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DeValls Bluff, Arkansas
Age Born in 1868
"I was born in Clarendon in 1868. My mother was sold to Judge Allen at Bihalia, N. C. and brought to Arkansas.
The Cunninghams brought father from Tennessee when they moved to this State. His mother died when he was
three months old and the white mistress had a baby three weeks older on him so she raised my father. She nursed
him with Gus Cunningham. My father had us call them Grandma, Aunt Indiana, and Aunt Imogene.
"When I was seven or eight years old I went to see them at Roe. When I first come to know how things was, father
had bought a place -- home and piece of land west of Clarendon and across the river. I don't know if the
Cunninghams ever give him some land or a mule or cow or not. He never said. His owner was Master John Henry
Cunningham.
"My father was a medium light man but not as light as I am. My mother was lighter than I em. I heard her say her
mother did the sewing for all on her owner's place in North Carolina. My mother was a house girl. The reason she
was put up to be sold she was hired out and they put her in the field to work. A dispute rose over her some way so
her owner sold her when she was eighteen years old. Her mother was crying and begging them not to sell her but it
didn't do no good she said. After the war was over she got somebody to write back and ask about her people. She
got word about her sister and aunt and uncle. She never seen none of them after she was sold. Never did see a one
of her people again. She was sold to Judge Allen for a house girl.
His wife was dead. My mother sewed at Judge Allen's and raised two little colored children he bought somewhere
cheap. He had a nephew that lived with him.
"Mr. Felix Allen and some other of his kin folks, one of them made me call him 'Tuscumby Bob.' I said it funny and
they would laugh at me. Judge Allen went to Memphis and come home and took smallpox and died. I heard my
mother say she seen him crying, sitting out under a tree. He said he recken he would give smallpox to all the colored
folks on his place. Some of them took smallpox.
"We have been good living colored folks, had a right smart. I farmed, cooked, sewed a little along. I washed. I been
living in DeValls Bluff 38 years. I got down and they put me on the relief. Seems I can't get back to going agin.
"Don't get me started on this young generation. I don't want to start talking about how they do. Times is right
smartly changed somehow. Everybody is in a hurry to do something and it turns out they don't do nuthin'. Times is
all in a stir it seem like to me.
"I don't vote. I get $8 and demodities and I make the rest of my keepin'."
Interviewer Miss Irene Robertson"
