ands very long, they'd have to
take me to Little Rock.

"I been married twice. My last husband was Sam Shaw. He was a great
whiskey man and when whiskey went out, he went to bootleggin' and they
got behind him and he left.

"He wrote me once and said if I'd borrow some money on my home and send
it to him, he'd come back. I wrote and told him just like I'm tellin'
you that after I had worked night and day to pay for this house while
he was off tellin' some other woman lies just like he told me, I wasn't
goin' to send him money. So I ain't seen him since.

"I ain't never been to school much. When schools got numerous in
Mississippi they had me behind a plow handle.

"Mrs. Jeter made me mad once and I quit. My first husband was a porter
on the railroad and I got on the train and went to Memphis with him.

"One time he come back from a trip to Pine Bluff and handed me a little
package. I opened it and it was a note from Mrs. Jeter and a piece of
corn bread. She said, 'Now, Mary, you see what I've had to eat. I want
you to come back.' So I went back and stayed 'til she died. And now I'm
workin' for her daughter, Mrs. McEwen. Mrs. Jeter used to say, 'Mary,
I know you're not a Arkansas woman 'cause you ain't got a lazy bone in
your body.'"

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Violet Shaw, West Memphis, Arkansas
Age: 50

"I heard Grandma Katie Williams say she was put up on a high stump and
auctioned off. She told how great-grandma cried and cried and never
seen her no more. Grandma come from Oakland, Tennessee to Mississippi.
Grandma took the two young children and left the other two with
great-grandma. They took her from her husband. She never seen none of
them again.

"After freedom she didn't know how to find them. She never could get
trace of them. She tried. She never married no more. I was born at
Clarksdale, Mississippi. I have seen Tom Pernell (white), the young
master, come and spend the night with Henry Pernell. Henry had once been
Tom's father's slave and carriage driver. I was too small to know the
cause but I remember that several times mighty well. They fixed him up a
clean bed by hisself. Henry lived in town. But he might have been drunk.
I never seen no misbehavior out of him. It was strange to me to see
that.

"Freedom--Aunt Mariah Jackson was freed at Dublin, Mississippi. She said
she was out in the field working. A great big white man come, jumped
up on a log and shoute