read the Bible to him and then he could get up and tell it to
the people. I don't know how he managed it. He didn't know how to read.
But he had a wonderful memory. He always had his exhorting license
renewed and he exhorted the people both Methodists and Baptists. After
freedom, when I went to school I knew and always helped him.

"My father voted on the election days all the time. Be was a Republican,
and he rallied to them all the time. Before the war, my father farmed.
He commenced in the early fall hauling the cotton from Abbeville, South
Carolina to Augusta, Georgia. That was his business--teamster, hauling
cotton. He never did talk like his owners were so mean to him. Of
course, they weren't mean. When her master died and the property had to
be sold, his master bought her and her babies.

"My father met my mother before the war started. Colored people were
scarce in the locality where she lived. These white people saw my father
and liked him. And they encouraged her to marry him. She was only
seventeen. My father was much older. He remembered the dark day in May
and when the stars fell.

"He didn't show his age much though till he came to Little Rock. He had
been used to farming and city life didn't agree with him. He left about
seven years after coming here.

"My father and mother met and married in Mississippi. He came from South
Carolina and she came from Alabama. They had nine children. All of them
were born after the war. I am the oldest. Lee McCoy is my youngest
brother. You know him, I'm sure. He is the president of Rust College. I
was born right after the war. Don't put me down as no ex-slave. I was
born right after the war.

"Right after the war, my father farmed in Mississippi. He took a notion
to come to Arkansas in 1891. He brought his whole family with him. And I
have been out here ever since.

"I never saw any slave houses. I wasn't a slave. I have been to the
place where my mother was raised. I was teaching school near there and
just wanted to see. After her master died, Sam McCallister, his cousin,
took the slave children and was their guardian. Years later it come up
in court and they took all his land. Bill Mitchell was her first master.
He died during slave time. McCallister was made administrator of the
estate. He was made guardian of all the children too. He was made
guardian of the white children and of the colored children. He raised
them all. There was Ma and her auntie and three or