"I got one girl married. I don't have no land nor home. I works for all I have yet.
"I have voted—not lately. I think my color outer vote like the white folks do long as they do right. The women takin' the mens' places too much it pears like. But they may be honester. I don't know how it will be."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Mrs. A. (Adrianna) W. Kerns
800 Victory Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 85
"When they first put me in the field, they put me and Viney to pick up brush and pile it, to pick up stumps, and when we got through with that, she worked on her mother's row and I worked on my aunt's row until we got large enough to have a row to ourselves. Me and Viney were the smallest children in the field and we had one row each. Some of the older people had two rows and picked on each row.
"My birthday is on the fourth of November, and I am eighty-five years old. You can count back and see what year I was born in.
Relatives
"My mother's first child was her master's child. I was the second child but my father was Reuben Dortch. He belonged to Colonel Dortch. Colonel Dortch died in Princeton, Arkansas, Dallas County, about eighty-six miles from here. He died before the War. I never saw him. But he was my father's first master. He used to go and get goods, and he caught this fever they had then—I think it was cholera—and died. After Colonel Dortch died, his son-in-law, Archie Hays, became my father's second master. Were all with Hays when we were freed.
"My father's father was a white man. He was named Wilson Rainey. I never did see him. My mother has said to me many a time that he was the meanest man in Dallas County. My father's mother was named Viney. That was her first name. I forget the last name. My mother's name was Martha Hays, and my grandmother's name on my mother's side was Sallie Hays. My maiden name was Adrianna Dortch.