During the interview, a little "pickaninny" came in with his mother. His grandmother and a forlorn little dog were also along. "Tell grandma what you want," his mother prompted. "Is that your grandson?" I interrupted. "No," she said, "He ain't no kin to me, but he calls me 'ma' and acts as if I was his grandma." The little fellow hung back. He was just about twenty-two months old, but large and mature for that age.
"Tell 'ma' what you want," his grandmother put in. Finally, he made up his mind and stood in front of her and said, "Buh—er." His mother explained, "I've done made him some corn bread, but he ain't got no butter to put on it and he wants you to give him some."
Sister Morgan sat silent awhile. Then she rose deliberately and went slowly to the ancient ice-box, opened it and took out a tin of butter which she had evidently churned herself in some manner and carefully cut out a small piece and wrapped it neatly and handed it to the little one. After a few amenities, they passed out.
Even with her pitiful and meagre lot, the old lady evidently means to share her bare necessities with others.
The manner of her calculation of her age is interesting. She was six years old when the War was going on. She definitely remembers seeing Sherman's army and Wheeler's cavalry after she was six. Since they were in her neighborhood in 1864, she is undoubtedly more than eighty. Eighty-one is a fair estimate.
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: James Morgan
819 Rice Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 65
"During the slave time, the pateroles used to go from one plantation to the other hunting Negroes. They would catch them at the door and throw hot ashes in their faces. You could go to another plantation and steal or do anything you wanted if you could manage to get back to your old master's place. But if you got caught away from your plantation, they would get you. Sometimes a nigger didn't want to get caught and beat, so he would throw a shovel of hot ashes in the pateroles' faces and beat it away.
"My daddy used to tell lots of stories about slavery times. He's been dead forty-three years and my mother has been dead forty-one years—forty-one years this May. I was quite young and lots of the things they told me, I remember, and some of them, I don't.