“In ’68 she worked with a colored man on the shares.

“I started to school in ’67.  A colored man come in there and established a private school.  I went in ’67, ’68, and ’69 and then I didn’t go any more till ’71 and ’72.  I got along pretty well in it.  I know mine from the other fellows.  I can write and any common business I can take care of.

“We had two or three men run off and joined the Yankees.  One got drowned fore he got there and the other two come back after freedom.

“My mother worked for wages after freedom.  She got three bales of cotton for her services and mine and she boarded herself.

“In ’74 she rented.  I still stayed with her.  She lived with me all her life and died with me.

“I come over to Arkansas the twenty-third day of December in 1916.  Worked for Long-Bell Lumber Company till they went down.  Then I Just jobbed around.  I can still work a little but not like I used to.

“I used to vote Republican when I was interested in politics but I have no interest in it now.

“The younger generation is faster now than they was in my time.  They was more constrictions on the young people.  When I was young I had a certain hour to come in at night.  Eight o’clock was my hour—­not later than that.  I think the fault must be in the times but if the parents started in time they could control them.

“I remember one time a cow got after my father and he ran, but she caught up with him.  He fell down and she booed him in the back.  My grandfather come up with a axe and hit her in the head.  She just shook her head and went off.

“Outside of my people, the best friend I ever met up with was a white man.”

Interviewer:  Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed:  Ella Daniels
                    1223 W. Eleventh Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age:  74, or over

[HW:  Food Rationed]

“I was born in North Carolina, in Halifax County, in the country near Scotland Neck.  My mother’s name was Nellie Doggett.  Her name was Hale before she married.  My father’s name was Tom Doggett.  I never did see any of my grand people.

“My mother’s master was named Lewis Hale.  He was a farmer.  He was fairly good himself but the overseers wasn’t.  They have mistreated my mother.  All I know is what I heard, of course; I wasn’t old enough to see for myself.  My mother was a field hand.  She worked on the farm.  My father did the same thing.

“My father and mother belonged to different masters.  I forgot now who my father said he belonged to.  My father didn’t live on the same plantation with my mother.  He just came and visited her from time to time.

Food

“Sometimes they didn’t have any food to eat.  The old missis sometimes saw that my mother’s children were fed.  My mother’s master was pretty good to her and her children, but my father’s master was not.  Food was issued every week.  They give molasses, meal, a little flour, a little rice and along like that.