“I was born in Chicot County, Arkansas in ’65.  They said I was born on the roadside while we was on our way here from Texas.  They had to camp they said.  Some people called it emigrate.  Now that’s the straightest way I can tell it.

“Our mistress and master was named Chapman.  I member when I was a child mistress used to be so good to us.  After surrender my parents stayed right on there with the Chapmans, stayed right on the place till they died.

“My mudder and pappy neither one of em could read or write, but I went to school.  I always was apt.  I am now.  I always was one to work—­yes ma’m—­rolled logs, hope clean up new ground—­yes ma’m.  When we was totin’ logs, I’d say, “Put the big end on me” but they’d say, “No, you’re a woman.”  Yes ma’m I been here a long time.  I do believe in stirrin’ work for your livin’, yes ma’m, that’s what I believe in.

“I been workin’ ever since I was six years old.  My daughter was just like me—­she had a gift, but she died.  I seen all my folks die and that lets me know I got to die too.

“White folks used to come along in buggies, and hoss back too, and stop and watch me plow.  Seem like the hotter the sun was the better I liked it.

“Yes ma’m, I done all kinds a work and I feels it now, too.”

Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Dan Newborn
                    1000 Louisiana, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  78

“I was born in 1860.  Born in Knoxville, Tennessee.  I suppose it was in the country.

“Solomon Walton was my mother’s owner and my father belonged to the Newborns.  My grandmother belonged to the Buggs in Richmond, Virginia and she was sold to the Waltons.  When my mother died in ’65 my grandmother raised me.  After she was freed she went to the Powell Clayton place.  Her daughter lived there and she sent up the river and got her.  I went too.  Me and two more boys.

“I never went to school but about thirty days.  Hardly learned my alphabet.

“In ’66, my grandmother bound two of us to Powell Clayton for our ‘vittils’ and clothes and schoolin’, but I didn’t get no schoolin’.  I waited in the house.  Stayed there three years, then we come back to the Walton place.

“My grandmother said the Waltons treated her mean.  Beat her on the head and that was part of her death.  Every spring her head would run.  She said they didn’t get much of somethin’ to eat.

“I was married ’fore my grandmother died—­to this wife that died two months ago.  We stayed together fifty-seven years.

“To my idea, this younger generation is too wild—­not near as settled as when I was comin’ up.  They used to obey.  Why, I slept in the bed with my grandmother till I was married.  She whipped me the day before I was married.  It was ’cause I had disobeyed her.  Children will resist their mothers now.

“I think the colored people is better off now ’cause they got more privilege, but the way some of ’em use their privilege, I think they ought to be slaves.