“I was born in Brownsville, Tennessee. My mother died when I was real young, and I had no father. Pike Sutton was mother’s master. He was my old grandfather. He owned a big farm. Tove Sutton was his son and my father. Mother was light but not as light as I am. I had a sister older than I am I lived with. I never lived among white folks except in a town with them. I don’t know a thing about my people to tell. I don’t know my age. I give myself a birthday. I don’t know the day nor month I was born. But I’m old. I can count back enough to tell that.
“I work in the sewing room. I’m the oldest woman in there at De Valls Bluff. I get twenty-one dollars and this month I am to get twenty-seven.
“If you don’t have work times are not good. I know that. I don’t hardly know the young generation. Of course I see them but that is all. They hurrying their way and I’m going my way.”
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Ida Harper
819 West Pullen Street; Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 93
“Now what you want with me? I was born in Mississippi. I come here tollable young. I’se ninety-three now.
“My old master mean to us. We used to watch for him to come in the big gate, then we run and hide. He used to come to the quarters and make us chillun sing. He make us sing Dixie. Sometimes he make us sing half a day. Seems like Dixie his main song. I tell you I don’t like it now. But have mercy! He make us sing it. Seems like all the white folks like Dixie. I’se glad when he went away to war.
“But they used to feed you. Heap better meat than you get now. I tell you they had things to eat in them days.
“I ’member when the soldiers was comin’ through and runnin’ the white folks both ways. Law chile—you don’t know nothin’! We used to hide in the cistern. One time when the Yankees come in a rush my brother and me hide in the feather bed.
“When the war ended, white man come to the field and tell my mother-in-law she free as he is. She dropped her hoe and danced up to the turn road and danced right up into old master’s parlor. She went so fast a bird could a sot on her dress tail. That was in June. That night she sent and got all the neighbors and they danced all night long.