"Right after the war, my parents farmed. He followed his trade. That always gave us something to eat you know. When we farmed, we sharecropped—a third and a fourth—that is, we got a third of the cotton and a fourth of the corn. Potatoes and things like that went free. All women got an acre free. My mother always got an acre and she worked it good too. She always had her bale of cotton. And if she didn't have a bale, she laid it next to the white folks' and made it out. They knew it and they didn't care. She stood well with the white people. Helped all of 'em raise their children, and they all liked that.
"I went along with my father whenever he had a big job and needed help. I got to be as good a carpenter as he was.
"I married out here. About eighty-five. People were emigrating to this country. There was a boom to emigrating then. Emigrating was a little dangerous when a man was trying to get hands. White folks would lay traps and kill men that were taking away their hands—they would kill white just as quick as they would black. I started out under a white man—I can't remember his name. He turned me over to Madden, a colored man who was raised in Waterloo. We came from there to Greenwood, South Carolina where everything was straight. After that we had nothing to do but get on the train and keep coming. We was with our agent then and we had no more trouble after that.
"I got off at Brinkley over at Minor Gregory's farm. He needed hands then and was glad to get us. He is dead now. I stayed in Brinkley the space of about a year. Then he gave us transportation to Little Rock. The train came from Memphis, and we struck out for Little Rock. I married after I come to Little Rock. I forget what year. But anyway my wife is dead and gone and all the children. So I'm single now.
Opinions of the Present
"I think times are about dead now. Things ought to get better. I believe things are going to get better for all of us. People have got to think more. People have got to get together more. War doesn't always make thing better. It didn't after the Civil War. And it didn't after the World War. The young people are all right in their way. It would just take another war to learn 'em a lesson.
Support
"I can't do any work now. I get a little help from the welfare. It doesn't come regular. I need a check right now. I think it's due now. But they haven't sent it out yet. That is, I haven't got it.
"I'm a Christian. All my family were Methodists. I belong to Wesley.