“I got thirteen children in all. Some in Tennessee by my first wife and some here and some grandchildren.
“Folks won’t work like I used to work. It ain’t no use to be ’larmed bout the times—they been changing since the world started—still changing. If you able it is best to go hunt work and be at a job working.
“I heard about the Ku Klux, they never troubled us. I seen em. I was scared of em.
“I get commodities and a check for us three old folks. My wife washes and irons.
“I got a bunion on one foot and raw sores on top of my toes. It won’t cure up. Both feet in bad shape. My wife had both her legs broke. We doing very well.”
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: William H. Harrison
Forrest City, Arkansas
Age: Over 100
“I was born March 4, 1832 in Richmond, Virginia. Master Anderson Harrison was a cousin to Benjamin Harrison, the twenty-third President of the United States. Master Anderson Harrison was my owner. I was a personal attendant of his young son and when I reached manhood I was the carriage boy. I did all the driving on all the trips the young people of the family took. My memories of slave days was my easiest days. Slavery was pleasant for me. My owner’s wife was named Ann. The son was Gummel L. Harrison. I went with him to war. I was his servant in the battle-field till we fought at Gettysburg and Manassas Gap. Then I was captured at Bulls Gap and brought to Knoxville, Tennessee and made a soldier. I was in the War three and one half years. They had us going to school. They had Yankee teachers in the army. All the schooling I ever got. I was mustered out at Chattanooga, Tennessee.
“My parents was Julia Ann Hodge and Cairo Hodge. I don’t know my mother’s last owners. When I was about eight years old I was sold to Ben Cowen. When I was thirteen years old I was sold to Master Anderson Harrison. My brothers Sam and Washington never were sold. Me and Sam Hodge, my brother, was in the War together. We struck up and knowed one another. A man bought mama that lived at Selma, Alabama. I never seen her ag’in to know her. After I was mustered out I went to Birmingham where she was drove and sold in search of her. I heard she was taken to Selma. I went there. I give out hunting for her. It was about dusk. I saw a woman standing in the door. I asked her to tell me where I could stay. She said, ‘You can stay here tonight.’ I went in, hung my overcoat up. I started to the saloon. I met her husband with a basket on his arm coming home. I told him who I was. We went to get a drink. I offered him sherry but he took whiskey. I got a pint of brandy, two apples, two oranges, for his wife and two little boys. I spent two nights there and two and a half days there, with my own mother but neither of us knew it then.
“Fourteen years later Wash wrote to me giving me the address. I told him about this and he said it was mama. He told her about it. She jumped up and shouted and fell dead. I never seen her but that one time after I was sold the first time. I was about eight years old then. She had eighteen of us boys and one girl, Diana, and then the half-brothers I seen at Selma. I had eleven brothers took off in a drove at one time and sold. They was older than I was. I don’t know what become of them. I never seen my papa after I was sold. Diana died in Knoxville, Tennessee after freedom. I seen better times in slavery than I’ve ever seen since but I don’t believe in slave traffic—that being sold.