“I member when they was fightin’ here at Pine Bluff.  I was standin’ at the overseer’s bell house waitin’ for a doll dress a girl had promised me and the guns was goin’ just like pop guns.  We didn’t know what it was to take off our shoes and clothes for six months.  We was ready to run if they broke in on us.

“The Yankees had their headquarters at the big house near the river.  All this was in woods till I growed up.  We used to have our picnic here.

“I was standin’ right at the post when they rung the bell in the bell house when peace declared.  I heered the old folks sayin, ’We is free, we is free!’

“I know before freedom they wouldn’t let us burn a speck of light at night.  Had these little iron lamps.  They’d twist wicks and put em in tallow.  I don’t know whether it was beef or sheep tallow but they had plenty of sheeps on the place.

“Colonel Cockrill would have us come up to the big house every Sunday mornin’ and he’d give us a apple or a stick of candy.  But them that was big enough to work wouldn’t get any.  They worked on Sunday too—­did the washin’ every Sunday evenin’.

“Oh lord, they had a big plantation.

“After the War I went to school some.  We had white teachers from the North.  I didn’t get to go much except on rainy days.  Other times I had to work.  I got so I could read print but I can’t read writin’.  I used to could but since I been sick seems like my mind just hops off.

“After freedom my parents rented land and farmed.  I stayed with the old doctor woman till I was fourteen then I went to my parents.

“I married when I was eighteen and had five chillun.  When I worked for my father he’d let us quit when we got tired and sit under the shade bushes.  But when I married I had to work harder than ever.  My husband was just a run-around.  He’d put in a crop and then go and leave it.  Sometimes he was a constable.  Finally he went off and took up with another woman.

“I been here in Arkansas all my life except eight months I lived in St. Louis, but I didn’t like it.  When I was in St. Louis I know it started to snow.  I thought it was somebody pickin’ geese.  I said, ’What is that?’ and my granddaughter said, ‘Gal, that’s snow.’

“I don’t know what to think of the younger generation.  I think they is just goin’ out to nothin’.  They say they are gettin’ weaker and wiser but I think they are weaker and foolish—­they are not wise in the right way.  Some are very good to their parents and some are not.

“Honey, I don’t know how things is goin’—­all I know is they is mighty tight right now.”

Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Emma Turner
                    330 W. Sixth Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  83

“Yes ma’am, I was born in slavery days.  They never did tell me when I was born but I was ten the seventh day of August the same year we was freed.