“They worked me in the loom room too. Had to hold the broche at the reel. I was glad when my young master called me out to go after the mail. Then they worked me in the smokehouse.
“I never had no schoolin’ a tall. What little I know I learned since I married. My wife was a good scholar.
“I thank the Lord he spared me. Eighty-four is pretty old.
“I come here to Pine Bluff in ’66. Wasn’t no town here then. Just some little shacks on Barraque. And Third Street was called Catfish Street.
“They was fifty carloads come here to Arkansas when I come.
“I’ve farmed mostly. Then I’ve cooked four or five years in railroad camps, when they was puttin’ in this Cotton Belt track. Then I’ve cooked on a steamboat.
“Yes ma’am, I’ve voted. I voted teeth and toe-nail for one man, and he got it and then they shot him down. He was about to get on to the fraud. He was ’testin’ the election. That was John M. Clayton. They can do most anything in these here elections. I know ’cause I done been in so many campaigns.”