“Another man was handling the steam hammer.  I was standing at my regular place doing my regular work.  When that happened, I was cut down like a weed.  There wasn’t a man ever thought they would see me in that job again after that piece of steel cut me down.

“Also, I lost my right eye in the service when a hot cinder from the furnace flew in it while I was doing my regular work.  Then I was ruptured because of the handling of heavy pieces of iron at my work.  I still wear the truss.  You can see the places where my jaw was broke and you can see where my teeth were knocked out.

“Out of all the ups and downs, I stuck to the company just the same until they retired me in 1935 because of old age.  The retirement board wanted to know when I asked for a pension, why did I think I was entitled to a pension?  I told them because I had been injured through service with the company and had honorably finished so long a period of service.  It is now admitted that I am eligible to a railroad pension but there seems to still be a delay in paying it for some reason or other.

Support Now

“I get a little assistance from the Welfare, and I get some commodities.  If it wasn’t for that, I would be broke up.”

[HW:  Brooks-Baxter War was about 1872-74.]

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Malindy Robinson
                    8th Street, West Memphis, Arkansas
Age:  61

“I was born in Wilkerson County, Mississippi.  My ma never was sold, She said she was eleven years old when peace was declared.  Master Sims was grandma’s owner.  Grandpa was never sold.  He was born in Mississippi.  He was a mulatto man.  He was a man worked about the house and grandma was a field woman.  She said she never was whooped but worked mighty hard.  They was good to grandma.  She lived in the quarters.  My parents b’long to the same owner.  But far as I ever knowed they married long after freedom.  They was raised close to Woodville, Mississippi.”

Interviewer:  Mary D. Hudgins
Person interviewed:  Tom Robinson
Aged:  88
Home:  Lives with his son on outskirts of Hot Springs

As I entered Goldstein Grade school for colored I passed an old fellow sitting on the sidewalk.  There was somthing of that venerable, dignified, I’ve-been-a-slave look about him, so much of it that I almost stopped to question him.  Inside I entered a classroom, where a young woman was in conference with a couple of sheepish youngsters who had been kept in after school.

Did she know the whereabouts of any ex-slaves?  She beamed.  Only the other day an old man had appeared on the school grounds.  She appealed to her charges.  Didn’t they remember that she had told them about him and about what slavery had meant.  Sheepish looks were gone.  They were agog with interest.  Yes ’um, they remembered.  But none of the three knew his name or where to find him.