"I had four sisters and three brothers and all of 'em dead but me, darlin.
"Now let me tell you somethin'. Old as I is, I ain't never been to but one picture show in my life. Old as I is, I never was on a base ball ground in my life. The onliest place I go now is to church."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Rachel Perkins, Goodwin, Arkansas
Age: ? Baby during the Civil War
"I was born in Greensboro, Alabama. Sallie Houston and Peter Houston was my parents. They had two girls and a boy. They died when they was small, but me. They always told me mother died when I was three days old in the cradle. I don't fur a fact know much about my own people. Miss Agnes took me to raise me fur a house girl. She nursed me wid her Mary. My mother's and father's owners was Alonso Brown and Miss Agnes Brown. Their two girls was Mary and Lucy and their three boys was Bobby, Jesse, and Frank. Miss Agnes rocked the babies to sleep in a big chair out on the gallery. We slept there all night. Company come and say, 'Where the babies?' Miss Agnes take them back and show us off. They say, 'Where the little black chile?' They'd try to get me to come go live wid them. They say they be good to me. I'd tell 'em, 'No, I stay here.' It was good a home as I wanted. We slept on the front gallery till Lucy come on, then we had sheep skin pallets. She got the big chair. She put us out there because it was cool.
"I left Miss Agnes when I got to be my own woman. Didn't nobody toll me off. I knowed I ought to go to my own race of people. They come after me once. Then they sent the baby boy after me what I had nursed. I wanted to go but I never went. Miss Lucy and Miss Mary both in college. It was lonesome for me. I wanted to go to my color. I jus' picked up and walked on off.
"My girl is half Indian. I'm fifteen years older than my girl. Then I married Wesley Perkins, my husband. He is black fur a fact. He died last fall. I married at my husband's brother's by a colored preacher. Tom Screws was his name. He was a Baptist preacher.
"I never went to school a day in my life. I can't read. I can count money. Seem lack it jus' come natural. I never learned it at no one time. It jus' come to me.
"In warm weather I slept on the gallery and in cold weather I slept by the fire. I made down my own bed. I cleaned the house. I took the cows off to the pasture. I nursed the babies, washed and dried the dishes. I made up the beds and cleaned the yards.