"After the war my mammie come back from Texas and took me over to Dover to live but my old boss told her if she would let him have me he would raise and educate me like his own children. When I got back the old boss already had a boy so I went to live with one of his sons. He told me it was time for me to learn how to work. My boss was rough but he was good to me and taught me how to work. The old boss had five sons in the army and all was wounded except one. One of them was shot through and through in the battle of Oak Hill. He got a furlough and come back and died. I left my white folks in 1869 and went to farming for myself up in Hartman bottom. I married when I was about seventeen years old.
"They though' a house near us was hainted. Nobody wanted to live in it so they went to see what the noise was. They found a pet coon with a piece of chain around his neck. The coon would run across the floor and drag the chain.
"The children now are bad. No telling that will be in the next twenty or thirty years everything is so changed now.
"I learnt to sing the hymns but never sang in the choir. We sang 'Dixie', 'John Brown's Body Lies, etc.', 'Juanita', 'Just Before the Battle, Mother', 'Old Black Joe'."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Charlie Norris
122 Miller Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 81
"Born in slavery times? That's me, I reckon. I was born October 1, 1857 in Arkansas in Union County. Tom Murphy was old master's name.
"Yes ma'am, I remember the first regiment left Arkansas—went to Virginia. I member our white folks had us packin' grub out in the woods cause they was spectin' the Yankees.
"I member when the first regiment started out. The music boat come to the landin' and played 'Yankee Doodle.' They carried all us chillun out there.