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309 Missouri Street; Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age 104
"Yes'm, I used to be a slave. My mother belonged to Mrs. Lindsey. One day when I was ten years old, my old
mistress take me over to her daughter and say 'I brought you a little nigger gal to rock de cradle.' I'se one hundred
and four years old now. Miss Etta done rit it down in the book for me.
"One time a lady from up North ask me did I ever get whipped. Honey, I ain't goin' tell you no lie. The overseer
whipped us. Old mistress used to send me to her mother to keep the Judge from whippin' me. Old Judge say 'Nigger
need whippin' whether he do anything or not.'
"Some of the hands run away. Old Henry run away and hide in the swamp and say he goin' stay till he bones turn
white. But he come back when he get hongry and then he run away again.
"When the war come some of the slaves steal the Judge's hosses and run away to Pine Bluff and he didn't never find
'em. The Judge think the Yankees goin' get everything he got so we all left Arkansas and went to Texas. We in
Texas when freedom come. We come back to Arkansas and I stay with my white folks awhile but I didn't get no pay
so I got a job cookin' for a colored woman.
"I been married fo' times. I left my las' husband. I didn't leave him cause he beat me. I lef' him cause he want too
many.
"No'm I never seen no Ku Klux. I heard 'bout 'em but I never seen none that I knows of. When I used to get a pass
to go to 'nother plantation I always come back fo' dark.
"This younger generation is beyond my onderstanding. They is gettin' weaker and wiser.
"I been ready to die for the last thirty years. 'Mary (her granddaughter with whom she lives), show the lady my
shroud.' I keeps it wrepped up in blue cloth. They tells me at the store to do that to keep is from turning yellow.
'Show her that las' quilt I made.' Yes'm I made this all by myself. I threads my own needle, too, and cuts out the
pieces. I has worked hard all my life.
"Now the Welfare gives me my check. My granddaughter good to me. I goes to church on the first and third
Sundays.
"Lady, I glad you come to see me and God bless you. Goo' bye!"
Interviewer Miss Irene Robertson"
