Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Mandy Thomas, 13th and Pearl Streets,
Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 78
Occupation: Laundress
"I know my sister told me I was five when my mama was freed. I was born down below El Dorado. Andrew Jaggers was my mother's old master.
"I just remember the soldiers goin' past. I think they was Yankees. They never stopped as I knows of.
"I've seed my young missis whip my mother.
"My papa belonged to the Agees. After I got up good sized, they told me 'bout my papa. He went with his white folks to Texas and we never did see him after we got up good size. So mama took a drove of us and went to work for some more white folks.
"I was good and grown when I married and I been workin' hard ever since. I was out pickin' huckleberries tryin' to get some money to buy baby clothes when my first girl was born. Yes ma'am."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Omelia Thomas
519 W. Ninth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: About 70
Occupation: Making cotton and corn
"I was born in Louisiana—in Vidalia. My mother's name was Emma Grant. My father's name was George Grant. My mother's name before she married was Emma Woodbridge. I don't know the names of my grand folks. I heard my mother say that my grandmother was named Matilda Woodbridge. I never got to see her. That is what I heard my mother say.