Opinions

“Roosevelt has got himself in a predicament.  They are drunk and don’t know what to do.  The whole world is stirred up over why one-fourth of the world should rule the other three-fourths.  One-fourth of the world is white.  The Bible says a house divided can’t stand.  The people don’t know what to do.  Look how they fight the Wage Hour Bill.  Look at the excitement they raised when it was first suggested that the Union and Confederate veterans meet together.

“We were savages when we came over here.  Everything we got and everything we know, good and bad, we got from the white folks.  Don’t know how they can get impatient with us when everything we do they learnt us.

“Roosevelt has done more than any Democrat that has ever been in the Chair.  He had to do something to keep down a rebellion.  Then we like to had one as it is through the labor question.

“The poor white man always has been in a tight [HW:  place].  He was almost as much oppressed as the Negro.

“The young people of today ain’t got no sense.  They don’t give no thought to nothing.  They don’t know how to think at all.  All the schools and education they give don’t make them think.  If I had as much education as they have, I would be able to accomplish something.  The teachers don’t press down on them and make them know what they go over.  There is a whole lot of things happening now.

Old People in Pulaski County

“Out in Pulaski County, going west out the Nineteenth Street Pike till you strike the Saline County line, there are quite a few old colored people.  I guess you would find no leas than twenty-five or thirty out that way.  There is one old man named Junius Peterson out that way who used to run a mill.  If you find him, he is very old and has a good memory.  He is a mulatto.  You could get out to him by going down till you come to a place that is called the Henderson Lane.  You turn to the right and go off the pike less than a mile and you come to a big one-story house settin’ on a hill where Peterson lives.  Right on beyond that about three-fourths of a mile on the right side of the road, you come to George Gregory’s.  The mother of my church is about eighty-one years old but she is over in Saline County.  Her name is Jane Joyner.

“There are quite a few old persons around Woodson that can give you information.  But that is in Saline County, I think.  Sweet Home, Wrightsville, Toltec—­all of them have a few old colored persons on the farm that was here in slavery times.”

Interviewer’s Comment

Reeves’ story was taken because of his clear memories of his parents and grandparents.  He described to me an old log house still standing in Union County.

I got all agog with excitement.  I asked him for the exact location.  He gave it.  Then I suggested that maybe he would go down with me sometime to visit it.  He agreed.  Then at the last moment caution began to assert itself, and I said, “When was the last time you saw the cabin?”