"People in them days didn't know as much as the young people do now. But they thought more. Young people nowadays don't think. Some of them will do pretty well, but some of them ain't goin' to do nothin'. They are gittin' worse and worser. I don't know what is goin' to become of them. They been dependin' on the white folks all along, but the white folks ain't sayin' much now. My people don't seem to want nothin'. The majority of them just want to dress and run up and down the streets and play cards and policy and drink and dance. It is nice to have a good time but there is something else to be thought of. But if one tries to do somethin', the rest tries to pull him down. The more education they get, the worse they are—that is, some of them."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Ishe Webb
1610 Cross Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 78, or more
"I was born October 14. That was in slavery time. The record is burnt up. I was born in Atlanta, Georgia. My father's master was a Webb. His first name was Huel. My father was named after him. I came here in 1874, and I was a boy eleven or twelve years old then.
"My father was sold to another man for seventeen hundred dollars. My mother was sold for twenty hundred. I have heard them say that so much that I never will forget it. Webb sold my father and bought him back. My mother's folks were Calverts. The Calverts and the Webbs owned adjoining plantations.
"My grandmother on my mother's side was a Calvert too. Her first name was Joanna. I think my father's parents got beat to death in slavery. Grandfather on my mother's side was tied to a stump and whipped to death. He was double jointed and no two men could whip him. They wanted to whip him because he wouldn't work. That was what they would whip any one for. They would run off before they would work. Stay in the woods all night.
"My Grandma Calvert was buried over here in Galloway on the Rock Island road on the John Eynes plantation.
"My folks' masters were all right. But them nigger drivers were bad, just like the county farm. A man sitting in the house and putting you over a lot of men, you gwinter go up high as you want to.
"My father was a blacksmith and my mother was a weaver. There was a lot of those slavery folks 'round the house, and they tell me they didn't work them till they were twenty-one, they put them in the field when they were twenty-two. If you didn't work they would beat you to death. My father killed his overseer and went on off to the War.