“My Indian grandma was mean.  I was feard of ’er.  She run us down and ketch us and whoop us.  She was tall slender woman.  She was mean as she could be.  She’d cut a cat’s head off fer no cause er tall.  Grandpa was kind.  He’d bring me candy back if he went off.  I cried after him.  I played with his girl.  We was about the same size.  Her name was Annie Mathis.  He was a Mathis.  He was a blacksmith too at Monticello and later he bought a farm three and one-half miles out.  I was raised on a farm.  Papa died there.  I washed and done field work all my life.  Grandma married Bob Mathis.

“Our owner was Sam and Lizzie Allen.  William Allen was his brother.  I think Sam had eight children.  There was a Claude Allen in Monticello and some grandchildren, Eva Allen and Lent Allen.  Eva married Robert Lawson.  I lived at Round Pond seventeen or eighteen years, then come to Forrest City.  I been away from them Allen’s and Mathis’ and Gill’s so long and ’bout forgot ’em.  They wasn’t none too good to nobody—­selfish.  They’d make trouble, then crap out of it.  Pack it on anybody.  They wasn’t none too good to do nothing.  Some of ’em lazy as ever was white men and women.  Some of ’em I know wasn’t rich—­poor as ‘Jobe’s stucky.’  I don’t know nothing ’bout ’em now.  They wasn’t good.

“I was a baby at freedom and I don’t know about that nor the Ku Klux.  Grandpa started a blacksmith shop at Monticello after freedom.

“My pa was a white man.  Richard Allen was mama’s husband.

“Me and my husband gats ten dollars from the Old Age Pension.  He is ninety-six years old.  He do a little about.  I had a stroke and ain’t been no ’count since.  He can tell you about the Cibil War.”

Interviewer’s Comment

I missed her husband twice.  It was a long ways out there but I will see him another time.

Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Alice Davis
                    1700 Vaugine Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  81

“I was born in Mississippi.  My mistress was Jane Davis.  She raised me.  She owned my mother too.

“When Miss Jane’s husband died, he willed the niggers to his childun and Mandy Paine owned me then.  When I was one month old they said I was so white Mandy Paine thought her brother was my father, so she got me and carried me to the meat block and was goin’ to cut my head off.  When the childun heard, they run and cried, ‘Mama’s goin’ to kill Harriet’s baby.’  Old mistress, Jane Davis, heard about it and she come and paid Miss Jane forty dollars for me and carried me to her home, and I slep right in the bed with her till the war ceasted.”

“Her childun was grown and they used to come by and say, ’Ma, why don’t you take that nigger out of your bed?’ and she’d reach over and pat me and say, ‘This the only nigger I got.’

“I stayed there two or three years after freedom.  I didn’t know what free meant.  Big childun all laugh and say, ’All niggers free, all niggers free.’  And I’d say, ‘What is free?’ I was lookin’ for a man to come.