"I don't recollect no big change after freedom cept they quit selling and working folks without giving them money. I was too small to notice much change then I speck. Times has always been tight wid me. I ain't never had very much. I did work an a livin is all I ever got out of it. Never could make enough to get ahead.
"The white folks never give the darky nothing when freedom declared. We used to raise tobacco and sell it to smoke and make snuff. And he had em make ax handles to sell on the side for money till the crops gathered.
"If you believe in the Bible you won't believe in women votin' I never did vote. I ain't goner never vote.
"The present condition is fine. Mrs. Robinson carries a great big truck load to her farm every day to pick cotton. She sent word up here she take anybody whut wanter work. I wish I was able to go. I loves to pick cotton. She pay em seventy-five cents a hundred. She'll pay em too! I don't know what they do this winter. Set by the fire I recken. But next spring she'll let hoe that crop. She took em this past year to hoe out that very cotton they pickin now. Her husband, he's sick. He keeps their store up town. She takes a few white hands too if they wanter work. I don't think the present generation no worse en they ever been. They drawed up closer together than they used to be. They buys everything now an they don't raise nuthin. It's the Bible fulfillin. Everything so high they caint save nuthin!
"I married twice. First time in the church, other time at home. I had four children. I had two in Detroit. I don't know where my son is. He may be there yet. My daughter there got fourteen children her own. I don't know where the others are. Nom [TR: long "o" diacritical] they don't help me a bit, do well helpin theirselves. I gets the Welfare sistance and I works my garden back here."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Parrish Washington
812 Spruce Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 86
"I was born in 1852—born in Arkansas. Sam Warren was my old master.
"I remember some of the Rebel generals—General Price and General Marmaduke.