Where did I get my name, then?  It came from my grandfather on my father’s side....  Well, now, Miss, I can’t tell you where he got that name.  From some white master, I reckon.

“We got free in Georgia June 15, 1865.  I’ll never forget that date.  What I mean is, that was the day the big freedom came.  But we didn’t know it and just worked on.  My father was a shoemaker for old mistress.  Only one in town, far as I recollect.  He made a lot of money for mistress.  Mother was houseworker for her.  As fast as us children got big enough to hire out, she leased us to anybody who would pay for our hire.  I was put out with another widow woman who lived about 20 miles.  She worked me on her cotton plantation.  Old mistress sold one of my sisters; took cotton for pay.  I remember hearing them tell about the big price she brought because cotton was so high.  Old mistress got 15 bales of cotton for sister, and it was only a few days till freedom came and the man who had traded all them bales of cotton lost my sister, but old mistress kept the cotton.  She was smart, wasn’t she?  She knew freedom was right there.  Sister came right back to my parents.

“Just give me time, miss, and I’ll tell you the whole story.  This woman what had me hired tried to run away and take all her slaves along.  I don’t remember just how many, but a dozen or more.  Lots of white folks tried to run away and hide their slaves until after the Yankee soldiers had been through the town searching for them what had not been set free.  She was trying to get to the woods country.  But she got nervous and scared and done the worst thing she could.  She run right into a Yankee camp.  Course they asked where we all belonged and sent us where we belonged.  They had always taught us to be scared of the Yankees.  I remember just as well when I got back to where my mother was she asked me:  “Boy, why you come here?  Don’t you know old mistress got you rented out?  You’re goin’ be whipped for sure.”  I told her, no, now we got freedom.  That was the first they had heard.  So then she had to tell my father and mother.  She tole them how they have no place to go, no money,—­nothing