spects of the country and the race are good. I don't see
much dark days ahead. It is just a new era. You are doing something
right now I never saw done before in my life. Even when they had the
census, I didn't see any colored people taking it.

"I don't get any assistance in the form of money from the government. I
have been trying to get it but I can't. Looks like they cut off a lot of
them and can't reach it. Won't let me teach school. Say I am too old for
WPA teaching. Superannuate me in the church, and say I'm too old to
preach, and still I haven't gotten anything from my church since last
January. I get some commodities from the state. I belong to the C.M.E.
Church. I have lived in this community twenty-five years."

Interviewer's Comment

Hanging on the wall was the old man's diploma from the Mississippi State
Normal School for colored persons. It was dated May 30, 1888, and it
bore the signatures of J.R. Preston, State Superintendent; E.D. Miller,
County Superintendent (both members of the Board of Directors); J.H.
Henderson, Principal; Narcissa Hill and Maria Rabb, faculty members.

Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: George Brown
Route 4; Box 159, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 84

"Yes'm, I was born in slavery times. I was born in 1854. How old does
that leave me?

"No ma'am, I wasn't born in Arkansas, born in Alabama.

"Jim Hart was my white folks. Good to me? I'd rather let that alone.
Plenty to eat? I'll have to let that alone too. I used to say my old
missis was 'Hell a mile.' Her name was Sarah. She was a Williams but she
married Jim Hart. They had about a hundred and seventy head, little and
big together.

"Me? I was a servant at the house. I didn't do any field work till after
surrender.

"Some women was pretty mean and old miss was one of 'em.

"You'll get the truth now--I ain't told you half.

"We lived in Marengo County. The Tombigbee River divided it and Sumter
County. The War didn't get down that far. It just got as far as Mobile.

"Oh yes'm, I knowed they was a war gwine on. I'd be waitin' on the table
and I'd hear the white folks talkin'. I couldn't keep all I heard.

"I know I heard 'em say General Grant went up in a balloon and counted
all the horses and mules they had in Vicksburg.

"I seen them gunboats gwine down the Tombigbee River. And I seen a
string of cotton bales as long as from here to there floatin' down the
river to Mobile