“My father’s master was named Lee.  He married my mother back in Virginia.  My daddy’s people when he was freed was named Taylor.  He died when I was young and he never gave me any details about them.

Good Masters

“The Adamses were good to my mother.  And they help her even after freedom.  Charlie Adams and Mack Adams of Malvern, Arkansas.  John was the sheriff and ran a store.  Mack was a drummer for the Penzl Grocery.  When my mother was ill, he used to bring her thirty dollars at a time.  Every two months she had to go down to Malvern when she was well and carry an empty trunk and when she would come back it would be full.  My mother was wet-nurse to the Adamses and they thought the world and all of her.

Marriage

“They had a good opinion of their house servants.  That is how she and my father came to belong to different families.  One white man would say to the other, ’I got a good boy.  I’m going to let him come over to see your girl.’  He would be talking about a Negro man that worked around his house and a Negro girl that worked for the other man.  That would be all right.  So that’s the way my father went to see my mother.  He was married in the way they always married in those days.  You know how it was.  There was no marriage at all.  They just went on out and got the woman and the white man said, ‘There she is.  You are man and wife.’

Right After the War

“My father died before freedom.  My mother lived with him until her folks moved away from his folks.  Then she was separated from him and left him in Mississippi.  She belonged to one white man and he to another, and that could happen any time.

“Right after freedom, she stayed with these white people, doing the house work.  She had the privilege of raising things for herself.  She made a garden, and raised vegetables and such like.

“My brother who had run off during slavery time and who later became a preacher in the North invited us to live in the city with him.

Vocational Experiences

“I wasn’t fourteen years old when I was tending to flowers for the Cairo and Fulton Railroad.  That was a railroad which later became Missouri Pacific.  They beautified everything.  There wasn’t any bridge.  They had a boat to take you into the town of Argenta then, and when the trains came through, the same boat would carry the cars across.  An engine would be on the other side to finish the journey with them.

“There is one engineer living now who was active in that time, Charlie Seymour, retired, of Little Rock.  He used to run the first train over the Baring Cross Bridge, and then he ran the first engine over the new bridge here.  He had already been retired when they finished the new bridge, but they had him pull the first train over the new bridge because he had pulled the first one over the old bridge.  They wanted to give him that honor.