MAY 11 1938
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: George Greene
Temporary—1700 Pulaski St., Little Rock, Ark.
Permanent—Wrightsville, Ark.
Age: 85?
Birth and Age
“I don’t know when I was born. I don’t know exactly, but I was born in slavery time before the War began. I was big enough to wait on the table when they was fighting. I remember when they was setting the Negroes free. I was born in Aberdeen, Mississippi, in Monroe County. Seven miles from the town of Aberdeen, out on the prairies, that is where I was born.
“I figure out my age by the white woman that raised me. She sent me my age. When they was working the roads, my road boss, I told him I was forty-five years old and he didn’t believe it. So I sent to the white woman that raised me from a month-old child. When I left her, I’d done got grown. Her name was Narcissus Stephenson; she had all our ages and she sent mine to me.
“She may be dead now. I could’ve stayed right there if she isn’t dead, because she never did want me to come away. Right out in Arkansas, I come,—to my sorrow. Well, I done right well till I got crippled. Got hit by an automobile. That’s what I’m doin’ here now.”
Parents and Relatives
“My father’s name was Nathan Greene. I reckon he went by that name, I can’t swear to it. I wasn’t with him when he died. I was up in Mississippi on the Mississippi River and didn’t get the news in time to get there till after he was dead. He was an old soldier. When the Yankees got down in Mississippi, they grabbed up every nigger that was able to fight. If I’d get his furlough papers, I’d a been drawin’ pension before I did. But his brother was with him when he died and he let the dismiss papers get lost, and nobody got nothin’. Don’t draw nothin’ from it at all. Couldn’t find the papers when I was down there.
“I don’t know whether my father used his master’s name or his father’s name. His father’s name was Jerry Greene, and his master’s name was Henry Bibb. I don’t know which name he went by, but I call myself Greene because his father’s name was Jerry Greene. No Bibb owned him at first. Jerry Greene was born in North, Alabama in Morgan County. That’s where he was born. Bibb bought him and brought him down to Mississippi where I was born. Lord! Old Man Bibb owned a lot of ’em, too. My father and grandfather were both colored but my grandfather was an old yellow man. You know, he had to take his color after his papa. I don’t know my great-grandfather’s name. They can’t tell nothin’ ’bout that in them days. His papa, my grandfather’s papa, I can’t tell for sure whether he was white or black.
“My mother’s name was Adeline Greene. Grandpa’s wife’s name was Louisa. She was one of these kinder mixed with Indian. She lived to see a many a year before she died. She lived to be a hundred and fifteen years of age before she died. I knowed Grandma Louisa. Up until I was a man grown. She was about my color with long straight hair and black (hair). Old Lady Bibb was her mistress. She died way after freedom.
“I don’t know mama’s age. I was here in Arkansas when she died. Didn’t know she was dead until a month after she was buried. She died in Mississippi. Grandma, mama, and all of them died in Mississippi.