“My papa said he knowed it to be a fact, the Ku Klux cut a colored woman’s breast off.  I don’t recollect why he said they got after her.  The Jayhawkers was bad too.  They all went wild; some of em left men hanging up in trees.  They needed a good master to protect em worse after the war than they needed em before.  They said they had a Yankee government then was reason of the Ku Klux.  They run the Jayhawkers out and made the Yankees go on home.  Everybody had a hard time.  Bread was mighty scarce when I was a child.  Times was hard.  Men that had land had to let it lay out.  They had nothin’ to feed the hands on, no money to pay, no seed, no stock to work.  The fences all went to rack and all the houses nearly down.  When I was a child they was havin’ hard times.

“I’m a country woman.  I farmed all my life.  I been married two times; I married Holmes, then Morgan.  They dead.  I washed, ironed, cooked, all at Mr. Jim Buchannan’s sawmill close to Lewisville two years and eight months; then I went back to farmin’ up at Pine Bluff.  My oldest sister washed and ironed for Mrs. Buchannan till she moved from the sawmill to Texarkana.  He lived right at the sawmill ground.

“My papa voted a Republican ticket.  I don’t vote.  My husbands have voted along.  If the women would let the men have the business I think times would be better.  I don’t believe in women voting.  The men ought to make the livings for the families, but the women doing too much.  They crowding the men out of work.

“Some folks is sorry in all colors.  Seems like the young folks ain’t got no use for quiet country life.  They buying too much.  They say they have to buy everything.  I ain’t had no depression yet.  I been at work and we had crop failures but I made it through.  Some folks good and some ain’t.  Times is bout to run away with some of the folks.  They all say times is better than they been since 1928.  I hope times is on the mend.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Tom Morgan, Madison, Arkansas
Age:  71

“My mother was the mother of fourteen of us children.  Their names was Sarah and Richard Morgan.

“My great-grandfather b’long to Bill Woods.  They had b’long to the Morgans and when freedom come they changed their names back.  Some of them still owned by Morgans.

“Mother’s owners was Auris and Lucella Harris.  They had a boy named Harley Harris and a girl.  He had a small farm.

“Mother said her master wasn’t bad, but my father said his owner was tough on him—­tough on all of them.  They was all field hands.  They had to git up and be doing.  He said they fed by torch morning and night and rested in the heat of the day two or three hours.  Feed the oxen and mules.  In them days stock and folks all et three times a day.  I does real well now to get two meals a day, sometimes but one.  They done some kind of work all the year ’round.  He said they had tasks.  They better git the task done or they would get a beating.