“Some things seem all right and some don’t.  Times seem good now but wait till dis winter.  Folks will go cold and hungry again.  Some folks good and some worse than in times b’fore.”

Interviewer’s Comment

Gets a pension check.

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Fanny Finney, Brinkley, Arkansas
Age:  74 plus

“I was born in Marshall County, Mississippi.  Born during slavery.  I b’long to Master John Rook.  He died during the Civil War.  Miss Patsy Rook raised me.  I put on her shoes, made up her bed, fetched her water and kindling wood.

“My parents named Catherine and Humphrey Rook.  They had three children.

“When Master John Rook died they divided us.  They give me to Rodie Briggs.  John and Lizzie was Master John’s other two children.  He had three children too same as ma.  My young master was a ball player.  I’d hear them talk.  Ma was a good house girl.  They thought we’d all be like ’er.  When I was three years old, I was the baby.  They took ma and pa off keep the Yankees from stealing then.  Miss Patsy took keer me.  When ma and pa come home I didn’t know them a tall.  They say when they come back they went to Louziana, then ’bout close to Monticello in dis state, then last year they run ’em to Texas.

“Pa was jus’ a farmer.  Gran’ma lived down in the quarters and kept my sisters.  I’d start to see ’em.  Old gander run me.  Sometimes the geese get me down and flog me wid their wings.  One day I climbed up and peeped through a crack.  I seen a lot of folks chopping cotton.  It looked so easy.  They was singing.

“Betsy done the milking.  I’d sit or stand ’round till the butter come.  She ax me which I wanted, milk or butter.  I’d tell her.  She put a little sugar on my buttered bread.  It was so good I thought Sometimes she’d fill my cup up with fresh churned milk.

“I et in the kitchen; the white folks et in the dining-room.  I slep’ in granny’s house, in granny’s bed, in the back yard.  Granny’s name was ‘Aunt’ Hannah.  She was real old and the boss cook on our place.  She learnt all the girls on our place how to cook.  Kept one or two helping her all the time.  It was her part to make them wash their faces every morning soon as they started a fire and keep their hands clean all the time er cooking.  Granny wore her white apron around her waist all time.  Betty would make them help her milk.  They had to wash the cows udder before they ever milked a drop.  Miss Patsy learnt her black folks to be clean.  Every one of them neat as a pin sure as you born.

“I was so little I couldn’t think they got whoopings.  I never heard of a woman on the place being whooped.  They all had their work to do.  Grandma cut out and made pants for all the men on the whole farm.

“Old man Rook raised near ’bout all his niggers.  He bought whiskey by the barrel.  On cold mornings they come by our shop to get their sacks.  I heard them say they all got a drink of whiskey.  His hands got to the field whooping and singing.  The overseers handed it out to them.  The women didn’t get none as I knowed of.