"I don't vote. I don't know who to vote for, let people vote know how.
"I get bout $8 and some commodities. It sure do help me out too. I tell you it sure do."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Bell Williams, Forrest City, Arkansas
Age: 85
"We was owned by Master Rucker. It seems I was about ten years old when the Civil War started. It seems like a dream to me now. Mother was a weaver. They said she was a fine weaver. She wove for all on the place and some special pieces of cloth for outsiders. She wove woolen cloth too. I don't know whether they paid for the extra weaving or not. People didn't look on money like they do now. They was free with one another about eating and visiting and work too when a man got behind with the work. The fields get gone in the grass. Sometimes they would be sick or it rained too much. The neighbor would send all his slaves to work till they caught up and never charge a cent. I don't hear about people doing that way now.
"My parents was named Clinton and Billy Bell. There was nine of us children.
"I never seen nobody sold. Mother was darker. Papa was light—half white. They didn't talk in front of children about things and I never did know. I've wondered.
"After freedom my folks stayed on at Master Rucker's. I got to be a midwife. I nursed and was a house girl after the war. Then the doctors got to sending for me to nurse and I got to be a midwife.
"My father was a good Bible scholar. He preached all around Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He was a Methodist. He died when he was seventy-seven years old. He had read the Bible through seventy-seven times--one time for every year old he was."