“When freedom come on, the owners told them they was free.  They didn’t leave and then they made a way for them to stay on.  They stayed on.

“I was grown when we come to this state but we lived in Tennessee a few years.  Mama had had nine children by that time.  All was dead, but us two girls and my brother.  We come to Arkansas with our parents.  We heard the land was new and rich.  I wasn’t married then.

“I’ve worked hard in the field all my life till last year or so.  I still do work.

“Times is tough here I tell you.  I get a little help, six dollars.

“Some of the young folks won’t work, some not able to work.  If anybody saving a thing I don’t hear about it.”

Interviewer:  Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Virginia Sims
                    1121 N. Magnolia
                    Pine Bluff, Ark. 
Age:  93
Occupation:  Retired Midwife

“I was born in 1844.  I was twenty when peace was declared.  I was born in Virginia.  Yes ma’am, but I was sold, put up on a stump just like you sell hogs to the highest speculator.  I was sold with my mother from a man named Joe Poindexter and bought by Tom Murphy and brought to Arkansas.  My God, every Murphy round here knows me.  Yes’m, my mother and me was sold.  Papa wasn’t sold, but he come here the second year after surrender.

“I was old enough to spin twelve cuts a day—­had it to do.  And I could weave cloth just like they do now.

“Had seven brothers and I’m the onliest girl.

“I can recollect when Miss Mary Poindexter died.  They said I was two.

“My mistis in Arkansas was Mrs. Susan Murphy.  That was out on the plantation, we didn’t live in no city—­my God, no!

“The way my people acts now, they looks foolish.  I never heard a person curse till I come up here.  I was a grown young lady nineteen years old when our master lowed us to get out and cote.  You better not.  The first husband I married I was nineteen goin’ on twenty.  My husband fought on the Southern side.  His master sent him as a substitute.

“My master put good clothes on me, I’d say.  ’Master.  I wants a dress like so and so, and I wants a pair of shoes.’  Yes ma’am, and he got em for me.  I was forty-three and married to a nigger fore I knowed what twas to cry for underwear.

“I member they was a white man called Dunk Hill and he said, ’Virginia, who freed the niggers?’ I said, ‘God freed the niggers.’  He said, ’Now, Virginia, you goin’ be just as free as I am some day!’

“General Shelby’s troops was comin’ on this side the ribber.  That’s one time I was scared.  Never seed so many men in my life.  They wanted something to eat.  Mama cooked all night.  They was nine hundred and somethin’.  I toted canteens all night long.

“I member when they had that Marks Mill battle.  My husband was there and he sent word for me to come cause he had the measles and they had went in on him.  I had to put on boots and wade mud.  Young folks now ain’t got no sense.  I see so many folks now with such dull understanding.  Marks Mill was the onliest part of the war I was in.