“They done some whooping on the place but it was a shame. They got over it and went on dressed up soon as the task was done. Never heard much said about it. I never seen nobody whooped.
“My own folks whooped me. We was free then.
“I heard how easy to farm out in Arkansas. I come to Forrest City in 1884. I was ’bout twenty-five years old then. It was a mud hole is right. I farmed all my life. We made money.
“My color folks don’t know how to take care of their money. They can make money but don’t handle it long.
“I owns a home and twenty acres of land. I want to keep it. Me and my wife live out there. I had ten children and four of them still living. They all good children and I’m proud to own they mine.
“John D. Kidd had a lot of his wife’s brothers that come visiting. I’d find out they be up there. Here I’d go. We’d swim, fish, ride, and I’d love to be around them and hear them talk. That was the kind of good times we had when I was a boy. I missed all that when I come here. It was sich fine farming land. I couldn’t go back to stay. I been back numbers of times visiting.
“I heard of the Ku Klux but I never seen none of them. They was hot over there in South Carolina in some spots.
“I’m able by the grace of God to make my own humble living. Sometime I may like a little help but I ain’t asked foe none yet.
“I heard this here about the Ku Klux in Forrest City. I heard different ones say. They was having a revival out here at Lane Chapel and the captain of the Ku Klux come in and they followed in their white clothes and he give the colored minister a letter. He opened it and it had some money for him. They went on off on their horses. I don’t know when that was. I didn’t see it, I heard about it.”