“I don’t know what become of ’em. They never did come back to Aberdeen.”
Occupations Followed and Life Since Freedom
“I ain’t worked a lick in four or five years. If I lived to see August tenth, I will be eighty-six years old. I used to follow railroading or saw milling or farming. That is what I followed when I was able to work. The last work I did was farming, working by the day—a dollar and a half a day. And they cut it down and cut me down. Now they ain’t giving nothing. If a man gets six bits a day he doing good. Harder times in Arkansas now than I have ever seen before. If a man is able to take care of his family now, he is doing well. They don’t give niggers nothing now.
“The only way I live is I get a little pension. They give me eight dollars a month and commodities. That is all I live on now. That keeps me up, thank God. I have been getting the pension about ever since they started. I reckon it is about two years. I have been receiving it every month. It ain’t failed yet. They been taking care of me pretty well ever since they started. First start it wasn’t nothin’ but rations. They give me groceries enough to las’ me every month. I had a wife then.
“I have been a widow now four years. Four years I’ve been a widow. But there ain’t nothin’ like a man staying in his own house. I have made out now for four years. Right there cooking and washing for George! I didn’t have nothing else to do. Fellow can’t tell what day the Lord will say, ‘Stop’, but as long as I am this way, I’ll keep at it.
“This soreness in my leg keeps me in bad shape. I came here to get my leg fixed. It gets so I can’t walk without a stick. I don’t like to stay with other folks. They’re sinners and they use me sorta sinful—speak any sort of language. But they sure ’nough treats me nice.
“I got my leg hurt last December. Car ran into me at Wrightsville, and knocked me down and threw me far as from here to that thing (about fifteen feet). After they flung me down, I was flat on my back a long while. I couldn’t move. When a fellow gets old and then gets crippled up, it’s hard. But I’m gettin’ ’long pretty well now, ’cept that this leg ain’t strong.”
DEC — 1937
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Andrew Gregory
Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 74
“I was born in Carroll County, Tennessee. My mother was owned by Houston. She said when war was declared he was at a neighbor’s house. He jumped up and said, ‘I gonner be the first to kill a Yankee.’ They said in a few minutes he fell back on the bed dead. My father owner was Tillman Gregory. After freedom he stayed on sharecroppin’. From what he said that wasn’t much better than bein’ owned. They had to work or starve. He said they didn’t make nobody work but they didn’t keep nobody from starvin’ if they didn’t go at it. They was proud to be free but that didn’t ease up the working.