Why you reckon they won't give me one. They don't understand that that
little house I own doesn't even keep itself up. My daughter-in-law is
good to me but she needs everything she makes. I can't get much to do
now, and what little I gets, they don't pay me much for.

I don' remember nothin' else.

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Jennie Washington, DeValls Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 80

"My mother was a slave and my father too I recken. They belonged to Jack
Walton when I remembered. I was born at St. Charles. My mother died in
time of the war at St. Louis. This is whut I remembers. My mother was
sold twice. The Prices owned her and the Wakefields owned her before she
was owned by old Jack Walton. I was the youngest child. I had one
brother went to war and he drawed a pension long as he lived. We
children all got scattered out. Mr. Walton bout the age of my father and
he said some day all these niggers be set free and warnt long fore they
sho was. I had one older sister I recollect mighty well. My mother named
Fannie, my father named Abe Walton. He had a young master James Walton.

"When I was nuthin but a chile I remembers James dressed up like Ku Klux
Klan and scared me. The old master sho did whoop him bout that. They
take care of the little black children and feed em good an don't let em
do too hard er work to stunt em so they take em off and sell em for a
good price.

"I remembers the little old log house my granma and granpa way back over
on the place stayed in till they died. We went back after the war and
lived ten years on the same place. We lived close to the white folks in
a bigger house.

"I don't recollect no big change after freedom cept they quit selling
and working folks without giving them money. I was too small to notice
much change then I speck. Times has always been tight wid me. I ain't
never had very much. I did work an a livin is all I ever got out of it.
Never could make enough to get ahead.

"The white folks never give the darky nothing when freedom declared. We
used to raise tobacco and sell it to smoke and make snuff. And he had em
make ax handles to sell on the side for money till the crops gathered.

"If you believe in the Bible you won't believe in women votin' I never
did vote. I ain't goner never vote.

"The present condition is fine. Mrs. Robinson carries a great big truck
load to her farm every day to pick cotton. She sent word up here she
take anybod