“I know I been converted but that made me stronger.  My son is a siner.  He knowed about how I was crippled.  He said you ought use your stick.  He didn’t know what to think about it.  Young folks don’t believe because they aint had no experience with prayer and they don’t know what can happen.

“I done told you all I know.  I don’t want to tell you anything I don’t know.  If you don’t know nothing, it is best to say you don’t.”

Everything which Orleana Finger states has the earmarks of being true.  There are a great many things which she does not state which I believe that she could state if she wished.  She evidently has a long list of things which she things should be unmentioned.  She has two magic phrases with which she dismisses all subjects which she does not wich to discuss: 

“I don’t remember that.”

“I better quit talking now before I start lying.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Molly Finley, Honey Creek
                    3-1/2 miles from Mesa, Arkansas
Age:  Born 1865

“My master was Captain Baker Jones and his pa was John Jones.  Miss Mariah was Baker Jones’ wife.  I believe the old man’s wife was dead.

“My parents’ name was Henry ("Clay”) Harris and Harriett Harris.  They had nine children.  We lived close to the Post (Arkansas Post).  Our nearest trading post was Pine Bluff.  And the old man made trips to Memphis and had barrels sent out by ship.  We lived around Hanniberry Creek.  It was a pretty lake of water.  Some folks called it Hanniberry Lake.  We fished and waded and washed.  We got our water out of two springs further up.  I used to tote one bucket on my head and one in each hand.  You never see that no more.  Mama was a nurse and house woman and field woman if she was needed.  I made fires around the pots and ’tended to mama’s children.

“We lived on the Jones place years after freedom.  I was born after freedom.  We finally left.  I cried and cried to let’s go back.  Only place ever seem like home to me yet.  We went to the Cummings farm.  They worked free labor then.  Then we went to the hills.  Then we seen hard times.  We knowed we was free niggers pretty soon back in them poor hills.

“I was more educated than some white folks up in them hills.  I went to school on the river.  My teacher was a white man named Mr. Van Sang.

“Mama belong to the Garretts in Mississippi.  She was sold when she was about four years old she tole me.  There had been a death and old mistress bought her in.  Master Garrett died.  Then she give her to her daughter.  She was her young mistress then.  Old mistress didn’t want her to bring her but she said she might well have her as any rest of the children.  Mama never set eyes on none of her folks no more.  Her father, she said, was light and part Enjun (Indian).

“John Prior owned papa in Kentucky.  He sold him, brother and his mother to a nigger trader’s gang.  Captain Jones bought all three in Tennessee.  He come brought them on to Arkansas.  He was a field hand.  He said they worked from daylight till after dark.