“Reuben White built the First Baptist Church.  In those days, people were Christian.  White baptized one hundred fifty people twice a month.  You didn’t have to put a lock on your door then.

Bachelor

“I haven’t been married; marriage holds a man back.  A woman won’t do as she is told.

Successful Negroes in Little Rock

“They had three Negro aldermen in this city:  one of them was Green Thompson; but the Negroes butchered him.  He was murdered as he came in from a festival.  M.W.  Gibbs, Land Office Man for the Government, was the only nigger here who wasn’t bothered by no one—­by no colored person.  Dr. Smith was the leading colored dentist once, and the leading dentist of the city in his day.  Almost all the white people went to him.  Colored people had the barber shops.  McNair had a barber shop on Main between Second and Third.  His boy killed him—­no good reason.  His boy went to school with us; he was always stubborn and mean.

“Henry Powell was jailer here once.  Sam Wilkins, a man that weighed about three hundred pounds, was the turnkey at the penitentiary.  He lived in one of the finest houses in the town at that time.  Nigger bands had all the music then.  I have seen white organizations like the Odd Fellows and Masons follow Negro bands.  Nigger orchestras played here all the big to-dos among white people.  White people used to get nigger dancers to come here to dance and show them so that they could learn the late steps.

“Colored caterers had the big jobs.  Henry Miller was one of them.  He’s going pretty strong still.  You get some smart niggers ’round the Marion Hotel right now.  We used to have some smart cooks.  But they did too much peddling out of the back door.  Dishonesty put them back.  White people have taken all that work now.  The nigger ruined himself in this town.  They are paying white men now for what they know.  They used to pay niggers for what they knowed.

Opinions

“If the government would give you a job today, niggers would be up to take you out of it tomorrow.  Niggers are dirty, and these ’round here are ignorant.

“The parents don’t teach the children, and the children can’t amount too anything.  If children are not taught to work, they will never have nothing.  A bunch of these young people don’t mean to work.  They just lay ’round waiting for the old people to die so they can get what little the old folks accumulated and run through it.  But a man never keeps what he himself doesn’t earn.  He can’t.