“When the war started—I remember that all right—cause when they was gettin’ started old master sent a colored man to take his son’s place in the war.
“I was born up here at Fort Smith and brought here to Jefferson County and sold—my mother and three chillun.
“Now wait—I’m goin’ to give you the full history. My father’s mother was a white woman from the North and my father was a colored man. Her folks run her here to Arkansas and she stayed with her brother till my father was nine months old and then she went back North and my papa stayed with his uncle.
“When his uncle died he willed my papa his place. He had it recorded at the cotehouse in Little Rock that my papa was a free man. But he couldn’t stay in Arkansas free, so he just rambled ’till he found old man Carson and my mother. He offered to buy my mother but old master wouldn’t sell her so he stayed with old man Carson till they was all free.
“My white folks was tollable fair—they didn’t beat up the people.
“My mother was as bright as you are. She could sit on her hair. Her mother was a Creole and her father was a Frenchman. After freedom they would a killed my father if it hadn’t been for old Sam Carson, cause they thought my mother was a white woman, she was so bright.
“Ku Klux? The Lord have mercy! I remember them. They came and surrounded the house, hundreds of em. We had a loose plank in the floor and we’d hide under the floor with the dogs and stay there, too, till they’d gone.
“My father was a gambler. He gambled and farmed. My mother was a Christian woman. When I got big enough to know anything, she was a Christian woman.
“I married when I was fourteen. We lived at a place called ‘Wildcat.’ Didn’t have no school. Nothin’ up there but saloons and gambling.
“Then we moved to what they called the Earl Wright place. I had four chillun—three boys and one girl. Most of my work was in the field.