“Oh, yes ma’am, I believe in all the old signs.

“You can take a rabbit foot and a black cat’s bone from the left fore shoulder, and you take your mouth and scrape all the meat offin that bone, and you take that bone and sew it up in a red flannel—­I know what I’m talkin’ ’bout now—­and you tote that in your pocket night and day—­sleep with it—­and it brings you good luck.  But the last one I had got burnt up when my house burnt down and I been goin’ back ever since.

“And these here frizzly chicken are good luck.  If you have a black frizzly chicken and anybody put any poison or anything down in your yard, they’ll scratch it up.”

Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Jeff Davis
                    1100 Texas Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  85
[May 31 1938]

“What’s my name?  I got a good name.  Name’s Jeff Davis.  Miss Mary Vinson was some of my white folks.

“Oh Lord yes, I was here in slavery times—­runnin’ around like you are—­ten years old.  I’m eighty-five even.

“Soldiers used to give me dimes and quarters.  Blue coats was what they called ’em.  And the Rebs was Gray.

“Yankees had a gun as long as from here to there.  Had cannon-balls weighed a hundred and forty-four pounds.

“I’m a musician—­played the fife.  Played it to a T. Had two kinds of drums.  Had different kinds of brass horns too.  I ’member one time they was a fellow thought he could beat the drum till I took it.

“Had plenty to eat.  Old master fed us plenty.

“Oh, I used to do a heap of work in a day.

“I was ’bout ten when freedom come.  Yes ma’am.”

Interviewer:  Watt McKinney
Person interviewed:  Jeff Davis
                    R.F.D. five miles south, Marvell, Arkansas
Age:  78

“I’se now seventy-eight year old an’ gwine on seventy-nine.  I was borned in de Tennessee Valley not far from Huntsville, Alabama.  Right soon atter I was borned my white folks, de Welborns, dey left Alabama an’ come right here to Phillips County, Arkansas, an’ brung all the darkies with ’em, an’ that’s how come me here till dis very day.  I is been here all de time since then an’ been makin’ crops er cotton an’ corn every since I been old enough.  I is seen good times an’ hard times, Boss, all endurin’ of those years followin’ de War, but de worst times I is ever seen hab been de last several years since de panic struck.

“How-some-ever I is got ’long first rate I reckon ’cause you know I owns my own place here of erbout eighty acres an’ has my own meat an’ all such like.  I really ain’t suffered any for nothin’.  Still they has been times when I ain’t had nary a cent an’ couldn’t get my hands on a dime, but I is made it out somehow.  Us old darkies what come up with de country, an’ was de fust one here, us cleared up de land when there wasn’t nothin’ here much, an’ built de log houses, an’ had to git ’long on just what us could raise on de land an’ so on.  Couldn’t mind a panic bad as de young folks what is growed up in de last ginnyration.