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DeValls Bluff, Ark.
Age 83
"I am 83 years old. My mother come from Georgia. She left all her kin. Our owner was Dave and Luiza Johnson.
They had two girls and a boy - Meely, Colly and Tobe. My mother's aunt come to Memphis in slavery time and
come to see us. She cooked and bought herself free. The folks what owned her hired her out till they got paid her
worth. She died in Memphis. I never heard father say where he come from or who owned him. He lived close by
somewhere.
"My mother cooked. Me and Dave Johnson's boy nursed together. When they had company, Miss Iniza was so
modest she wouldn't let Tobe have 'titty'. He would come lead my mother behind the door and pull at her till she
would take him and let him nurse. She said he would lead her behind the door.
"I don't remember freedom. I know the Ku Klux was bad around Augusta, Arkansas. One time when I was little a
crowd of Ku Klux come at about dusk. They told Dave Johnson they wanted water. He told them there was a well
full but not bother that woman and her children in the kitchen. Dave Johnson was a Ku Klux himself. They went on
down the road and met a colored woman. She knowed their horses. She called some of them by name and they let
her alone.
"One time a colored man was settin' by the fire. His wife was sick in bed. He seen the Ku Klux coming and said
'Lord God, here comes the devil.' He run off. They didn't bother her. She told them she was sick. When she got up
and well she wouldn't live with that husband no more.
"Up at Bowens Ridge they took some colored men out one night and if they said they was Republicans they let them
go but if they said they was Democrats they whooped them so hard they nearly killed some of them. Some said they
was bushwhackers or carpet baggers and not Ku Klux.
"I am a country-raised woman. I had a light stroke and cain't work in the field. I get $8.00 and commodities. I like to
live here very well. I don't meddle with young folks business. Seems like they do mighty foolish things to me.
Times been changing ever since I come in this world. It is the people cause the times to change. I wouldn't know
how to start to vote."
Interviewer Miss Irene Robertson"
