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Age 78 Residence Foot of King Street on river bank,
no number; Pine Bluff, Arkansas
"Come right in and I'll tell you what I know. I was born in Tennessee in slavery days. No ma'm I do not know what
year, because I can't read or write.
"I know who my mistress was. She was Miss Lucy Ann Dillard. She come from Virginia. She was an old maid and
she was very nice. Some very good blooded people come from Virginia. She brought my mother with her from
Virginia before I was born.
"My father belonged to the Crowders and mammy belonged to Miss Lucy Ann Dillard. They wouldn't sell pappy to
Miss Lucy and she wouldn't sell mammy to the Croxders, so mammy lost sight of him and never married again. She
just married that time by the consent of the white folks. In them times they wasn't no such thing as a license for the
colored folks.
"I remember my mother milked and tended to the cows and issued out the milk to the colored folks.
"Miss Lucy lived in town and come out once a week to see to us. When the overseer was there she come out
oftener. We stayed right on there after the war, till we come to Arkansas. I was betwixt eleven and twelve years old.
"And we was fooled in this place. A man my mother knowed had been here two years. He come back to Tennessee
and, oh Lord, you could do this and do that, so we come here.
"First year we come here we all got down sick. When we got well we had to go to work and I didn't have a chance
to go to school.
"I've seen my mother wring her hands and cry and say she wished she was back in Tennessee where Lucy Ann
Dillard was.
"When I got big enough I went to work for Ben Johnson and stayed there fifteen years. I never knew when my
payday was. Mammy come and got my pay and give me just what she wanted me to have. And as for runnin' up and
down the streets -- why mammy would a died first. She's dead and in her grave but I give her credit -- she took the
best of care of us. She had three girls and they didn't romp up and down the big road neither.
"I just looks at the young folks now. If they had been comin' along when I was, they'd done been tore all to pieces.
They ain't raisin' em now, they're just comin' up like grass and weeds. And as for speakin' to you now -- just turn
their heads. Now I'm just fogy nuf that if I mast you out, I'll say good mornin' or good evenin'.
"If it hadn't been for the Yankees, we'd have the yoke on our necks right today. The Lord got into their hearts.
"Now I don't feel bitter gainst people. Ain't no use to hold malice gainst nobody -- got to have a clean heart. Folks
does things cause they's ignorant and don't know no better and they shouldn't be crowned with it.
"But I'll tell you the truth -- I've heard my nother say she was happier in slavery times than after cause she said the
Dillards certainly took good care of her. Southerners got a heart in em."
Interviewer: Mary D. Hudgins"
