“Papa was a little chunky man. He’d steal flour and hogs. He could tote a hog on his back. My papa went on off when freedom come. They was so happy they had no sense. Mama never seen him no more. I didn’t neither. Mama didn’t care so much about him. He was her mate give to her. I didn’t worry ’bout him nor nobody then.
“Master Collins did give us plenty to wear and eat too. When I left there we all worked. Mama married ag’in. We kept on farming. I farmed all my life.
“I got a boy what works. We own our house and all this place (one-half acre). I don’t get no help from nowhere. Seem like them what works and tries ought to be the ones to get help and not them what don’t never pay no taxes. Fast generation it is now. But they don’t bother me. I got a good boy. Times is hard. Everything you have to buy is high.”
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Anna Hall (mulatto)
Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 68
“I don’t know nuthin’ cept what I heard folks talk ’bout when I was a child. I was born good while after that war. My folks lived in Scott County near Jackson, Mississippi when I was little and in slavery times too. My mother’s mistress was Miss Dolly Cruder. She was a widow and run her own farm. I don’t remember her. She give her own children a cotton patch apiece and give the women hands a patch about and they had to work it at night. If the moon didn’t give light somebody had to hold a literd (lantern) not fur from ’em so they could see to hoe and work it out. I think she had more land then hands, what they made was to be about a bale around for extra money. It took all the day time working in the big field for Miss Dolly. I heard ’em say how tired they would be and then go work out their own patches ’fore they go to bed. I don’t remember how they said the white girls got their cotton patches worked. And that is about all I remembers good ’nough to tell you.
“They didn’t expect nothing but freedom out the war. The first my mother heard she was working doing something and somebody say, ‘What you working fur don’t you know you done free?’ That the first she knowed she was free. They just passed the word round; that’s how they heard it and the soldiers started coming in to their families. Some of them come back by themselves and some come riding several of them together.
“I know they didn’t give my mother nothing after the war. She washed and ironed ’bout all her life.
“The young generation is doing better than we old folks is. If there is any work to get they gets it in preference to us. Education is helping some of ’em here in Brinkley. Some of the young ones gets good money. They teaches and cooks. Times is hard for some.
“I live wid my son. Yes he own his house. I gets $8 from the relief. We has ’bout ’nough to live on and dat is all.”