“All de slaves that I remembers stayed on around in different parts of Mississippi after de War and engaged in farmin’, and workin’ on roads and streets, and other public work.  About forty years ago I come to Pope County, Arkansas wid my parents and has lived here ever’ since.

“I don’t remember nothin’ about de Klu Klux Klan or if our folks was ever bothered wid em.

“Yes suh, I keeps workin’ every day and likes to keep up my sewin’.  Plenty of it to do all de time—­jest like I’m doin’ today.  My health is purty good ceptin’ I has a sort of misery in my side.

“I draws a pension of $7.50 a month, but I dunno who sends it.

“I belongs to de Adventist Church, and I sure believes in always tellin’ de trufe and nofin’ but de trufe; we better tell de trufe here, for some of dese days we all gwine where nofin’ but de trufe will be accepted.

“No suh, I ain’t never took any interest in politics and ain’t never voted.

“Dese young’uns today is simply too much for me; I can’t understand em, and I dunno which way dey headed.  Some few of em seems to have sound common sense, but—­well, I just refuse to talk about em.”

Interviewer:  Pernella Anderson
Person Interviewed:  Edmond Smith
                    D Avenue
                    El Dorado, Ark. 
Age:  ?

“I was born in Arcadia, Louisiana a long, long time ago.  Now my work when I was a child was farmin’.  I did not stay a child long, I been grown ever since I was fourteen.  My father lived till I was eleven, and I thought since I was the oldest boy I could take his place of bossin’, but my mother would take me down a button hole lower whenever I got too high.

“Before my papa died we had a good livin’.  We lived with his mistress’s daughter, and we thought we lived in heaven.  My papa made all of the shoes and raised all of the cattle from which he got the hide.  We raised all the wool to make our wool clothes and made all of the clothes we wore.  And food—­we did not know what it was to go to a store to buy.  Didn’t have to do that.  You see, people now living out of paper sacks.  Every time they get ready to cook it’s go to the store.  We old timers lived out of our smokehouse.

“In there we had dried beef, cured pork, sugar from syrup, sweet potatoes, onions, Irish potatoes, plenty of dried fruit and canned fruit, peanuts, hickory nuts, walnuts; eggs in the henhouse and chickens on the yard, cows in the pen and milk and butter in the house.

“My mama even made our plow lines.  She had a spinning wheel and you know how to spin?—­you can make ropes for plow lines too.  Just twist the cotton and have it about six inches long and put it in the loom and let it go around and around.  You keep puttin’ the twisted cotton in the loom and step on the peddle and no sooner than done, that was worked in a rope.  Now, if you don’t know what I am talking about it is useless for me to tell you.