"Yes ma'm, I done all kinds a work and I feels it now, too."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Dan Newborn
1000 Louisiana, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 78
"I was born in 1860. Born in Knoxville, Tennessee. I suppose it was in the country.
"Solomon Walton was my mother's owner and my father belonged to the Newborns. My grandmother belonged to the Buggs in Richmond, Virginia and she was sold to the Waltons. When my mother died in '65 my grandmother raised me. After she was freed she went to the Powell Clayton place. Her daughter lived there and she sent up the river and got her. I went too. Me and two more boys.
"I never went to school but about thirty days. Hardly learned my alphabet.
"In '66, my grandmother bound two of us to Powell Clayton for our 'vittils' and clothes and schoolin', but I didn't get no schoolin'. I waited in the house. Stayed there three years, then we come back to the Walton place.
"My grandmother said the Waltons treated her mean. Beat her on the head and that was part of her death. Every spring her head would run. She said they didn't get much of somethin' to eat.
"I was married 'fore my grandmother died—to this wife that died two months ago. We stayed together fifty-seven years.