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3301 W. 14th Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age 76
"I was born in South Carolina and I was my mother's baby chile.
"Jacob Foster was our old master and he sold my mother over in east Tennessee. Now of cose she wasn't put upon
the block and sold. She was the house woman and spin and wove. After they sold her my father run off. Oh sure,
they caught him and I know old mistress said, 'Now, Jacob, if you want to go where Lydia is, you can go.' So they
sold him near her.
"I stayed with the Fosters till peace was declared and ever'thing was declared free. Then my father come after me.
"I can just sketch things. I try to forget it. My mother and father was pretty agreeable when they was set free.
"In Tennessee we stayed at the foot of Lookout Mountain and I can remember seein' the cannon balls.
"Here's the way I want to tell you. Some of the white people are as good to the colored people as they could be and
some of em are mean. My own folks do so bad I'm ashamed of em.
"So many of the colored of the South have emigrated to the North. I have lived there and I don't know why I'm here
now.
"Some of my color don't like that about the Jim Crow Law, but I say if they furnish us a nice comfortable coach I
would rather be with my own people. And I don't care to go to the white folks' church.
"My mother used to tell me how they used to hide behind trees so the boss man couldn't see em when they was
prayin' and at night put out the light and turn the pot down.
"I went to school in Tennessee. I never will forget it. I had a white teacher. He was in the War and he had a leg shot
off. I went through the sixth grade and was ready for the seventh Ray's Arithmetic. I walked four miles there and
four miles back---eight miles a day.
"I can remember too when my mother and father was baptized. I know mama come out of the water a shoutin'. Oh,
that was good times then. I felt better when I was under my mother cause when I married my life was over. I raised
about ten children.
"I remember when the Ku Klux come to my sister's house lookin' for her husband. I know I was in the bed and I
raised up. I was scared you know.
"When I hear some colored folks say they wish the old slavery times was back, I just knows they is lazy. They don't
want any responsibility."
Interviewer Mrs. Bernice Bowden"
