“I don’t think much of the young people.  These nineteenth or twentieth century Negroes is something fierce I’m telling you.

Vocational Experiences

“I am a carpenter.  I wish I wasn’t.  The depression has made it so that the Negroes get very little to do.  What they have they give to their own people.  They don’t have much for nobody.  Even if the nigger gets something, he gets very little out of it.  But the main trouble is there isn’t anything to do.

“I have been a carpenter for fifty-four years.  I have been here fifty-one years.  I have never had no trouble earning a living till now.  I can’t do it now.  The biggest obstacle of the success of the Negro carpenter is that Negroes don’t have the money to build with.  They must get the money from the white man.  The white man, on the other hand, if he lets out the money for the building, has the say-so on who will do it, and he naturally picks out another white man.  That keeps the majority of Negroes out of work as far as carpentry is concerned.  It does in a time like this.  When times is better, the white man does not need to be so tight, and he can divide up.”

Interviewer:  Pernella Anderson, colored Caroline Stout

EX-SLAVES

I was born in Alabama in slavery time.  I was sold from my mother after I was five years old and never did see her again.  Was sold to a family by the name of Mr. Games.  There were six of them in family and I was the seventh.  They were very nice to me until I was about 10 years of age.  I would attend to the little kids.  They were all boys.  Had to sleep on straw beds and been cooking for myself ever since I was 8 years old.  When about ten they started putting hard work on me and had to pick cotton and do the work around the house.  Was a slave for about 15 years.  After I was freed I moved to Union County and been here ever since.

Interviewer:  Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed:  Felix Street
                    822 Schiller Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age:  74

I was born in Dickson County, Tennessee, fifty miles north of Nashville, in 1864.  It was on December twenty-eighth.  My father told me when he was living how old I was.  He told me all the way along, and I remember it.

“Nannie, Jeff, Hardy, John Mack, and Felix (that’s me) are my father’s children by his first wife.  Lena, Martha, Esther are his children by his second wife.  He had five children by my mother, and four of them lived to be grown, and one died in infancy.  My mother was his first wife.  Her name was Mary Street.  Her name before she married—­hold a minute, lemme see—­seems like it was Mary—­Mary—­Street.

“My father and my mother couldn’t have lived on the same plantation because she was a May and he was a Street.  I don’t know how they met.

“My father’s master’s name was Jick Street.  He owned, to my knowing, my father, Bill Street; Henry Street, and Ed Street.  He might have owned more but I heard my father say he owned those.