“I would drink any kind of water that I saw if I wanted a drink.  If the white folks poured out wash water and I wanted a drink that would do me.  It just made me fat and healthy.  Most we played was tussling, and couldn’t no boy throw me.  Nobody tried to whip me cause they couldn’t.

“We always cooked on fireplaces and our cake was always molasses cakes.  At Christmas time we got candy and apples, but these oranges and bananas and stuff like that wasn’t out then.  Bananas and oranges just been out a few years.  And sugar—­we did not know about that.  We always used sugar from molasses.  I don’t think sugar been in session long.  If it had I did not get it.

“I got married when I was pretty old, I lived with my husband eight years and he died.  I had some children, but I stole them.  The biggest work I ever done was farm and we sure worked.”

Interviewer:  Watt McKinney
Person interviewed:  Joe Clinton, Route 2, Marvell, Arkansas
Age:  86

“Uncle Joe” Clinton, on ex-Mississippi slave, lives on a small farm that he owns a few miles north of Marvell, Arkansas.  His wife has been dead for a number of years and he has only one living child, if indeed his boy, Joe, who left home fifteen years ago for Chicago and from whom no word has been received since, is still alive.  Due to the infirmities of age “Uncle Joe” is unable to work and obtains his support from the income received off the small acreage he rents each year to the Negro family with whom he lives.  Seated in an old cane-bottomed chair “Uncle Joe” was dozing in the warm sunshine of on afternoon in early October as I passed through the gate leading into the small yard enclosing his cabin.  Arousing himself on my approach, the old Negro offered me a chair.  I explained the purpose of my visit and this old man told me the following story: 

“I’se now past eighty-six year ole an’ was borned in Panola County, Mississippi ’bout three miles from Sardis.  My ole mars was Mark Childress, en he sure owned er heap of peoples, womens an’ mens bofe, en jus’ gangs of chillun.  I was real small when us lived in Panola County; how-some-ever I riccolect it well when us all lef’ dar and ole mars sold out his land and took us all to de delta where he had bought a big plantation ’bout two or three miles wide in Coahoma County not far from Friar Point.  De very place dat my mars bought and dat us moved to is what dey call now, de ‘Clover Hill Plantation’.  De fust year dat us lived in de delta, us stayed on de place what dey called de ’Swan Lake Place’.  Dat place is over dere close to Jonestown and de very place dat Mr. Billy Jones and his son John bought, en dats zackly how come dat town git its name.  It was named for Mr. John Jones.

“My mars, Mark Childress, he never was married.  He was a bachelor, en I’se tellin’ you dis, boss, he was a good, fair man and no fault was to be found wid him.  But dem overseers dat he had, dey was real mean.  Dey was cruel, least one of them was ’bout de cruelest white man dat I is ever seen.  Dat was Harvey Brown.  Mars had a nephew what lived with him named Mark Sillers.  He was mars’ sister’s son and was named for my mars.  Mr. Mark Sillers, he helped with de runnin’ of the place en sich times dat mars ’way from home Mr. Mark, he the real boss den.