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West Memphis, Arkansas
Age 65
"I was born in Yellowbush County, Mississippi close to Grenada. Grandmother come from North Caroline. They
wouldn't sell grandpa. He was owned by Laston. They never met again. She brought two boys with her. She was a
Pernell. Her master brought her away and would have brought her husband but they wouldn't sell. She said durin'
her forty years in slavery she never got a whoopin'. She was a field hand. After she come to Mississippi they was so
good to her they called her free. She was a midwife. She doctored the rich white and colored. She rode horseback,
she said, far and near. In Grenada after freedom she walked. They called her free her master was so good to her. I
don't know how she learned to be a midwife. Her master was Henry Pernell. He owned a small place twelve miles
from Grenada and another place in the Mississippi bottoms. My folks become renters after freedom. I don't know if
they rented from him but I guess they did.
"The Ku Klux never bothered them that I ever heard them mention."
Interviewer Pernella Anderson"
