"Good morning Granny, how are you this morning?"

"Only tolerable, thank you," replied Granny.

The health of Mrs. Lennox has been failing for the past three years but she gets around quite well for a lady who will be eight-eight years old the twenty-fifth day of this October. She gets an old age pension of about thirteen dollars per month.

A peculiar thing about Mrs. Lennox's life is that she says that she never knew that she was a slave until she was set free. Her mistress then told her that she was free and could go back to her father's home which she did rather reluctantly.

Mrs. Lennox smokes, enjoys corn bread and boiled potatoes as food, but does not enjoy automobiles as "they are too bumpy and they gather too much air," she says. "I do not eat sweets," she remarks "my one ambition in life is to live so that I may claim Heaven as my home when I die."

There is a newspaper picture in the office along with an article published by the Elkhart Truth. This is being sent to Indianapolis today.

Submitted by:
Estella R. Dodson
District #11
Monroe County
Bloomington, Ind.
October 4, 1937
INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS LEWIS, COLORED
North Summit Street, Bloomington, Ind.

I was born in Spencer County, Kentucky, in 1857. I was born a slave. There was slavery all around on all the adjoining places. I was seven years old when I was set free. My father was killed in the Northern army. My mother, step-father and my mother's four living children came to Indiana when I was twelve years old. My grandfather was set free and given a little place of about sixteen acres. A gang of white men went to my grandmother's place and ordered the colored people out to work. The colored people had worked before for white men, on shares. When the wheat was all in and the corn laid by, the white farmers would tell the colored people to get out, and would give them nothing. The colored people did not want to work that way, and refused. This was the cause of the raids by white farmers. My mother recognized one of the men in the gang and reported him to the standing soldiers in Louisville. He was caught and made to tell who the others were until they had 360 men. All were fined and none allowed to leave until all the fines were paid. So the rich ones had to pay for the poor ones. Many of them left because all were made responsible if such an event ever occurred again.