e Bluff and he didn't never find 'em. The Judge think the
Yankees goin' get everything he got so we all left Arkansas and went to
Texas. We in Texas when freedom come. We come back to Arkansas and I
stay with my white folks awhile but I didn't get no pay so I got a job
cookin' for a colored woman.

"I been married fo' times. I left my las' husband. I didn't leave him
cause he beat me. I lef' him cause he want too many.

"No'm I never seen no Ku Klux. I heard 'bout 'em but I never seen none
that I knows of. When I used to get a pass to go to 'nother plantation I
always come back fo' dark.

"This younger generation is beyond my onderstanding. They is gettin'
weaker and wiser.

"I been ready to die for the last thirty years. 'Mary (her granddaughter
with whom she lives), show the lady my shroud.' I keeps it wropped up
in blue cloth. They tells me at the store to do that to keep it from
turning yellow. 'Show her that las' quilt I made.' Yes'm I made this all
by myself. I threads my own needle, too, and cuts out the pieces. I has
worked hard all my life.

"Now the Welfare gives me my check. My granddaughter good to me. I goes
to church on the first and third Sundays.

"Lady, I glad you come to see me and God bless you. Goo' bye!"

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person Interviewed: Tom Stanhouse
R.F.D.
Brinkley, Ark.
Age: 74

"I was born close to Greenville, South Carolina. I lived down close to
Spartanburg. My mother was named Luvenia Stanhouse and Henry Stanhouse.
They had nine children. Grandma belong to Hopkins but married into the
Stanhouse family. Grandpa's name was Tom. They set him free. I guess
because he was old. He lived about mong his children.

"When they was set free old man Adam Stanhouse was good to em. He
treated em nice but they never got nothing but their clothes. They moved
on another place and started working sharecropper.

"Before freedom old man Adam Stanhouse would give my pa a pass or his
pocket knife to show to go to see my ma. She lived at Dr. Harrison's
farm five miles apart. They all knowed Adam Stanhouse's knife. I don't
know how they would know it. He never let his Negroes be whooped unless
he said so. Owners didn't 'low the Ku Klux whoop hands on their place.

"Adam Stanhouse brought my pa from Virginia with him. Some of them men
thought might near much of his slaves as they did their children. Or I
heard em say they seem to. My