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610 E. Eighteenth, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age 89
"Yes ma'am, this is Eliza. I was born in slave times and I knowed how to work good.
"You know I was grown in time of the War 'cause I married the first year of freedom.
"Belonged to a widow named Edna Mitchell. That was in Tennessee near Jackson. Oh Lawd, my missis was good to
all her niggers--if you should call 'em that.
"She had two men and three women. My mother was the cook. Let's see--Sarah was one, Jane was two, and Eliza
was three. (I was Eliza.) Then there was Doc and Uncle Alf. I reckon he was our uncle. Anyway we all called him
Uncle Alf. He managed the business--he was the head man and Doc was next. And Miss Edna raised us all to
grown.
"Now I'm tellin' you right straight along. I try to tell the truth. I forgits and I can't remember ever'thing like it ought
to be but I hit at it.
"Things is hard this year and I don't know how come. I guess it's 'cause folks is so wicked. They is livin' fast--black
and white.
"How many chillun? Now, you'd be s'prised. I hardly ever tell folks how many. I had fifteen; I was a good breeder.
But they is all dead but one, and they ain't doin' me no good. Never raised but two. Most of 'em just died when they
was born.
"I'd a been better off if I had stayed single a while longer and went to school and learned how to read and write and
figger. But I went to another kind of a school.
"But I sure has been blest. I been here a long time, got a chile to cook me a little bread--don't have to worry 'bout
dat.
"I had to send clean back to where I j'ined the Metropolitan to get my age. That was in Cairo, Illinois 'cause I'd lived
there fifteen years. But when my daughter and her husband come here and got settled, why I come to finish it out.
"Yes ma'am, I sure have worked hard. I've plowed, split wood, and done a little bit of ever'thing. But it was all done
since freedom. In slavery times I was a house girl. I tell you I was a heap better off a slave than I was free.
"After freedom we had to go and get what we could get to do and work hard.
"They used to talk 'bout ha'nts and squinch owls. Say it was a sign of somebody dead. But I don't believe in that.
'Course what I don't believe in somebody else does."
Interviewer Samuel S. Taylor"
Jones, Eliza -- Additional Interview
"My daughter has got a birthmark. It's a bunch of gray hair in the back of her head. She was born with a bunch of
gray hair.
"Well, I think the reason is cause I was workin' pickin' the burs out of wool 'fore she was born."
Age 89
Justice, Mollie Clarksville, Arkansas (Miss Sallie C. Miller)
Jones, Eliza -- Additional Interview
"My daughter has got a birthmark. It's a bunch of gray hair right in the back of her head. She was born with a bunch
of gray hair.
"Well, I think the reason is 'cause I was workin' pickin' the burs out of wool 'fore she was born."
This information given by Eliza Jones; Place of residence - 610 E. Eighteenth, Pine Bluff, Arkansas; Age - 89.
Name of Interviewer Mrs. Bernice Bowden"
