“Our master had no Ku Klux comin’ on our place.  He protected us, It wasn’t no different than slavery till I was nearly grown and a drove was walking going west to better place.  I got in with them and come on.  The Ku Klux had killed several Negroes.  That scared them all up.  I remember Tuscaloosa, Alabama when we cone through there.  We was walking—­a line a mile long—­marching and singing.  They was building back in a hurry seemed like to me.  The town had been burned up.  Some dropped out to get work along.  Some fell out sick.  Some so weak they died long the road.  Had to keep up.  Some stopped; they never caught up no more.  Mostly old folks or half starved folks couldn’t keep going.  The Ku Klux whoop and shoot you down for any little thing.  They started at night, fraid of the Yankees but they whooped and run them out and the Negroes left.  The Ku Klux got so bold they didn’t dress up nor go at night neither.  At first they was careful then they got bold.  The Yankee soldiers bout all they was afraid of.  The Negroes found out who some of the Ku Klux was and told the Yankees but it didn’t do much good.  After bout twelve years all the Yankees gone back home.  The white folks down in Carolina thought bout as little of them as Negroes.  They wouldn’t let them have no land if they did have money to pay any price for it.  They didn’t want them living amongst them.  They say they rether have a Negro family.

“The biggest Negro uprisin’ I ever seed was at freedom.  They riz up in a hurry.

“I had to stop and work all along.  I got to Arkansas in 1881.  I never went no further.  I been all my life farmin’.  I cut and sell wood, clear land.  The best living was when I farmed and sold wood.  I bought a 10 acre farm and cleared it up graduly, then I sold it fer $180.00 cause I got blind and couldn’t see to farm it.  I had a house on it.  I own this here house (a splendid home).  My daughter and her husband come to take care me.  They come from Cincinatti here.  She made $15.00 a week up there three years.  I get $8.00 a month now from the Social Welfare.  If I could see I could make money.

“I never seen times like this.  Sin is causin’ it.  Unrest and selfishness.  No neighborly spirit.  I don’t bother no young folks.  I don’t know how they will come out.  If they caint get a big price they won’t work and the white folks are doing their own work, and don’t help like they did.  I could get along if I could see.  I had a light stroke keeps me from talkin’ good, I hear that.”

Interviewer:  Thomas Elmore Lucy
Person interviewed:  Henry Russell, Russellville, Arkansas
Age:  72

“My father’s name was Ed Russell, and he was owned by Dr. Tom Russell, de first pioneer settler of Russellville—­de’ man de town got its name from.

“My name is Henry, and some folks call me ‘Bud.’  I was born at Old Dwight de 28th of October, 1866.  Yes suh, dat date is correct.

“I was too young to remember much about happenings soon after de War, but I kin ricollect my father belongin’ to de militia for awhile during de Reconstruction days.  Both Negroes and whites were members of de militia.