"I've seen my mother wring her hands and cry and say she wished she was back in Tennessee where Lucy Ann Dillard was.
"When I got big enough I went to work for Ben Johnson and stayed there fifteen years. I never knew when my payday was. Mammy come and got my pay and give me just what she wanted me to have. And as for runnin' up and down the streets—why mammy would a died first. She's dead and in her grave but I give her credit—she took the best of care of us. She had three girls and they didn't romp up and down the big road neither.
"I just looks at the young folks now. If they had been comin' along when I was, they'd done been tore all to pieces. They ain't raisin' em now, they're just comin' up like grass and weeds. And as for speakin' to you now—just turn their heads. Now I'm just fogy nuf that if I meet you out, I'll say good mornin' or good evenin'.
"If it hadn't been for the Yankees, we'd have the yoke on our necks right today. The Lord got into their hearts.
"Now I don't feel bitter gainst people. Ain't no use to hold malice gainst nobody—got to have a clean heart. Folks does things cause they's ignorant and don't know no better and they shouldn't be crowned with it.
"But I'll tell you the truth—I've heard my mother say she was happier in slavery times than after cause she said the Dillards certainly took good care of her. Southerners got a heart in em."
Interviewer: Mary D. Hudgins
Person interviewed: Henry Long
Home: 112 East Grand
Age: c. 71
"Yes, 'um, I owns my own home—and what's more it's on the same street with the Mayor's house. Yes 'um, I owns a good home, has my own chickens and my flowers and I has a pension of $50 a month.