hen he was sold, he said. I don't know who bought him. He must
have left soon after he was sold, for he was a soldier. He run away and
want in the War. He was a private and mustered out at DeValls Bluff,
Arkansas. That is how come my mother to come here. He died in 1912 at
Wilson, Arkansas. He got a federal pension, thirty-six dollars, every
three months. He wasn't wounded, or if he was I didn't hear him speak of
it. He didn't praise war."

Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Annie Young, 913 West Scull Street,
Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 76

"My old master's name was Sam Knox. I 'members all my white people. My
mother was the cook.

"We had a good master and a good mistress too. I wish I could find some
of my master's family now. But after the war they broke up and went up
North.

"I 'member well the day my old master's son got killed. My mother was
workin' in the field and I know she come to the house a cryin'. I
'member well when we was out in the plum nursery and could hear the
cannons. My white girl Nannie told me 'Now listen, that's the war a
fightin'.'

"The soldiers used to come along and sometimes they were in a hurry and
would grab something to eat and go on and then sometimes they would sit
down to a long table.

"I could hear my great grandmother and my mother talkin' 'We'll be free
after awhile.'

"After the war my stepfather come and got my mother and we moved out in
the piney woods. My stepfather was a preacher and sometimes he was a
hundred miles from home. My mother hired out to work by the day. I was
the oldest of seven chillun and when I got big enough to work they
worked me in the field. When we cleaned up the new ground we got fifty
cents a day.

"I was between ten and twelve years old when I went to school. My first
teacher was white. But I tell you the truth, I learned most after my
children started to school.

"I worked twenty-three years for the police headquarters. I was janitor
and matron too. I washed and ironed too. I been here in Pine Bluff about
fifty or sixty years.

"If justice was done everybody would have a living. I earned the money
to buy this place and they come and wanted me to sign away my home so I
could get the old age pension but I just had sense enough not to do it.
I'm not goin' sign away my home just for some meat and bread."

Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: John Young