“The Yankees rode three years over the country in squads and colored folks didn’t know they was free.  I have seen them in their old uniforms riding around when I was a child.  White folks started talking about freedom fore the darkies and turning them loose with the clothes they had on and what they could tote away.  No land, no home, no place; they roamed around.

“When it was freedom the thing papa done was go to a place and start out share croppin’.  Folks had no horses or mules.  They had to plough new ground with oxen.  I ploughed when I was a girl, ploughed oxen.  If you had horses or mules and the Yankees come along three or four years after the war, they would swap horses, ride a piece, and if they had a chance swap horses again.  Stealing went on during and long after the war.

“The Ku Klux was awful in South Carolina.  The colored folks had no church to go to.  They gather around at folks’ houses to have preaching and prayers.  One night we was having it at our house, only I was the oldest and was in another room sound asleep on the bed.  There was a crowd at our house.  The Ku Klux come, pulled off his robe and door face, hung it up on a nail in the room, and said, ‘Where’s that Jim Jesus?’ He pulled him out the room.  The crowd run off.  Mama took the three little children but forgot me and run off too.  They beat papa till they thought he was dead and throwed him in a fence corner.  He was beat nearly to death, just cut all to pieces.  He crawled to my bed and woke me up and back to the steps.  I thought he was dead—­bled to death—­on the steps.  Mama come back to leave and found he was alive.  She doctored him up and he lived thirty years after that.  We left that morning.

“The old white woman that owned the place was rich—­big rich.  She been complaining about the noise—­singing and preaching.  She called him Praying Jim Jesus till he got to be called that around.  He prayed in the field.  She said he disturbed her.  Mama said one of the Ku Klux she knowed been raised up there close to Master Barton’s but papa said he didn’t know one of them that beat on him.

“Papa never did vote.  I don’t vote.  I think women should vote much as men.  They live under the same law.

“I come to Arkansas about forty-five years ago.  Papa brought us to a new country, thought we could do better.  I been farming, cooking, washing.  I can’t do my own cooking and washing now.  I got rheumatism in my joints, feet, knees, and hands.  We don’t get no help of no kind.

“My daughter is in Caldwell, New Jersey at work.  She went there to get work.  She heard about it and went and haven’t come home.  I jes’ got one child.”

Interviewer:  Beulah Sherwood Hagg
Person interviewed:  Mrs. Charlotte E. Stephens
                    1420 West 15th Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age:  83

I was born right here in Little Rock.  My father was owned by a splendid family—­the Ashleys.  The family of Noah Badgett owned my mother and the children.  Pardon me, madam, and I shall explain how that was.  In many cases the father of children born in slavery could not be definitely determined.  There was never a question about the mother.  From this you will understand that the children belonged to the master who owned the mother.  This was according to law.