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Douglas Addition, El Dorado, Arkansas
Age 69
"My name is Mose Banks and I am sixty-nine years old. I was born in 1869. I was born four years after freedom but
still I was a slave in a way. My papa stayed with his old miss and master after freedom until he died and he just died
in 1918, so we all stayed with him too. I had one of the best easiest times in my life. My master was name Bob
Stevanson and he was a jewel. Never meaned us, never dogged, never hit one of us in his life. He bought us just like
he bought my papa. He never made any of the girls work in the field. He said the work was too hard. He always said
splitting rails, bushing, plowing and work like that was for men. That work makes no count women.
"The girls swept yards, cleaned the house, marsed, and washed and ironed, coubed old miss' and the children's hair
and cut their finger and toe nails and mended the clothes. The womens' job was to cook, attend to the cows, knit all
the socks for the men and boys, spin thread, card bats, weave cloth, quilt, sew, scrub and things like that.
"The little boys drove up the cows, slopped the hogs, got wood and pins for light, go to the spring and get water.
After a boy was twelve then he let him work in the field. My main job was hitching the horse to the buggy for old
Miss Stevenson, and put the saddle on old master's saddle horse.
"I was very small but when the first railroad come through old master took us to see the train. I guess it was about
forty or fifty miles because it took us around four days to make the round trip. The trains ware not like they are now.
The engine was smaller and they burned wood and they had what they called a drum beed and they didn't run very
fast, and could not carry many cars. It was a narrow gauge road and the rails were small and the road was dirt. It
was not gravel and rocks like it is now. It was a great show to me and we all had something to talk about for a long
time. People all around went to see it and we camped out one night going and coming and camped one night et the
railroad so we could see the train the next day. A man kept putting wood in the furnace in order to keep a fire.
Smoke come out of the drum bead. The drum head was something like a big washpot or a big old hogshead barrel.
An ox team was used for most all traveling. You did not see very many horses or mules.
"The white children taught us how to read and I went to school too.
"I went to church too. We did not have a church house; we used a brush arbor for service for a long time. In the
winter we built a big fire in the middle and we sat all around the fire on small pine logs. Later they built a log
church, so we had service in there for years.
"We did not live near a school, so old mistress and the children taught us how to read and write and court. I never
went to school is my life and I bet you, can't none of these children that rub their heads on college walls best me
reading and counting. You call one and ask them to divide ninety-nine come and one bob-tailed hall by two, and
they can't answer it to save their lives without a pencil and paper and two hours' figuring when it's nothing to say
but fifty.
"Wasn't no cook stoves and heaters until about 1890 or 1900. If there was I did not know about them. They cooked
on fireplace and fire out is the yard on what they called oven and we had plenty of plain grub. We stole eggs from
the big house because we never got any eggs.
"The custom of marrying was just peck up and go on and live with who you wanted to; that is the Negroes did---I
don't know how the white people married. This lawful marrying case from the law since man made law.
"When anybody died everybody stopped working and moaned and prayed until after the burying.
"I can say there is as much difference between now and sixty years ago as it is in day and night."
Interviewer S. S. Taylor"
