“My mother lived to be one hundred years old. She died in 1920. Her name is Hulda Bruce. She belonged to a man named Leslie during slavery. I forget his name—his first name. She come from Mississippi. She was sold there when she was eleven years old. That is where all her people were. There might be some of them here and I don’t know it. She said she had three sisters but I don’t know any of them. The folks raised her—the Leslie white folks. It was the Leslies that brought her and bought her in the old country. I don’t know the names of the people that sold her. She wasn’t nothing but a kid. I guess she would hardly know.
“The Leslies brought her to Arkansas when she was eleven. That is what she always told us kids. She was eleven years old when they sold her. Just like selling mules.
“I don’t know what is the first place they come to here. Benton, Arkansas was the first place I knowed anything about. That is where her folks were and that is where the young generation of them is now. The old ones is dead and gone.
“I was born in Nashville. And she had come from Benton to Nashville. She was living In Benton, Arkansas when she died. She was never able to send me to school when I was young. When the white folks first turned them loose they weren’t able to do for them as they are now. Children have a chance now and don’t appreciate it. But when I was coming up my folks weren’t able. Mother knew she was one hundred eight years old because her white folks told her what it was. When her old white folks died, the young ones hunted it up for her out of the old family Bible and sent it to me. The Bible was so old that the leaves were yellow and you could hardly turn them. They were living in Benton, Arkansas and I guess they are still living there because that is the old home place. That is the kids is still there, ’cause the old folks is dead and gone. One girl is named Cora and one of the boys is called Bud, Buddy. Leslie is the last name of them both.
“I got one of her pictures with her young master’s kids—three of ’em—in there with her. Anybody that bothered that picture would git in it with me, ’cause I values it.
“Mother farmed right after the surrender. She married after freedom but went back to her old name when her husband left. He was named Richard Hill. He was supposed to be a bishop down there in Arkadelphia. But he wasn’t no bishop with mama. All them Hills in Arkadelphia are kin to me. She had four children—one boy and three girls. The boy died before I was born. She was just married the one time that I know about.
“Her white folks were good to her. You know there was so many of them that weren’t. And you know they bound to be because they were always good to her. They would be looking for her and sending her something to eat and sending her shoes and clothes and things like that, and she’d go to them and stay with them months at a time so they bound to ’ve been good to her. All the young kids always called her their Black Mammy. They thought a heap of her. That is since freedom. Since I been born. That is somethin’ I seen with my own eyes.
“I spect my mother’s white folks is mad at me. They come to see her just before she died and they knew she couldn’t live long. They told me to let them know when there was a chance.
“That was about three days before she died. There come a storm. It broke down the wire so we couldn’t let them know. My boy was too small; I couldn’t send him. He was only nine years old. And you know how it is out in the country, you can’t keep them long. You have to put them away. You can’t keep no dead person in the country. So I had to bury her without letting ’em know it.
“I do laundry work for a living when I can get any to do. I am living with my boy but I do laundry work to help myself. It is so good, and nice to kinda help yourself. I’ll do for self as long as I am able and when I can’t, the children can help me more. I have heard and seen so many mothers whose children would do things for them and it wouldn’t suit so well up the road. You see me hopping along; I’m trying to work for Annie.