"I believe in the right thing. I wouldn't believe in anything else. I try to be loyal to the state and the city. But colored folks don't have much show. Work for a man four or five years and go back to him and he don't know nothin' about you. They soon forget you and a white man's word goes far.
"I was able to work as late as 1930, but I ain't been no 'count since to do much work. I get a pension for old age from the Welfare and commodities and I depend on that for a living. Whatever they want to give me, I'll take it and make out with it. If there's any chance for me to git a slave's pension, I wish they would send it to me. For I need it awful bad. They done cut me way down now. I got heart trouble and high blood pressure but I don't give up.
"My mother sure used to make good ash cake. When she made it for my daddy, she would put a piece of paper on it on top and another on the bottom. That would keep it clean. She made it extra good. When he would git through, she would give us the rest. Sometimes, she wouldn't put the paper on it because she would be mad. He would ask, 'No paper today?' She would say, 'No.' And he wouldn't say nothin' more.
"There is some of the meanest white people in the United States in Mississippi up there on the Yellow Dog River. That's where the Devil makes meanness.
"There's some pretty mean colored folks too. There is some of them right here in Little Rock. Them boys from Dunbar give me a lot of trouble. They ride by on their bicycles and holler at us. If we say anything to them, they say, 'Shut up, old gray head.' Sometimes they say worse. I used to live by Brother Love. Christmas the boys threw at the house and gave me sass when I spoke to them. So I got out of that settlement. Here it is quiet because it is among the white folks."
Interviewer: Mrs. Carol Graham, El Dorado Division
Person interviewed: Zenia Culp
Age: Over 80
[Jan 29 1938]
"Yas'm, my name is Zenia, Zenia Culp 'tis now since I married. My old master's name was Billy Newton. Him and three more brothers come here and settled in this county years ago and Master Billy settled this farm. I was born and raised here and ain't never lived nowheres else. I used to be nurse girl and lived up at the big house. You know up there where Mr. John Dunbar's widow lives now. And the family burying groun' is jus' a little south of the house where you sees them trees and tomb stones out in the middle of the field.
"Master Billy's folks was so good to me and I sure thought a heap of young Master Billy. Believe I told you I was the nurse girl. Well, young Master Billy was my special care. And he was a live one too. I sure had a time keepin' up wid that young rascal. I would get him ready for bed every night. In summer time he went barefoot like all little chaps does and course I would wash his foots before I put him to bed. That little fellow would be so sleepy sometime that he would say: 'Don't wash em, Zenia, jes' wet em.' Oh, he was a sight, young Master Billy was.