EX-SLAVES
Interviewer: Pernella Anderson
Hicks, Will
“I was born in Farmerville, La., I don’t know what year. I was about three or four years at surrender. I lived with my mother and father. The first work I ever did was plow. I did not work very hard at no time but what ever there was to do I went on and got through with it. All of our work was muscle work. There were no cultivators.
“I stayed at home with my father and mother until I was 32 years of age. I was thirty years old when papa died and mother lived two years longer. About a month after mother died I married. We lived in a real good house. My father bought it after slavery time. We had good furniture that was bought from the hardware. The first stove that we used we bought it and father bought it just after surrender. Never used a homemade broom in my life. Now, Ma just naturally liked ash cakes so she always cooked them in the fireplace. We wore all homespun clothes, and we wore the big bill baily hats. We chaps went barefooted until I was 16 years old then I bought my first pair of shoes. They were brass toe progans. I never been in the school house a day in my life. Can’t read neither write nor figure. I went to church. Our first preacher was name Prince Jones. The biggest games I played was ball and card. I was one of the best dancers. We danced the old juland dance, swing your partner, promonate. Danced by fiddling. The fiddlers could beat the fiddlers of today. Get your partners, swing them to the left and to the right, hands up four, swing corners, right hands up four promonate all around all the way, git your partners boys. I shoot dice, drink, I got drunk and broke up church one Sunday night. Me and sister broke up a dinner once because we got drunk. Whiskey been in circulation a long time. There have been bad people ever since I been in the world.”
—Will Hicks.
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Bert Higgins
611 Missouri Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 88
“I was born in slavery times. I was thirteen when peace declared. I was workin’ in the field.
“No ma’am, I wasn’t born in Arkansas. I was born in Macon, Mississippi.
“Marcus Higgins was my old master. He was good to me. He treated me all right.