e old people that used to live here is mostly dead or moved
up North.

"On Seventh and Ringo there was a little store. It was the only store
this side of Main Street. There was a little old house where Coffin's
Drug Store is now. The branch ran across there. Old man John Peyton had
a nursery in a little log house. You couldn't see it for the trees. He
kept a nursery for flowers. On the next corner, old man Sinclair lived.
That is the southeast corner of Ninth and Broadway. Next to him was the
Hall of the Sons of Ham.

"That was the first place I went to school. Lottie Stephens, Robert
Lacy, and Gus Richmond were the teacher. Hollins was the principal. That
was in the Sons of Ham's Hall.

"I was born in Dallas County, Arkansas. It must have been 'long 'bout in
eighty-fifty-nine, 'cause I was sixteen years old when I come here and I
been here sixty-three years.

"During the War, I was quite small. My mother brought me here after the
War and I went to school for a while. Mother had a large family. So I
never got to go to school but three months at a time and only got one
dollar and twenty-five cents a week wages when I was working. My father
drove a wagon and hoed cotton. Mother kept house. She had--lemme
see--one, two, three, four--eight of us, but the youngest brother was
born here.

"My mother's name was Millie Stokes. My mother's name before she was
married was--I don't know what. My father's name was William Stokes. My
father said he was born in Maryland. I met Richard Weathers here and
married him sixty-three years ago. I had six children, three girls and
three boys. Children make you smart and industrious--make you think and
make you get about.

"I've heard talk of the pateroles; they used to whip the slaves that was
out without passes, but none of them never bothered us. I don't remember
anything myself, because I was too small. I heard of the Ku Klux too;
they never bothered my people none. They scared the niggers at night. I
never saw none of them. I can't remember how freedom came. First I
knowed, I was free.

"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