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Kansas City, Missouri. Visiting at 1105 Louisiana St., Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Age 80
"Well, I was livin' than. I was born in Georgia. Honey, I don't know what year. I was born before the war. I was
about ten when freedom come. I don't remember when it started but I remember when it ended. I think I'm in the
80's --- that's the way I count it.
"My master was dead and my mistress was a widow --- Miss Sarah Childe. She had a guardeen. When the war
come, old mistress and her daughter refugeed to Mississippi. The guardian wouldn't let me go, said I was too young.
"My parents stayed on the plantation. My white folks' house was vacant and the Yankees come and used it for
headquarters. They never had put shoes on me and when the Yankees shot the chickens I'd run and get em. They
didn't burn up nothin', just kill the hogs and chickens and give us plenty.
"I didn't know what the war was about. You know chillun in them days didn't have as much sense as they got now.
"After freedom, my folks stayed on the place and worked on the shares. I want to school right after the war. I went
every year till we left there. We come to this country in seventy something. We come here and stopped at the
Cummins place. I worked in the field till I come to town bout fifty years age. Since then I cooked some and done
laundry work.
"I married when I was seventeen. Had six children. I been livin' in Kansas City twenty-three years. Followed my
boy up there. I like it up there a lot better than I do here. Ch Lord, yes, there are a lot of colored people in Kansas
City."
Interviewer Miss Irene Robertson"
