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"Lord, honey, what is it you want to know? I come from middle Tennessee about fifty years ago. I was only three
years old when the war broke out but I remember me and my sister running and hiding under the bed from the
soldiers. My mother was sold during the war. Her white folks sold her so she could be with my father and I was sold
with her. Our white folks was so good to us. They never had no overseer over his colored people. He always made
my father overseer over his colored people. When the war closed he told his colored people they was free and could
stay on the place and he would give them one-half of what they made on the farm. He always furnished all the seed
for the crop. My mother had a loom and always done all the weaving for the family; the others would spin. Father
was foreman. He worked and seen after the hands too. After father died we come to Arkansas to our two brothers
who had come a few years before hand.
"Honey, we sung 'Dixie', 'Carry Me Back to Old Virginia', all them old songs and yes, honey, we sung 'Yankey
Doodle' too.
"I think the younger generation is terrible. Looks to me like they are living in another world. I don't know what is to
become of them. They says sometimes the coming generation will be our church. I tells them looks to me like we
ain't going to have no church."
Age 79
McCloud, Lizzie 1203 E. Short 13th Street Pine Bluff, Arkansas (Mrs. Bernice Bowden)
