“The Ku Klux come to our house, called Uncle Billy—­that was my papa.  They got him up out of bed.  One man said, ’I ain’t had no water since the battle of Shiloah.’  He had pa draw water till daybreaking.  He had a horn he poured the water in.  We was all scared half to death.  Next morning there was a branch from the well done run off.  Something took place about a well.  Uncle Neel Anderson and Uncle Cush dug wells for their living.  They come after them.  Aunt Mandy had a baby.  They pitied her and Uncle Neel got so scared he run upstairs in his shirt tail and stuck his head in the cotton.  They found him that way.  Uncle Cush said, ‘Come on, Neel, and go with me.’  They whooped Uncle Cush in his shirt tail.  If you didn’t open the door they would break it in.

“I worked in the field in Georgia and Arkansas both.  I cooked since I was twelve years old.  I married when I was twenty years old.  I cooked here in Marianna eighteen years and I have cooked three Sunday dinners on Saturday and Sunday together.  I would make three dollars when I done that.  I had five children and I raised one boy.  I washed and ironed.  I get some help from the Welfare but I saved and my good old man saved so we would have plenty when we got old.  Folks burnt up two of my houses.  I got three more not fitten to live in till they are covered.  I got good property in Stuttgart but couldn’t pay the tax on it and ’bout to loose it.  I tried to get a loan and never could.  We niggers have a hard time.”

Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Rosa Simmons
                    823 West 13th Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  85?

“Yes mam, I was here during that Civil War.  I was fifteen years old then.  I was born In Tennessee.

“My boss man carried all the best hands to Texas and carried the scrub hands across Cypress Creek here in Arkansas, and that’s where I come.  I was fifteen when the Yankees come in on my boss man’s place, so you know now I ain’t no baby.  I thank God that He left me here to get old.

“Before the war.  I nussed two babies—­my mistress’ baby and her sister’s baby.  Yes’m we had a good master and mistress.  We didn’t suffer for nothin’ and we didn’t have no overseer over us.  Colonel Maples was my master.  No’m he wasn’t no soldier—­that was the name his mother give him.

“When my folks first come to Arkansas we lived in a cabin that just had a balin’ sack hangin’ in the door and one night a bear come in and my brother and I broke a board off the side and fell right out in the cane.  We all hollered so some folks come down and shot the bear.  I ain’t never seed a bear before and I didn’t know what it was.

“I ’member when the Yankees come to my boss man’s place.  They wanted to shake hands but he was scared to death and wouldn’t do it.  Another time the Yankees captured him and kept him three months.  They took his horse and he finally come home on a mule that didn’t have but three legs.  I guess the Yankees give him the mule.  He turned the old mule loose and said he never wanted to see another Yankee.  If he saw any kind of a white man comin’ down the road he run in the house and hid between the feather bed and the mattress.