"I didn't have to work, just stayed in the house with my mammy. She was a seamstress. I'm tellin' you the truth now. I can tell it at night as well as daytime.
"We lived in Union County. Old master had a lot of hands. Old mistress' name was Miss Sallie Benford. She just as good as she could be. She'd come out to the quarters to see how we was gettin' along. I'd be so glad when Christmas come. We'd have hog killin' and I'd get the bladders and blow em up to make noise—you know. Yes, lady, we'd have a time.
"I recollect when Marse Jim broke up and went to Texas. Stayed there bout a year and come back. [HW: migration?]
"When the war was over I recollect they said we was free but I didn't know what that meant. I was always free.
"After freedom mammy stayed there on the place and worked on the shares. I don't know nothin' bout my father. They said he was a white man.
"I remember I was out in the field with mammy and had a old mule. I punched him with a stick and he come back with them hoofs and kicked me right in the jaw—knocked me dead. Lord, lady, I had to eat mush till I don't like mush today. That was old Mose—he was a saddle mule.
"Me? I ain't been to school a day in my life. If I had a chance to go I didn't know it. I had to help mammy work. I recollect one time when she was sick I got into a fight and she cried and said, 'That's the way you does my child' and I know she died next week.
"After that I worked here and there. I remember the first run I worked for was Kinch McKinney of El Dorado.
"I remember when I was just learnin' to plow, old mule knew five hundred times more than I did. He was graduated and he learnt me.
"I made fifty-seven crops in my lifetime. Me and Hance Chapman—he was my witness when I married—we made four bales that year. That was in 1879. His father got two bales and Hance and me got two. I made money every year. Yes ma'am, I have made some money in my day. When I moved from Louisiana to Arkansas I sold one hundred eighty acres of land and three hundred head of hogs. I come up here cause my chillun was here and my wife wanted to come here. You know how people will stroll when they get grown. Lost everything I had. Bought a little farm here and they wouldn't let me raise but two acres of cotton the last year I farmed and I couldn't make my payments with that. Made me plow up some of the prettiest cotton I ever saw and I never got a cent for it.