“When we was in Fort Pickens I ’member they had a poll parrot—­some of the officers had trained it to say ’Corporal of the guard, Jim Spikes, post No. 1.”  Sometimes I would draw my gun like I was going to shoot and the poll parrot would say, ‘Jim, don’t you shoot me!’ They got plenty a sense.

“The war was funny and it wasn’t funny.  Well, it was funny for the side that won when we had scrummishes (skirmish).  I never was captured but I hoped capture a lot.

“I stayed in the war till I was mustered out in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  I was a good big fellow then.  Oh Lord yes, I knowed most anything.

“After that I went to Memphis and then I come to Arkansas and went to farming with some white fellows named French.  The river overflowed and we lost ’bout all the cotton.

“The government gives me a pension now cause I was a soldier.  Yes’m it comes in right nice—­it does that.”

Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Kittie Stanford
                    309 Missouri Street; Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  104

“Yes’m, I used to be a slave.  My mother belonged to Mrs. Lindsey.  One day when I was ten years old, my old mistress take me over to her daughter and say ‘I brought you a little nigger gal to rock de cradle.’  I’se one hundred and four years old now.  Miss Etta done writ it down in the book for me.

“One time a lady from up North ask me did I ever get whipped.  Honey, I ain’t goin’ tell you no lie.  The overseer whipped us.  Old mistress used to send me to her mother to keep the Judge from whippin’ me.  Old Judge say ‘Nigger need whippin’ whether he do anything or not.’

“Some of the hands run away.  Old Henry run away and hide in the swamp and say he goin’ stay till he bones turn white.  But he come back when he get hongry and then he run away again.

“When the war come some of the slaves steal the Judge’s hosses and run away to Pine Bluff and he didn’t never find ’em.  The Judge think the Yankees goin’ get everything he got so we all left Arkansas and went to Texas.  We in Texas when freedom come.  We come back to Arkansas and I stay with my white folks awhile but I didn’t get no pay so I got a job cookin’ for a colored woman.

“I been married fo’ times.  I left my las’ husband.  I didn’t leave him cause he beat me.  I lef’ him cause he want too many.

“No’m I never seen no Ku Klux.  I heard ’bout ’em but I never seen none that I knows of.  When I used to get a pass to go to ’nother plantation I always come back fo’ dark.

“This younger generation is beyond my onderstanding.  They is gettin’ weaker and wiser.

“I been ready to die for the last thirty years.  ’Mary (her granddaughter with whom she lives), show the lady my shroud.’  I keeps it wropped up in blue cloth.  They tells me at the store to do that to keep it from turning yellow.  ‘Show her that las’ quilt I made.’  Yes’m I made this all by myself.  I threads my own needle, too, and cuts out the pieces.  I has worked hard all my life.