“We never was give a thing at freedom but papa was buying a place from his master and got in debt and sold it.  I don’t own a home.

“I have high blood pressure and the Welfare gives me $8 a month.  I’m not able to work.  When you been used to a good plenty it is mighty bad to get mighty near helpless.”

Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Senia Rassberry
                    810 Catalpa Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  84

“Yes’m, I know what I hear em say.  Well, in slavery times I helped make the soldiers’ clothes.

“I was born on the old Jack Hall place on the Arkansas River in Jefferson County.

“I know I was ’leven years old when peace declared.  I reckon I can member fore the War started.  I know I was bastin’ them coats and pants.

“My old master’s name was Jack Hall and old mistress’ name was Priscilla.  Oh, yes’m, they was good to me—­just as good to me as they could be.  But ever’ once in awhile they’d call me and say, ‘Senia.’  I’d say, ‘What you want?’ They say, ‘Wasn’t you out there doin’ so and so?’ I’d say, ‘No.’  They say, ‘Now, you’re tellin’ a lie’ and they’d whip me.

“I was the house girl, me and my sister.  My mammy was the cook.

“Old master had two plantations.  Sometimes he had a overseer and sometimes he didn’t.

“Oh, they had plenty to eat, hog meat and cracklin’ bread.  Yes ma’am.  I loved that, I reckon.  I et so much of it then I don’t hardly ever want it now.  They had so much to eat.  Blackberry cobbler?  Oh Lawd.

“How many brothers and sisters?  Me?  My dear, I don’t know how many I had but I heard my mother say that all the chillun she did have, that she had ’leven chillun.

“Our white folks took us to Texas durin’ of the War.  I think my old master said we stayed there three years.  My mother died there with a congestive chill.

“We come back here to Arkansas after freedom and I think my father worked for Jack Hall three or four years.  He wouldn’t let him leave.  He raised my father and thought so much of him.  He worked on the shares.

“After freedom I went to school.  I learnt to read and write but I just wouldn’t do it.  I learnt the other chillun though.  I did that.  I was into ever’thing.  I learnt them that what I could do.  Blue Back?  Them’s the very ones I studied.

“In slavery times I had to rise as early as I could.  Old master would give me any little thing around the house that I wanted.  They said he was too old to go to war.  Some of the hands run off but I didn’t know where they went to.

“Some of the people was better off slaves than they was free.  I don’t study bout things now but sometimes seems like all them things comes before me.

“I used to hear em talkin’ bout old Jeff Davis.  I didn’t know what they was talkin’ bout but I heered em.

“I was sixteen when I married and I had eleven chillun.  All dead but four.