“We was all scared when the War was on and glad it was over.  Mama died at the close.  Me and my sister sharecropped and made seven bales of cotton in one year.

“When freedom come on, our master and mistress told us.  We all cried.  Miss Mollie was next to our own mother.  She raised us.  We kept on their place.

“I cooked for Joe Campbell at Forrest City.  He had one boy I help to raise.  They think well of me.”

Interviewer’s Comment

Very light mulatto.  Bed fast and had two rolls and a cup of coffee.  Had been alone all day except when Home Aid girls bathed and cleaned her bed.  She is paralyzed.  She said she was hungry.

Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Nellie Dunne
                    3900 W. Sixth Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  78

“Yes ma’am, I was slavery born but free raised.  I was half as big as I is now. (She is not much over four feet tall—­ed.) Born in Silver Creek, Mississippi.  Yes ma’am.  They give ever’body on the place their ages but mama said it wasn’t no ’count and tore it up, so I don’t know what year I was born.

“Cy Magby—­mama was under his control.  He would carry us over to the white folks’ house every morning to see Miss Becky.  When old master come after us, he’d say, ‘What you gwine say?’ and we’d say, ‘One-two-three.’  Then we’d go over to old Mis’ and courtesy and say, ’Good morning, Miss Becky; good morning, Mars Albert; good morning, Mars Wardly.’  They was just little old kids but we had to call ’em Mars.

“What I know I’m gwine tell you, but you ain’t gwine ketch me in no tale.

“I ‘member they was gwine put us to carryin’ water for the hands next year, and that year we got free.  My mother shouted, ‘Now I ain’t lyin’ ‘bout dat.’  I sure ’member when they sot the people free.  They was just ready to blow the folks out to the field.  I ’member old Mose would blow the bugle and he could blow that bugle.  If you wasn’t in, you better get in.  Yes ma’am!  The day freedom come, I know Mose was just ready to blow the bugle when the Yankees begun to beat the drum down the road.  They knowed it was all over then.  That ain’t no joke.

“I was a full grown woman then I come to Arkansas; I wasn’t no baby.

“I went to school one month in my life.  That was in Mississippi.

“My Joe” (her husband) “just lack one year bein’ a graduate.  He went up here to that Branch Normal.  That boy had good learnin’.  He could a learnt me but he was too high tempered.  If I missed a word he would be so crabb’y.  So one night I throwed the book across the room and said, ‘You don’t need try to learn me no more.’”

Interviewer:  Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed:  William L. Dunwoody
                    2116 W. 24th Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age:  About 98

[HW:  Remembers Jeff Davis]