love her soul in her grave. I helped her to do all her work she taught
me. She'd leave me with her little boy and go to church and I'd make
cakes and corn bread. She brag on me. We'd have biscuits on Sunday
morning. They was a rarity.

"One day she had company. She told me to bake some potatoes with the
jackets on. I washed the potatoes and wrapped them up in rags and boiled
them. It made her so mad she wet the towel and whooped me with it. I
unwrapped the potatoes and we had them that way for dinner. That was the
maddest she ever got at me. She learned me to cook and keep a nice house
and to sew good as anybody. I rather know how to work than be educated.

"Mr. Ash give me a lot of scraps from his garment factory. I made them
up in quilts. He give me enough to make three dresses. I needed dresses
so bad." (One dress has sixty-six pieces in it but it didn't look like
that. They sent it to Little Tock and St. Louis for the county fairs.
Her dresses looked fairly well.)

"I was born at Holly Grove, Arkansas. Alexander was the name my pa went
by and that was my maiden name."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Liza Moore Tanner, Helena, Arkansas
Age: 79

"I was born in north Georgia. It was not fer from Rome. We belong to
Master Belton Moore and Miss Jane Moore. They had a big family, some
grandchildren old as their own. That was my job playing wid the
children. My parents' name Rob Moore and Pilfy Calley. She lived five
miles from Belton Moore's house. She was hired out over at Moore's the
way she and papa met up. I know now I was hired out too. I run after
them children a long time it seemed like to me. I loved them and they
cried after me. I get so tired I'd slip off and go up in the loft and
soon be asleep. I learned to climb a ladder that very way. It was nailed
up straight against the side of the wall. They'd ask me where I been.
They never did whoop me fer that. I tell 'em I been asleep. I drapped
off 'sleep. I was so tired. Papa helped with the young calves and the
feeding and in the field too. Mama was a fast hand in the field. They
called her a little guinea woman. She could outdo me when I was grown
and she was getting old. She washed fer the Calley's. All I remember
they was a old man and woman. Mama lived in the office at their house.
He let her ride a horse to Moore's to work. I rode home wid her many a
time. She rode a side saddle. I rode sideways too. She used a battling
st