Chapter XII: Part 12

"Isom ran away three times. He was a field hand up to eighteen years. The overseer wanted to whip him. Isom would help his wife in the field because she couldn't keep up with the others and he would help her to keep the overseer from whipping her. He'd take her beside him and row his row and hers too. He was the fastest worker on the place. The overseer told him to not do that. But Isom just kept on doing it anyway. Then the overseer asked Isom for his shirt. When they whipped you them days they didn't whip you on your clothes because they didn't want to wear them out. Isom said he was not going to take off his shirt because his mistress gave it to him and he wasn't going to give it to anybody else. Then the overseer stepped 'round in front of him to stop him, because Isom had just kept on hoeing. Isom just caught the overseer's feet in his hoe and dumped him down on the ground and went on hoeing his own row and his wife's. He called his hoe 'One Eyed Aggie.'

"The overseer said, 'You think you done something smart' and he went for his master. The overseer was named Mack Hainey. His master came out the next morning and caught Isom. Isom has often told us about it.

"'First thing I knowed, he had his feet on my hoe and he said, "Isom, they tell me you can't be whipped." "I'd be willing to be whipped if I'd done anything." "Huh!" said my master, "Right or wrong, if my overseer asked you for your shirt give it to him."'

"He held a pistol on him. They made him pull off his shirt and tied him up to a gin post. The overseer hit him five times and kept him there till noon trying to get him to say that he would give his shirt to him the next time. Finally Isom promised and the overseer untied him. When the overseer untied him, Isom took his shirt in one hand and the overseer's whip in the other and whipped him almost all the way to the big house. Then he ran away and stayed in the woods for three or four days until his old master sent word for him to come on back and he wouldn't do nothing to him.

"When he went back, his master took him off the farm because he and my father was nursed together and he didn't want Isom killed. So from that time on, my father never worked as a field hand any more. And they put Isom's wife as a cook. She couldn't chop cotton fast enough and they couldn't handle Isom as long as she was in the field; so they put her to washing, and ironing, and cooking, and milking.

"The second time father ran away was once when they missed some groceries out of the storeroom. Master asked him if he took them because he made the keys to the place and not a person on the place but him could know anything about getting in there. He didn't own it, so they tied him up and whipped him two days. When night come they took him and tied him in his house and told his wife that if he got loose they would put the portion on her. He didn't try to get loose because he knowed if he did they would whip her, so he stayed. At noon time when they went to get the dinner they poured three buckets of water in his face and almost drowned him. Then after dinner they came back and whipped him again. Finally he said, 'I didn't do it but nothing will suit you but for me to say I did, so I will say I did it.' So he owned up to it.

"A few days later Mr. Horn who owned the adjoining plantation came over and asked him if he had missed anything,--any rations he said. Old master told him 'Yes' and went on to explain what had been taken and what he had done about it. Then Mr. Horn took Mr. Blackshear over to his house and showed him the rations and they were the one he had whipped my old father about. Then Blackshear came back and told my father that he was sorry, that he never had known him to steal anything. He turned him loose and apologized to him but he made him work with the bloody shirt that they whipped him in sticking to his back.

"The third time he ran off he was in the army working on the batteries at Vicksburg. He worked there till he got to thinking about his wife and children, and then he ran off. He got tired and hungry and he went to Mopilis and give himself up. The jailer written to his master, that is to his mistress, about it, and she got her father to go and see about him and bring him home. They'd had a big storm. The houses were in bad shape. The fences was blown down. The plows was broken or dull and needed fixin'. And they were so glad to see Isom that they didn't whip him nor nothin' for runnin' away.

"Isom's mother was named Winnie Blackshear. She was Luke's wife. She was a light brownskin woman and weighed about one hundred fifty pounds. I have seen her, but Luke was dead before I was born. Grandmother Winnie has been dead about twenty years now. She labored in the field.

"My mother's mother was named Nancy Martin and her father was named Jordan Martin. We kept a Jordan in the family all the way down. Both of them farmed. They were slaves.

"There were fourteen children of us,--eleven sisters and three brothers. The brothers were Jordan, Prince, and John. The sisters were Margaret, Eliza, Nancy, Tempy, Bell, Abbie, Caroline, Frances, Dosia, Mattie, Lucy, Louisa, Ida."

Suicide

"They say Negroes won't commit suicide, but Isom told us of a girl that committed suicide. There was a girl named Lu who used to run off and go to the dances. The patrollers would try to catch her but they couldn't because she was too fast on her feet. One day they got after her in the daytime. She had always outran them at night. She ran to the cabin and got her quarter which she had hid. She put the quarter in her mouth. The white folks didn't allow the slaves to handle no money. The quarter got stuck in her throat, and she went on down to the slough and drowned herself rather than let them beat her, and mark her up. Then patrollers sure would get you and beat you up. If they couldn't catch you when you were running away from them, they would come on your master's place and get you and beat you. The master would allow them to do it. They didn't let the patrollers come on the Blackshear place, but this gal was so hard-headed 'bout goin' out that they made a 'ception to her. And they intended to make her an example to the rest of the slaves. But they didn't get Lucy."

Death of Sixty Babies

"Once on the Blackshear place, they took all the fine looking boys and girls that was thirteen years old or older and put them in a big barn after they had stripped them naked. They used to strip them naked and put them in a big barn every Sunday and leave them there until Monday morning. Out of that came sixty babies.

"They was too many babies to leave in the quarters for some one to take care of during the day. When the young mothers went to work Blackshear had them take their babies with them to the field, and it was two or three miles from the house to the field. He didn't want them to lose time walking backward and forward nursing. They built a long old trough like a great long old cradle and put all these babies in it every morning when the mother come out to the field. It was set at the end of the rows under a big old cottonwood tree.

"When they were at the other end of the row, all at once a cloud no bigger than a small spot came up, and it grew fast, and it thundered and lightened as if the world were coming to an end, and the rain just came down in great sheets. And when it got so they could go to the other end of the field, that trough was filled with water and every baby in it was floating 'round in the water drownded. They never got nary a lick of labor and nary a red penny for ary one of them babies."

Experiences just after the War

"Mother had been a cook and she just kept on cooking, for the same people. My father he went to farming."

Patrollers

"My father said that the patrollers would run you and ketch you and whip you if you didn't have a pass, when you was away from the pass.[HW: place?] But they didn't bother you if you had a pass. The patrollers were mean white people who called themselves making the niggers stay home. I think they were hired. They called their selves making the niggers stay home. They went all through the community looking for people, and whipping them when they'd leave home without a pass. They said you wasn't submissive when you left home without a pass. They hounded Lucy to death. She wouldn't let 'em get her, and she wouldn't let 'em get her quarter."

Ku Klux Klan

"I have seen the Ku Klux. I have washed their regalia and ironed it for them. They wouldn't let just anybody wash and iron it because they couldn't do it right. My son's wife had a job washing and ironing for them and I used to go down and help her. I never did take a job of any kind myself because my husband didn't let me. The regalia was white. They were made near like these singing robes the church choirs have. But they were long--come way down to the shoe tops. That was along in the nineties,--about 1890. It was when they revived the Ku Klux the last time before the World War. In the old days the patrollers used to whip them for being out without a pass but the Ku Klux used to whip them for disorderly living.

"Way back yonder when I was in Alabama, too, I can remember the Ku Klux riding. I was a little child then. The Republicans and Democrats were at war with each other then and they was killing everybody. My brother was one of them they run. He could come out in the daytime, but in the night he would have to hide. They never got him. He dodged them. That was 'round in 1874. In 1875, him and my uncle left Alabama and went to Louisiana. They called him a stump speaker. They wanted to kill him. They killed Tom Ivory. He was the leader of the Republicans--he was a colored man. His father was white but his mother was a Negro. His father educated him in slavery time. He had been up North and was coming back. They knew he was coming back, so they went up the creek and waited for him--his train. They flagged it down, and some one on the train commenced hollering, 'Look yonder.' Ivory stepped out on the platform to see what they were hollering about, and all them guns started popping and Ivory fell over the end of the platform and down on the ground. He was already leaning over the gate when they fired. Then they come up and cut his tongue out before he died. They said if they got him that would stop all the rest of the niggers. You see, he was a leader.

"Niggers was voting the Republican ticket 'long about that time. They just went in gangs riding every night--the Ku Klux did. Ku Kluxing and killing them they got hold of.

"The police arrested all the men that had anything to do with Tom Ivory's killing. The leader of the killers was a white man they called Captain Hess. I never knowed how the trial came out because we left there while they was still in jail."

How Freedom Came

"I heard my mother say that when the Refugees came through Sumter County, Alabama, she wasn't free but was 'sot' free later. The refugees came through along in February. Then the papers was struck and it went out that the niggers all was free. Mother's master and my oldest brother who had stayed in the War with his master four years came home. The refugees was in there when he got home. They went on through. They didn't tarry long there. Then the papers came out and the next day, master called all the hands up to the big house and told them they was free. Mother was set free in the latter part of February and I was born June 5, 1865, so I was born free."

Leaving Alabama

"We left Alabama in the same year Tom Ivory got killed. More than fifty colored people left on the train and come off when we did. People was leaving Alabama something terrible. I never did know what happened to Tom's killers. I heard afterwards that Alabama got broke, they had to pay for so many men they killed."

Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Cornelia Ishmon
3319 W. Second Avenue
Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 78

"I was born in Mississippi and I can member seein' the Yankees goin' by. I was a little bit of a girl and Betsy Hardy, that was old Miss, she kep' the Yankees from gettin' me. She told me many a time if it hadn't been for her I'd a had my brains beat out against a tree. When I didn't do to suit her, she'd tell me bout dat. I stayed right in the house.

"I member when they was lookin' for Johnson's brigade and when they saw it was the Yankees they just flew. The Yankees was goin' through there doin' what they wanted.

"I never got no further than the third grade."

FOLKLORE SUBJECTS

El Dorado District
Name of interviewer: Mildred Thompson & Carol Graham.
Subject: Uncle Jack Island--Ex-Slave.
Story--Information (If not enough space on this page add page)

"Yas'm ah membuhs a lil'l bit bout slavery days. Ah wuz jes a chap den. Ah'm 73 now. Ah wuz such a chap dat ah didn' do much work. Day use tuh cook on de fiuh place an ah'd tote in bark an wood fuh em tuh cook wid an git up de aigs (eggs) an sich li'l things as dat.

"Mah ole marster was Marse Bullock an we lived in de Lisbon community.

"Mistress' baby chile wuz a boy an he wuz jes six months olduh dan ah wuz. Ah wuz de only boy chile in de whole business uv slaves. Evah evenin bout a hour by de sun dey would feed us an by sundown we bettuh be in baid. Dat wuz tuh git us outn de way when de grown fokes come in. Dey wuz six uv us chillun an dey would feed us in a big wooden tray. Dey'd po' hot pot liquor in de tray an crumble braid in hit. Den dey'd give us each a spoon an we would all git roun an eat. Dere wuz Lizzie, Nancy, Sistuh Julia, Sistuh Lu and Martha. Der wuz six uv us. Aftuh dey fed us we would go tuh baid an tuh sleep. Dey had ole fashion wheels. Some nights de women would spin. We wouldn' heah dem when dey come in but when dat ole wheel started tuh goin hit'd wake me up an ah'd lie der a while an watch em spin den ah'd go tuh sleep ergin, an leave em spinnin'. Sometimes we wouldn' see our mamas fum Sunday night till next Sunday mornin. Mah mistress wove cloth. Bout de biggest thing ah done wuz help huh wid huh weavin. Ah would pick up de shickle (shuttle) an run hit through fuh huh. Dat bout de biggest thing ah'd do sides feedin the chickens an bringin in bark. In dem days wuznt no buckets much. We used hand gourds dat would hold two or three gallons uv watuh. An ah'd carry one uv dem gourds uv watuh tuh de fiel' tuh em while day was pickin cotton. One yeah de cotton worms wuz so bad an ah hadn' nevah seen none. Ah'd started tuh de fiel' wid de gourd uv watuh an saw dem worms an oh, ah jes bawled. Mah mama had tuh come an git me. Ah didn' know nothin bout dem worms.

"De nearest battle in de wah was at Vicksburg. Ah membuh one day hit got so smoky an ah could heah de guns. Ah thought hit wuz thunderin an said tuh ole missus dat hit wuz gointer rain soon but ole missus say: 'Oh Lawdy, dat aint thunder. Ah wish hit wuz. Dat's guns and dat, dat yo sees is smoke an not clouds.' Aftuh de wah wuz ovah we stayed on wid ole marster. Soon aftuh de wah wuz ovah marster died an missus mahried Ed Oakley, a spare built man. Dey lives in Arcadia, Louisiana now. Ah stayed on thar till ah wuz bout fo'teen an ah lef' dere. Wuz gone bout a yeah an ah learnt sumpin too. When ah got off ah had tuh go to work. Bout all ah had tuh do at home wuz tuh take keer uv de stock aftuh ah got big nough tuh but ah sho nuff worked den. Ah stayed way bout a year den ah went back an stayed dere too till ah was bout twenty-one. Ah been mahried three times. Ah had five chillun by mah fust wife an dem is all de chillun ah evah had. One uv dem lives in town, one in Texas, one Dubach, La., one is daid an ah don' know de where-bouts uv de othuh one. De las' time ah heerd anything bout him he wuz in Hot Springs. Mah present wife's name is Talitha. We has one gran'chile livin wid us. He bout fifteen an is at school ovah dar crost de road wha yo sees dat house. Oh Missy dem times we been tawkin bout wuz de good times. Dese times are hard."

#792
FORM A
_Circumstances of Interview_

STATE--Arkansas
NAME OF WORKER--Mrs. Carol Graham
ADDRESS--El Dorado, Arkansas
DATE--December, 1938
SUBJECT--Ex-slave

1. Name and address of informant--Jack and Talitha Island, Route 1, El Dorado, Arkansas.

2. Date and time of interview--December, 1938

3. Place of interview--Route 1, El Dorado, Arkansas.

4. Name and address of person, if any, who put you in touch with informant--

5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you--

6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.--

#792
FORM B
_Personal History of Informant_

STATE--Arkansas
NAME OF WORKER--Mrs. Carol Graham
ADDRESS--EL Dorado, Arkansas
DATE--December, 1938
SUBJECT--Ex-slave
NAME AND ADDRESS OF INFORMANTS--Jack and Talitha Island,
Route 1, El Dorado.

1. Ancestry--

2. Place and date of birth--Talitha was born April 14, 1864 in Arcadia, Louisiana. Jack was born in 1863.

3. Family--Talitha had three children and Jack had three children.

4. Places lived in, with dates--Talitha lived in Arcadia, Louisiana until freedom. Jack and Talitha now live in El Dorado.

5. Education, with dates--

6. Occupations and accomplishments, with dates--

7. Special skills and interests--

8. Community and religious activities--Goes to church in schoolhouse across the road.

9. Description of informant--

10. Other points gained in interview--They tell some of their childhood days.

#792
FORM C
_Text of Interview (Unedited)_

_Talitha_: "Howdy, chillun, come in. Naw suh, Jack ain't heah right now. He down tuh the thicket back uv de house gittin' some wood. Naw suh, he won't be gone long. He soon be back. You all come in and set on the gallery. Here's a cheer, missy. He be back in no time tall.

"You wants to know how old I am? I was born April 14, 1864 before the niggers was freed in '65.

"My mother was a field woman (worked in the field) and had seven chillun when set free. Her mistress raised her from three weeks old. Her mother burned to death in a house on the plantation. Our home was 'bout four miles east of Arcadia, Louisiana, or rather Miss Sarah Given's house was, and we stayed on wid her until I was a big girl, plowin' and hoeing.

"No ma'am, I never did go to no parties. I was never 'lowed to go. I been a member of the church since I was ten and now I'm seventy-three.

"I first married a man by the name of Williams and had three chillun by him, two boys and one girl. Then I was a widow fifteen years before I married Jack. We ain't never had no chillun, but Jack had three chillun and I helped to raise them and I've helped raise a bunch of his gran'chillun.

"I believes I hear Jack back there now."

_Jack_: "Howdy, howdy! So you is back for more tales 'bout long ago. I'se seventy-three and I been in this world a long time I tell you."

_Talitha_: "Now, Jack, you knows you is heap older 'n me and I'm seventy-three and I was born jes 'bout a year befo the War closed and you say you was a big chap then."

_Jack_: "Well, I guess I was around six years old when the War started. I was a good big chap. I 'member one evening 'bout three o'clock I was settin' out in the yard playin' with a mate of mine--Johnnie Cook. I guess you would call him my mate; he was my mistress's boy and 'bout my age and we played together all the time even if I was black. I was the only black boy on the place, all the other cullud chillun was gals. Us chaps was out in the yard making frog nesties with our bare feet in the sand. They was fightin' in Vicksburg then. They was doing a whole lot of shooting. You could hear it one right after the other and it got so smoky. I thought it was thunder and said something 'bout hit. Mistress was setting on the gallery sewing and when I said that she said, 'Aw Lawd, that ain't no thunder,' but she didn' tell us what hit wuz."

_Talitha_: "Course I wasn't old enough to know anything 'bout hit but I heard my mother say it got so smoky the chickens didn't get off the roost while they was bustin' all them big cannons."

_Jack_: "All us chillun was just as fat and healthy as hogs. Warn't never sick. They'd feed 'bout this time every evening (4 p.m.) and by sundown I was in bed. My mother worked in the field and I've heard her say that sometime she didn't see her chillun from Sunday to Sunday. Old lady Hannah Banks done the cooking for everybody and she cooked on a big fireplace. They didn't have no stove. _Why, I got here before the stoves did._ Ma and pa and all the grown ones would get up at four o'clock and eat breakfast and be in the field workin' by sunup. They had a box with shelves drove up on the side of the wall to the cabin where we slept and old lady Hannah Banks would put our breakfast in that and when we woke up we would get it and eat. One morning I woke up before the other chillun did and 'cided I'd git my breakfast first 'fore they did. I clem up, rech up and got holt of that box and I was so heavy I pulled it down and broke all the old blue edge plates. That woke the other chillun up all right, and I can jes see them old blue edge plates now. For dinner they would give us boiled greens or beans wid bread and for supper they would save the slop (liquor), cram it full of bread, pour it in a tray and give it to all the chilluns and me, sister Julia, Nancy, Lizzie, Marthy, and all the little nigger chillun."

_Talitha_: "Huh! Old man Givens had so many little nigger chillun couldn' feed 'em in no tray. Had to have troughs. They'd take a log and hollow it out and make three tubs in a row and put peg legs on it and a hole in the bottom of each one with a pin in it. They would use these tubs to wash the clothes in and pull the stem up to let all the water run out, clean 'em out real good, fill with bread and pot-licker or bread and milk, and feed the nigger chillun."

_Jack_: "You say our nephew wants to come out and bring a bunch of young folks and wants me to take them 'possum hunting some moonlight night? Sho, sho, I'll go."

_Talitha_: "I don't know how he'd go lessen we totes him. Why, he got the rheumatism so bad he can't hardly git 'round in the daytime much less at night. Why, the other day he was out in the field follerin' the boy that was plowin' up the potatoes and we was goin' on pickin' them up. First thing I know I hear somethin' behind me go 'plop' and I looked roun and there lay Jack jes stretched out. Fell down over his own feet. So what would he do out nights? And you sees that knot on his ankle. Hit was broke when he was a boy an' hit still gives him trouble when his rheumatism starts up."

_Jack_: "You say how did I do it? I was jumpin'. A bunch of us boys was jumpin' 'cross a ditch jes to see how far we could jump. I was a young chap 'bout seventeen or eighteen then. I was doin' purty well with my jumpin' when I made a misjump an' jumped crooked and hit my ankle on a big old iron rock. My but hit hurt bad. I didn' do no more jumpin' that day. The next day I was down in the woods getting a load of lider. Had put on a few pieces on the wagon when I started to turn aroun and down I went. I jes lay there and hollered till someone come an' got me. That was in the winter just before Christmas and I didn't get out no more till in the spring. The woods looked right purty to me when I got out. The leaves was great big. And that ain't all, I ain't jumped no more since. 'Sides that I ain't never been sick to 'mount to anything. Had the whooping cough at the same time that Joe and Tom Snyder had hit. Still got my natchel teeth, lost four up here and got one that bothers me some, 'sides that I have 'em all. Yas suh, that the schoolhouse 'cross the road there. We has preachin' there sometimes too. Does Ab preach there? He, he, he! sometime he do. Did I ever tell you 'bout the time Ab was preaching out here at ____ and got to stampin' roun wid that peg-leg of his'n an' hit went through the rotten floor and we had to pull him out? He, he, he!"

_Talitha_: "Now, Jack Island, you knows that is jes 'nother one uv yo tales. I is been to hear Ab preach lots of times and he does storm roun mighty bad and I ain't got no faith in his religion tall but I warn't there when he fell through the floo'."

Interviewer: Pernella M. Anderson
Person interviewed: Mary Island
626 Nelson Street, El Dorado, Arkansas
Age: 80

"I was born in Union Parish, Louisiana in the year of 1857, so the white folks told me, and I am eighty years old. My mama died when I was two years old and my aunty raised me. She started me out washing dishes when I was four years old and when I was six she was learning me how to cook. While the other hands was working in the field I carried water. We had to cook out in the yard on an old skillet and lid, so you see I had to tote brush and bark and roll up little logs such as I could to keep the fire from one time of cooking to the other. I was not but six years old either. When I got to be seven years old I was cutting sprouts almost like a man and when I was eight I could pick one hundred pounds of cotton. When it rained and we could not go to the field my aunty had me spinning thread to make socks and cloth, then I had to card the bats and make the rolls to spin.

"My auntie was a slave and she lived in the edge of the field. Of course I was born a slave but didn't know much about it because my aunty did the bossing of me but I had a pretty hard time. Our wash tubs, water buckets, bread trays and such were made out of tupelo gum logs dug out with some kind of an axe and when aunty would wash I had to use the battling stick. I would carry the wet clothes to a stump and beat them with that battling stick and we hung the clothes out on bushes and on the fence. We used water from a spring.

"In my young days all we wore was homespun and lowel.[HW: ?] We lived in a log house with a dirt floor and the cracks was chinked with mud and our bed was some poles nailed against the wall with two legs out on the dirt floor, and we pulled grass and put in a lowel[HW: ?] bed tick. My aunty would get old dresses, old coats, and old pants and make quilts.

"I never went to school a day in my life. No, the back of my head has never rubbed against the walls of a schoolhouse and I never did go to Sunday School and I never did like it. And I didn't go to church until I was grown and the church that I did attend was called the Iron Jacket Church. Now they call it the Hard Shell Church. I believe in foot washing. I don't go to church now because there is no Hard Shell church close around here."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Henrietta Isom, Biscoe, Arkansas
Age: 81

"I was born in Mississippi. It wasn't far from Memphis, Tennessee. I heard em talking bout it then. When I first knowed anything we lived way down in Mississippi. It was on a big farm not close to no place much. My ma's and pa's master was named Thornton. Seems lack it was Jack and her name was Miss Lucretia. They show did have a big family, little ones on up. I have three sisters and a brother all dead--ma was a farm hand. She left us wid a real old woman--all the little children stayed right wid her. We minded her lack our ma's. She switch our legs if we didn't. She carded and sewed about all the time.

"I don't know much about master and mistress; their house was way over the field. They lived on a hill and had the finest well of water. It was so cold. They had two buckets on a chain to pull it up by. The cabins down closer to the creek. There was two springs one used mostly for washing and the other for house use.

"I don't know how many cabins they was scattered. He had a lot of hands about all I remembers--on Saturdays we get to go up to the house to fetch back something; some provisions. They tell us if we be good we could go. They done their own cooking. When they work their dinners was sent to the shade trees from white folks house and the childrens was sent too. We would all stand around Miss Rachel (white) when she bring it then we go sit on the steps and eat. We show did have plenty to eat. We wear the dresses new in cold weather then they wear thin for summer. They be lighter in color too when they fade.

"I remember when the white folks left an went to war. They worked on. They had a white man and a colored man boss. When freedom was declared nearly all of them walked off so glad they was free. I don't know where they all went. My folks went to another big place. We had a hard time. We all farmed. I don't know what they expected from freedom. Nobody didn't ask for nuthin. I remembers when some new hands was bought and put on the place. I think they sold em off in town.

"After de war at the church they talked bout if they didn't get freedom they would clang together for der rights but they never did do nuthin. Times was so hard they had to work harder than before.

"The Yankees nor none of the soldiers ever come to our cabins--I seen them along the roads. They show did clean up Miss Leucretia's calves and hogs. Took em all off at one time. Rations show did get mighty scarce.

"They sing, I recken they did sing, go off to work singin and the men whistlin. Mostly sung religious songs. Master Thornton had a white man preach sometimes. Down in front of the cabins in the shade. Sometimes somebody get to go to white church with the family. They held the baby. They didn't have no school.

"I seed the Ku Klux Klans in the road light nights--when they pass we all peep out the cracks. They didn't bother nobody I knowed. We was scared they would turn in an come to the house.

"I farmed all my life, hoed cotton and corn. No maam I aint never voted--I jess lives wid my children here and my son in Memphis and my other daughter at Helena. My daughter do farm work and my son railroads. He works in the yards.

"I don't know what to say bout the generations comin on. They is smarter in their books and sees more than older folks, but they ain't no better. You kaint depend on what they says. I don't know what to say would make the country better lessen the folks all be better.

"I never heard of no rebellions. I jess lived in Mississippi till I comes here and Memphis and stay around wid the children and grandchildren. They all do fairly well for the fast times I guess."