“I have lived right here on this spot for forty-three years. About 1893 I bought this place and have lived here ever since. This was just a big woods and weed patch then. There weren’t more than about six houses out here this side of the Rock Island Railroad.
“I commenced voting in 1889. Cast my first ballot then. I never had any trouble about it.”
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Ambus Gray
R.F.D. #1. Biscoe, Arkansas
Age: 80
“I was ten year old when the Civil War come on. I was born Tallapoosy County, Alabama. I belong to Jim Gray. I recollect the paddyrollers. I don’t recollect the Ku Klux Klan. There was twelve boys and two girls in our family in time. I was among the older set.
“Bout all I remembers bout slavery was how hard the hands had to work. We sho did haf to work! When we wasn’t clerin new ground and rollin pine logs an burnin brush we was er buildin fences and shuckin an shellin corn. Woman you don’t know nufin bout work! We cler new groun all day den burn brush and pile logs at nite. We build fences all day and kill hogs and shuck corn dat night. No use to say word bout bein tired. Never heard nobody complainin. They went right on singin or whislin’. Started out plowin and drappin corn then plantin’ cotton. Choppin’ time come on then pullin’ fodder and layin’ by time be on. Be bout big meetin time and bout fo that or was over everybody was dun in the cotton field till dun cold weather. I remembers how they sho did work.
“Both my parents was field hands. They stayed on two years after the war was over. Jim Gray raised red hogs and red corn, whooper-will peas. He kept a whole heap of goats and a flock of sheep.
“We didn’t see no real hard times after the war. We went to Georgia to work on Armstrongs farm. We didn’t stay there long. We went to Atlanta and met a fellar huntin’ hands down at Sardis, Mississippi. We come on there. Rob Richardson brought the family out here. I been here round Biscoe 58 years when it was sho nuf swamps and woods.
“I don’t think the Ku Klux ever got after any us but I seen em, I recken. I don’t know but mighty little. The paddyrollers is what I dreaded. Sometime the overseer was a paddyroller. My folks didn’t go to war. We didn’t know what the war was for till it had been going on a year or so. The news got circulated round the North was fighting to give the black man freedom. Some of em thought they said that so they’d follow and get in the lines, help out. Some did go long, some didn’t want to go get killed. Nobody never got nuthin, didn’t know much when it was freedom. I didn’t see much difference for a year or more. We gradually quit gettin’ provisions up at the house and had to take a wagon and team and go buy what we had. We didn’t have near as much. Money then like it is now, it don’t buy much. It made one difference. You could change places and work for different men. They had overseers just the same as they did in slavery.
“The Reconstruction time was like this. You go up to a man and tell him you and your family want to hire fer next year on his place. He say I’m broke, the war broke me. Move down there in the best empty house you find. You can get your provisions furnished at certain little store in the closest town about. You say yesser. When the crop made bout all you got was a little money to take to give the man what run you and you have to stay on or starve or go get somebody else let you share crop wid them. As the time come on the black man gets to handle a little mo silver and greenbacks than he used to. Slaves didn’t hardly ever handle any money long as he live. He never buy nothin, he have no use for money. White folks burried money durin the war. Some of them had a heap of money.