"After we got up larger she got along better. I worked on a steamboat twelve or thirteen years. I was a roustabout and freight picker. I was on passenger boats mostly but they carried freight. I went to school some. I always had colored teachers. I farmed at Hughes and Madison ever since excepting one year in Mississippi.
"I live alone. I get $8 and commodities from the Sociable Welfare.
"The young folks would do better, work better, if they could get work all time. It is hard at times to get work right now. The times is all right. Better everything but work. I know colored folks is bad managers. That has been bad on us always.
"I worked on boats from Evansville, St. Louis, Memphis to New Orleans mostly. It was hard work but a fine living. I was stout then."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Jesse Meeks
707 Elm Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 76
Occupation: Minister
"I am seventy-six. 'Course I was young in slavery times, but I can remember some things. I remember how they used to feed us. Put milk and bread or poke salad and corn-meal dumplin's in a trough and give you a wooden spoon and all the children eat together.
"We stayed with our old master fourteen years. They were good folks and treated us right. My old master's name was Sam Meeks—in Longview, Drew County, Arkansas, down here below Monticello.
"I got a letter here about a month ago from the daughter of my young mistress. I wrote to my young mistress and she was dead, so her daughter got the letter. She answered it and sent me a dollar and asked me was I on the Old Age Pension list.