y.

"I never been anywhere 'cept Arkansas, Jefferson, and Conway Counties. I
was in Conway County when they went to the precinct to vote for or
against the Fort Smith & Little Rock Railroad. The precinct where they
went to vote was Springfield. It used to be the county seat of Conway
County.

"While the war was goin' on and when young Tom Word would come home from
school, he learned me and when the war ended, I could read in McGuffy's
Third Reader. After that I went to school three months for about four
years.

"Directly after Emancipation, the white men in the South had to take the
Oath of Allegiance. Old master took it but he hated to do it. Now these
are stubborn facts I'm givin' you but they's true.

"After freedom mother brought me here to Pine Bluff and put me in the
field. I picked up corn stalks and brush and carried water to the hands.
Children in them days worked. After they come from school, even the
white children had work to do. Trouble with the colored folks now, to my
way of thinkin', is they are top heavy with literary learning and
feather light with common sense and domestic training.

"I remember a song they used to sing daring the war:

'Jeff Davis is our President
Lincoln is a fool;
Jeff Davis rides a fine white horse
While Lincoln rides a mule.'

"And here's another one:

'Hurrah for Southern rights, hurrah!
Hurrah for the Bonny Blue Flag
That bore the single star.'

"Yes, they was hants sixty years ago. The generation they was interested
has bred em out. Ain't none now.

"I never did care much for politics, but I've always been for the South.
I love the Southland. Only thing I don't like is they don't give a
square deal when it comes between the colored and the Whites. Ten years
ago, I was worth $15,000 and now I'm not worth fifteen cents. The real
estate men got the best of me. I've been blind now for four years and
all my wife and I have is what we get from the Welfare."

Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Ike Worthy
2413 W. 11th Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age 74

"I was born in Selma, Alabama on Christmas day and I'm goin' on 75.

"I can 'member old missis' name Miss Liza Ann Bussey. I never will
forget her name. Fed us in a trough--eighteen of us. Her husband was
named Jim Bussey, but they all dead now.

"When I got large enough to remember we went to Louisiana. I was sixteen
when we left Alabama--six hundr