. That was
when I married too."

How Freedom Came

"All I know about freedom was Old Man Henry Bibb come out and told us we
was free. That is how I came to know it. He came out there on the farm
and said, 'Well, you all free as I am. You can stay here if you want to
or you can go somewhere else.' We stayed. Mama stayed there on the farm
plumb till she come to town. I don't know how many years. I was there in
town and so she come onto town later. Moved in with the people she was
with. They gave up their place. I was nineteen years old when I left the
country. My mother gave me her consent,--to marry then, too. She came to
town a few years later.

"The slaves weren't given nothin' after they was freed. Nothing but what
they worked for. They got to be share croppers."

Ku Klux Klan

"The Ku Klux never bothered me but they sure bothered others. Way yonder
in Mississippi directly after the surrender, they'd hated it so bad they
killed up many of them. They caught white men there and whipped them and
killed them. They killed many a nigger. They caught a white man there
and whipped him and he went on up to Washington, D. C. and came back
with a train load of soldiers. They came right down there in the south
end of our town and they carried them Ku Kluxers away by train loads
full. They cleaned out the east side of the river. The Ku Klux had been
stringing up niggers every which way. 'Twasn't nothin' to find a nigger
swinging up in the woods. But those soldiers come from Washington City.
If they didn't clean 'em up, I'll hush.

"I don't know what become of 'em. They never did come back to Aberdeen."

Occupations Followed and Life Since Freedom

"I ain't worked a lick in four or five years. If I lived to see August
tenth, I will be eighty-six years old. I used to follow railroading or
saw milling or farming. That is what I followed when I was able to work.
The last work I did was farming, working by the day--a dollar and a half
a day. And they cut it down and cut me down. Now they ain't giving
nothing. If a man gets six bits a day he doing good. Harder times in
Arkansas now than I have ever seen before. If a man is able to take care
of his family now, he is doing well. They don't give niggers nothing
now.

"The only way I live is I get a little pension. They give me eight
dollars a month and commodities. That is all I live on now. That keeps
me up, thank God. I have been getting the pension about ever since they