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913 West Soull Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age 76
"My old master's name was Sam Knox. I 'members all my white people. My mother was the cook.
"We had a good master and a good mistress too. I wish I could find some of my master's family now. But after the
war they broke up and want up North.
"I 'member well the day my old master's son got killed. My mother was workin' in the field and I know she come to
the house a cryin'. I 'member well when we was out in the plum nursery and could hear the cannons. My white girl
Nannie told me 'Now listen, that's the war a fightin'.'
"The soldiers used to come along and sometimes they were in a hurry and would grab something to eat and go on
and then sometimes they would sit down to a long table.
"I could hear my great grandmother and my mother talkin' 'We'll be free after awhile.'
"After the war my stepfather come and got my mother and we moved out in the piney woods. My stepfather was a
preacher and sometimes he was a hundred miles from home. My mother hired out to work by the day. I was the
oldest of seven chillun and when I got big enough to work they worked mo in the field. When we cleaned up the
new ground we got fifty cents a day.
"I was between ten and twelve years old when I went to school. My first teacher was white. But I tell you the truth, I
learned most after my children started to school.
"I worked twenty-three years for the police headquarters. I was janitor and matron too. I washed and lroned too. I
been here in Pine Bluff about fifty or sixty years.
"If justice was done everybody would have a living. I earned the money to buy this place and they come and wanted
me to sign away my home so I could get the old age pension but I just had sense enough not to do it. I'm not goin'
sign away my home just for some meat and bread."
Interviewer Mrs. Barnice Bowden"
