Course he wasn’t sick.  They come and took off 25 mules and all the chickens and he never got up.  They took two fine carriage horses weighed 2,000 pounds apiece I speck.  One named Lee and one Stone Wall.  He never went out there.  He claimed he was sick all time.  One of the carriage horses was a fine big white horse and had a bay match.  Folks didn’t like him—­said he was a coward.  When I went over cross the creek after the fightin’ was over, men just lay like dis[A] piled on top each other.” [A:  [Illustration] He used his fingers to show me how the soldiers were crossed.]

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Alex Murdock, Edmondson, Arkansas
Age:  65

“My owner or least my folks was owned by Dr. [HW:  ‘Murder’] (Murdock).  He had a big farm.  He was a widower.  He had no children as ever I knowed of.  Dr.  ‘Murder’ raised my father’s mother.  He bought her at Tupelo, Mississippi.  He raised mother too.  She was bright color.  I’m sure they stayed on after freedom ’cause I stayed there till we come to Arkansas.  Father was a teamster.  He followed that till he died.  He owned a dray and died at Brinkley.  He was well-known and honorable.

“I worked in the oil mill at Brinkley-American Oil Company.

“Mother was learned durin’ slavery but I couldn’t say who done it.  She taught school ’round Buena Vista and Okolona, Mississippi.  She learned me.  I was born 1874—­November 25, 1874.  I heard her say she worked in the field one year.  They give her some land and ploughed it so she could have a patch.  It was all she could work.  I don’t know how much.  It was her patch.  Our depot was Prairie Station, Mississippi.  My parents was Monroe [HW:  ‘Murder’] Murdock[TR:  lined out] and Lucy Ann Murdock[TR:  lined out] [HW:  Murder].  It is spelled M-u-r-d-o-c-k.

“I farmed all my whole life.  Oil milling was the surest, quickest living but I likes farmin’ all right.

“I never contacted the Ku Kluxes.  They was ’bout gone when I come on.

“I voted off an’ on.  This is the white folks’ country and they going to run their gov’mint.  The thing balls us up is, some tells us one way and some more tells us a different way to do.  And we don’t know the best way.  That balls us up.  Times is better than ever I seen them, for the man that wants to work.

“I get $8 a month.  I work all I can.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Bessie Myers, Brassfield, Arkansas
Age:  50? didn’t know

“My mother was named Jennie Bell.  She was born in North Ca’lina (Carolina).  She worked about the house.  She said there was others at the house working all the time with her.

“She said they daresn’t to cross the fence on other folks’ land or go off up the road ’lessen you had a writing to show.  One woman could write.  She got a pass and this woman made some more.  She said couldn’t find nothing to make passes on.  It happened they never got caught up.  That woman didn’t live very close by.  She talked like she was free but was one time a slave her own self.