“We is livin’ now in a time of worry. What they is doin’ is told about in the scripture.”
DEC 21 1937
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Rachel Harris
816½ E. Fifth, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 90
“I reekolect when the war started. I was big enuf to be totin’ water, sweepin’, feedin’ chickens. I was a big chap when it started. I went with the white chillun and watched the soldiers marchin’. The drums was playin’ and the next thing I heered, the war was gwine on. You could hear the guns just as plain. The soldiers went by just in droves from soon of a mornin’ till sundown. They said they was goin’ to head off the Yankees. Dis fore the war ended I heered en say they was gwine to free the colored folks. That was in Mississippi.
“My old master was Jim Smith and old mistress’ name was Louisa Smith.
“I had many a whip put on me. When they wasn’t whippin’ me the chillun was. They whipped my mother and everybody.
“My brother Lewis went plum through the war till surrender. He waited on a Rebel soldier—cooked and washed for him. I never did see no white Yankee soldiers but I seed the colored soldiers with the blue suits. I stood out many a night and day and heered them guns.
“Jim Smith had near bout a hundred head of colored folks on his place. He didn’t go to war—he just seed that all the white women had plenty to eat while their men folks was away.
“My mother was sold away from my father long ’fore I was born. He used to come to visit, but a little while ’fore I was born they stopped him and wouldn’t let him come no more.
“After surrender one of my brothers come home and say the war was over.