“Mother belonged to him, yes’m.

“I tell you the truf, what little I used to remember I done forgot it.  I just didn’t try to keep up with it.  I wasn’t concerned and just didn’t try to keep up with it.

“I know our folks stayed there a while.  First place we went to after the War was Tennessee.

“I don’t know how long I been here—­I been here a time though.

“Yes’m, I went to school several terms.

“I was married in Arkansas.  My folks heard about Arkansas bein’ such a rich country, so they come to Arkansas.

“I farmed a long time and then I done housework.

“Deal a times I don’t know what to think of this younger generation.  I sits down sometimes and tries to study ’em out, but I fails.

“Well, what the old folks goin’ to get out of this?”

Interviewer:  Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed:  Henrietta Evelina Smith
                    1714 Pine Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 

“I was born in Louisiana in East Felicie Parish near Baton Rouge on the twenty-eighth day of December.  My mother’s name was Delia White.  Her maiden name was Delia Early.  My father’s name was Henry White.  My mother’s father was named Amos Early.  My mother’s mother’s name was Julia.  My father’s father was named Tom White and his mother was named Susan.

“My father and mother both belonged to the Eason’s.  I don’t know how they spelled it.  Eason’s daughter married Munday and my uncle bought this white man’s place years after freedom.  That is not far from Clinton—­about four or five miles.  It is three miles from Ethel, Louisiana.

“Amos, my grandfather, was the wagoneer on the old place.  Father, he used to drive the wagon too.  He’d haul cotton to Baton Rouge and things like that.  He would run off and stay five or six months.  I have heard them talk about how he used to come back and bring hogs and one thing and another that he had found out in the woods.  He would run off because the overseer would whip him.  But he was such a good working man that once or twice, the boss man turned off his overseer on account of him.  There wasn’t nothing against his work.  He just wouldn’t take a blow.  Most of the times after he had been out a while the boss man would tell the hands to tell Amos that if he would come on home they wouldn’t whip him for running off.

“My grandmother’s mother on my father’s side was named Melissa.  I think that was her name.  My father’s mother was named Susan like I told you.

She was part Indian—­better work hand never was.  But she wouldn’t be conquered neither.  When they got ready to whip her, it would be half a day before they could take her.  When they did get her, they would whip her so they would have to raise her in a sheet.  The last time they whipped her, it took her nearly a year to get over it.  So the white man just turned her loose and told her she was free.  She went on off and we never did know what became of her.