Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: F. H. Brown
701 Hickory Street, North Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 75
[HW: Builds Church and School]
"I was born in Marion County, Mississippi. Columbus is the county-seat. My father's name was Hazard Brown, and my mother's name was Willie Brown. She was a Rankin before she married. My mother was born in Lawrence County, Mississippi, and married father there. My father was born in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana. I was born in three feet of the line in Louisiana. I was born in the old slave quarters. The house was just across the line between Mississippi and Louisiana. The lower room was in Louisiana and the other was in Mississippi. There was a three foot hall between the rooms. It was a matter of convenience that I was born in Mississippi. I might have been just as well born in Louisiana. The house was in both states.
"My father's master was Black Bill Warren. Black Bill was just a title they give him. I think that his name was Joe Warren, but they nicknamed him Black Bill, and everybody called him that. My mother belonged to the Rankinses.
"My mother's mother was named Dolly Ware. My father's mother was named Maria. Their papa's father was named Thomas, and I forget my mother's father's name. I know it but I forget it just now. I haven't thought over it for a long time.
"My father when he died was eighty-five years old. He was treated pretty good in slavery time. He did farm work. His mars had about ninety slaves, that is, counting children and all. When I was a boy, I was in those quarters and saw them. I went back there and though it was some time afterward, taught in them. And later on, I preached in them, since I have been a preacher, of course. I have a cousin there now. He is about a hundred years old. He belongs to the Methodist Episcopal Church.
"My father lived to see freedom. He has been dead more than twelve years. He died at my home.
"He was so close to the fighting that he could hear the guns and the firing. When they was freed, some white people told him, 'You are just as free as we are.' I was born after the Emancipation proclamation. The proclamation was issued in September and I was born in October. It didn't become effective till January first. So I was born a slave any way you take it.
"The farm my father worked on was on the Pearl River. It was very fertile. It was in Mississippi. A very big road runs beside the farm. The road is called the Big Road. The nigger quarters were across the road on the south side.