“I member seein’ the Rebels ridin’ horses, three double, down the road time of the war. I used to run off from mama to the county band—right where the roundhouse is now. Mama used to have to come after me. You know I wasn’t no baby when I shed all my teeth durin’ slavery days.
“Yankee soldiers? Oh Lord—seed em by fifties and hundreds. Used to pint the gun at me jest to hear me holler and cry. I was scared of em. They come in and went in Dr. Jenkins’ dairy and got what they wanted. And every morning they’d blow that bugle, bugle as long as a broom handle. Heard em blow ‘Glory, Glory Hallelujah’. I liked to hear em blow it.
“Yankees marched all up and down the river road. They’d eat them navy beans. I used to see where they throwed em in the fence corner. Saw so many I don’t like em now. They called em navy beans and I called em soldier beans.
“I member it well. I’m a person can remember. Heap a folks tell what other folks see but I tell what I see. Don’t tell what nobody told me and what I heard.
“I member when they had the battle in Pine Bluff. We was bout three miles from here when they fit-up here. I member all of it.
“They started to send us to Texas and we got as far as the ravine when they heard the Yankees wasn’t comin’ so we went back home.
“I stayed round the house with the white folks and didn’t know what nothin’ was till after surrender. We stayed with Dr. Jenkins for a week or two after surrender, then a man come and took my mother down in the country. I don’t know what she was paid—she never did tell us her business.
“I was mama’s onliest girl and she worked me day and night. Hoed and picked cotton and sewed at night. Mama learned me to knit and I used to crochet a lot. She sure learned me to work and I ain’t sorry.
“I worked in the field till I come out to marry a railroad man. I never went to school but two or three months in my life directly after freedom. My husband was a good scholar and he learned me how to read and write. I learned my daughter how to read and write so when she started to school they didn’t have to put her in the chart class. When she was six years old she could put down a figger as quick as you can.
“Been married four times and they’s all dead now. Ain’t got nobody but myself. If it wasn’t for the white folks don’t know what I’d do.