“The Ku Klux come ’round right smart.  Some had on skin coverings, cow heads and horns.  Some wore white sheets and black dresses on white horses.  They was scary looking.  They would whoop and kill too.  I was too scared to get caught off at night.

“Mother died.  I was traveling about.  I spent thirteen months in Mississippi.  Three winters right in Memphis.  I married in Mississippi.  I left two daughters in Georgia.  My wife died.  I come to Arkansas in 1902.  I live all alone.

“This present generation is traveling too fast.  It-is-to-be.  Fast traveling and education.  Times not good as it always have been b’fore that last war (World War).  When the white folks start jowing we black folks suffers.  It ain’t a bit our fault.  Education causes the black man to see he is bit (cheated) but he better not say a word.  It very good thing if it is used right.  Fast traveling is all right in its place.  But too many is traveling and they all want to be going.  We got into pretty fast time of it now.  It-is-to-be and it’s getting shoved on faster.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Ida Rigley, Forrest City, Arkansas
Age:  82

“I was born in Richmond, Virginia.  Colonel Radford and Emma Radford owned my mother.  They had a older girl, Emma and Betty and three boys.  I called her Miss Betty.

“My mother was Sylvia Jones and she had five children.  Bill Jones was my father.  He was a born free man and a blacksmith at Lynchburg, Virginia in slavery times.

“He asked Colonel Radford could he come to see my mama and marry her.  They had a wedding in Colonel Radford’s dining room and a preacher on the place married them.  They told me.  My father was a Presbyterian preacher.  I heard papa preach at Lynchburg.  He had a white principle but no white blood.  I never knew him very much till long after freedom.

“Miss Betty Radford was raising me for a house girl.  I was younger than her children.  Mother was a weaver for all on the place.  Old aunt Caroline was the regular cook but my mother helped to cook for hands he hired at busy seasons of the year.  My sisters lived in the quarters and mama slept with them.  She helped them.  They worked in the field some.  They was careful not to overwork young hands.  They cooked down at the quarters.  They had a real old man and woman to set about and see after the children and feed them.  The older children looked after the babies.  When Miss Betty went off visiting she would send me down there.  I did love it.

“Emma and Betty went to school at Richmond in a buggy.  They had a colored boy driver.  He was the carriage driver.  Emma and Betty would play with me too.  Miss Betty fed me all the time.  She made me a bonnet and I can’t get shed of my bonnet yet.  I got four bonnets now.

“When the white folks had a wedding it lasted a week.  They had a second day dress and a third day dress and had suppers and dinner receptions about among the kin folks.  They had big chests full of quilts and coverlets and counterpanes they been packing back.  Some of them would have big dances.  A wedding would last a week, night and day.