"Freedom come on. The colored folks slip about from place to place and whisper, 'We goiner be set free.' I think my mama left at freedom and come to twenty or twenty-two miles from Oxford, Mississippi. I don't know where I was born. But in Mississippi somewheres.
"There is something wrong about the way we are doing somehow. It is from hand to mouth. We buys too many paper sacks. They say work is hard to get. One thing now didn't used to be, you have to show the money before you can buy a thing. Seem like we all gone money crazy. Automobiles and silk stockings done ruined us all. White folks ought to straighten this out."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Mary Williams, Clarendon, Arkansas
Age: Born 1872
Light color
"My father was a slavery man two and one-half miles from Somerville, Tennessee. Colonel Rivers owned him. Argile Rivers was papa's name.
"He went to war. His job was hauling food to the soldiers. He lay out in the woods getting to his soldiers with provisions. He'd run hide under the feed wagon from the shot. Him and old master would be together sometimes. His master died, or was hurt and died after the War a long while.
"He said his master was good to him all time. They had to work hard. He raised one boy and me."