Interviewer: Bernice Bowden
Person Interviewed: Zenie Cauley
1000 Louisiana
Pine Bluff, Ark.
Age: 78
[-- 7 1938]
"I member when they freed the people.
"I was born in Bedie Kellog's yard and I know she said, 'Zenie, I hate to give you up, I'd like to keep you.' But my mother said, 'No, ma'am, I can't give Zenie up.'
"We still stayed there on the place and I was settled and growed up when I left there.
"I'm old. I feels my age too. I may not look old but I feels it.
"Yes ma'am, I member when they carried us to church under bresh arbors. Old folks had rags on their hair. Yes'm, I been here.
"My father was a Missionary Baptist preacher and he was a preacher. Didn't know 'A' from 'B' but he was a preacher. Everbody knowed Jake Alsbrooks. He preached all over that country of North Carolina. They'd be as many white folks as colored. They'd give him money and he never called for a collection in his life. Why one Sunday they give him sixty-five dollars to help buy a horse.
"Fore I left the old county, I member the boss man, Henry Grady, come by and tell my mother, 'I'm gwine to town now, have my dinner ready when I come back—kill a chicken.' She was one of the cooks. Used to have us chillun pick dewberries and blackberries and bring em to the house.
"Yes, I done left there thirty-six years—will be this August.