"I'm tryin' to study 'bout some songs but I can't think of nothin' but Dixie."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Lydia Jones
228 North Oak Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 93
"My name's Lydia—Lydia Jones. Oh my God I'se born in Mississippi. I wish you'd hush—I know all about slavery.
"I never had but one master. That was old John Patterson. No he want good to me. I wish you'd hush! I had two young masters—Marse John and Marse Edward. Marse John go off to war and say he gwine whip them Yankees with his pocket knife, but he didn't do it. They said the war was to keep the colored folks slaves. I tell you I've heard them bull whips a ringin' from sun to sun.
"After the war when they told us we is free, they said to hire ourselves out. They didn't give us a nickel when we left.
"I heered talk of the Ku Klux and they come close enough for us to be skeered but I never seen none of 'em. We never had no slave uprisin's on our plantation—old John Patterson would a shot 'em down. I tell you he was a rabid man.
"I used to pick cotton and chop cotton and help weave the cloth. My old mistress—Miss Fannie—used to go to the woods and get things to dye the cloth. She would dye some blue and some red.
"Only song I 'member is Dixie. I heered talk of some others but God knows I never fooled with 'em.