"When we had the patrollers it was just like the white man would have another white man working for him. It was to see that the Negroes went to bed on time and didn't steal nothing. But my master and missis never allowed anybody to whip their slaves.
What the Slaves Expected and Got
"I don't know what the slaves was expecting to get, but my parents when they left Ben See's place had nothing but the few clothes in the house. They didn't give em nothing. They had some clothes all right, enough to cover themselves. I don't know what kind or how much because I wasn't old enough to know all into such details.
"When we left Ben See's plantation and went down into Alabama, we left there on a wagon. Daddy was driving four big steers hitched to it. There was just three of us children. The little boy my mother was schooling then, it died. It died when we went down betwixt New Falls and Montgomery, Alabama. I don't know when we left Alabama nor how long we stayed there. After he was told he was free, I know he didn't make nare another crop on Ben See's plantation.
1865-1938
"My father, when he left from where we was freed, he went to hauling logs for a sawmill, and then he farmed. He done that for years, driving these old oxen. He mostly did this logging and my mother did the farming.
"I can't tell you what kind of time it was right after the Civil War because I was too young to notice. All our lives I had plenty to eat. When we first came to Arkansas we stopped at old Mary Jones down in Riceville, and then we went down on the Gates Farm at Biscoe. Then we went from there to Atkins up in Pope County. No, he went up in the sand hills and bought him a home and then he went up into Atkins. Of course, I was a married woman by that time.
"I married the second year I came to Arkansas, about sixty-two or sixty-three years ago. I have lived in Little Rock about thirty-two or thirty-three years. When I first came here, I came right up here on Seventeenth and State streets.
Voting
"I never voted. For twenty years the old white lady I stayed with looked after my taxes. None of my friends ever voted. I ain't got nothing but some children and they ain't never been crazy enough to go to anybody's polls.