Woods.

"I come to Arkansas so my little boys would have a home. I had a little
home an sold it to come out here. Agents come round showin pictures how
big the cotton grow. They say it grow like trees out here. The children
climb the stalks an set on the limb lack birds to pick it. They show
pictures like that. Cotton basket way down under it on the ground. See
droves of wild hogs coming up, look big as mules. Men ridin em. No I
didn't know they said it was so fine. We come in freight cars wid our
furniture and everything we brought. We had our provision in baskets and
big buckets. It lasted till we passed Atlanta. We nearly starved the
rest of the way. When we did stop you never hear such a hollein. We come
two days and nights hard as we could come. We stayed up and eat, cooked
meat an eggs on the stove in the store till daybreak. Then they showed
us wha to go to our places the next day. I been here ever since.

"I hab voted. I done quit lettin votin bother me up. All I see it do is
give one fellow out of two or three a job both of them maybe ought to
have. The meanest man often gets lected. It the money they all after not
the work in it. I heard em say what all they do and when they got lected
they forgot to do all they say they would do.

"I never knowed bout no slave uprisins. Thed had to uprose wid rocks an
red clods. The black man couldn't shoot. He had no guns. They had so
much work they didn't know how to have a uprisin. The better you be to
your master the better he treat you. The white preachers teach that in
the church."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Maggie Woods,
Brassfield, Ark.
Deaner Farm.
Age: 70

"My parents was Fannie and Alfred Douglas. They had three children, then
he died and my mother married a man name Thompson. My parents belong to
the Douglasses at Summerville, Tennessee. They had six children in their
family.

"I was born the second year of the surrender that make me seventy years
old. My folks was all field hands. They was all pure African stock. All
black folks like me. Grandma Liney Douglass said she was sold and
Grandpa was sold too. My own parents never was sold. The Douglass
men-folks whooped the slaves but they was good masters outside of that.

"They would steal off and have preachin' at night. Had preachin' nearly
all night sometimes. They'd hurry and get in home fore the day be
breakin'. From the way t