"I would be back home yet if they hadn't made me come away.
"They didn't have no church in slavery time. They jus' had to hide around and worship God any way they could.
"I used to live in Laconia. I ain't been back there since the war. I want to go back to my folks."
Interviewer's Comment
Frank Williams is like a man suffering from amnesia. He is the first old man that I have interviewed whose memory is so far gone. He remembers practically nothing. He can't tell you where he was born. He can't tell you where he lived before he came to Little Rock. Only when his associates mention some of the things he formerly told them can he remember that little of his past that he does state in any remote approach to detail.
There is a strong emotional set which relates to his slave time experiences. The emotion surges up in his mind at any mention of slave time matters. But only the emotion remains. The details are gone forever. Names, times, places, happenings are gone forever. He does not even recall the name of his father, the name of his mother, or the name of any of his relatives or masters, or old-time friends. No single definite thing rises above the horizon of his mind and defines itself clearly to him.
And always after every sentence he utters, there rises the old refrain: "I want to go back home. I wouldn't be in this condition if I was back home. I live in Laconia. They made me come away." And that is the substance of the story he remembers.