folks,
young mistress."

#774
Interviewer: Watt McKinney
Person interviewed: Henry Green
Barton, Arkansas
Age: 90

Uncle Henry Green, an ex-slave ninety years of age, is affectionately
known throughout a large part of Phillips County as "Happy Day". This
nickname, acquired in years long past, was given him no doubt partly on
account of his remarkably happy disposition, but mainly on account of
his love for the old religious song, "Happy Day", that Uncle Henry has
enjoyed so long to sing and the verses of which his voice still carries
out daily over the countryside each morning promptly at daybreak and
again at sundown.

Uncle Henry and his old wife, Louisa, live with Uncle Henry's sister,
Mattie Harris, herself seventy-five years of age, on a poor forty acre
farm that Mattie owns in the Hyde Park community just off the main
highway between Walnut Corner and West Helena. Henry acts as janitor at
the Lutherian Church at Barton and the three do such farming as they are
able on the thin acres and with the few dollars that they receive each
month from the Welfare Board together with the supplies furnished them
at the Relief Office these three old folks are provided with the bare
necessities sufficient to sustain them.

Uncle Henry, his wife and sister Mattie are the most interesting of the
several ex-slave Negroes in this county whom it has been my pleasure and
good fortune to interview. As I sat with them on the porch of their old,
rambling log house the following incidents and account of their lives
were given with Uncle Henry talking and Mattie and Louisa offering
occasional explanations and corrections:

"Yes sir, Boss Man, my right name is Henry Green but eberybody, dey all
calls me 'Happy Day'. Dat is de name whut mos' all calls me fer so long
now dat heap of de folks, dey don't eben know dat my name is sho nuf
Henry Green. I sho ain't no baby, Boss Man, kase I is been here er long
time, dat I is, and near as I kin cum at hit I is ninety years old er
mo, kase Mattie sey dat de lady in de cote-house tell her dat I is
ninety-fo, en dat wuz three years er go. I is er old nigger, Boss Man,
en er bout de onliest old pusson whut is lef er round here in dis part
of de county. I means whut is sho nuf old, en what wuz born way bak in
de slabery times, way fo de peace wuz 'clared.

"Us wuz borned, dat is me en sister Mattie, er way bak dere in Souf
Alabama, down below Montgomery, i