Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Emma Foster
1200 N. Magnolia, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 80
"Yes'm, I was born in time of slavery—seven years before surrender. No'm, I wasn't born in Arkansas. Born in Claiborne Parish, Louisiana.
"I remember hearin' the big guns shoot. I was small and I didn't know what it was only by what they told me.
"My parents belonged to the Harts. My mother run off and left me, a year-old baby.
"I remember better when I was young than I do now.
"After I got big enough—you know, a little old nasty somethin' runnin' around in the yard—after I got big enough, they took me in the house to rock the cradle, and I stayed there till I was twenty-three. I would a stayed longer but they was so cruel to me.
"I didn't know nothin'. I run off and stayed with a colored preacher and his family not far away. You know I was crazy. One day the preacher said some of his members was objectin' to me stayin' there and he was goin' to tell my white folks where I was. And sure enough, he did, and one morning I was out in the field and I saw the son-in-law comin'. So I went back and worked for him and his wife.
"Me? All I did do was farmin' when I was young.