7. Special skills and interests--

8. Community and religious activities--Belongs to Baptist Church.

9. Description of informant--

10. Other points gained in interview--Facts concerning child life,
status of colored girls, patrollers, marriage and sex relationships,
churches and amusements.

Text of Interview (Unedited)

STATE--Arkansas

NAME OF WORKER--Samuel S. Taylor

ADDRESS--Little Rock, Arkansas

DATE--December, 1938

SUBJECT--Ex-slave

NAME AND ADDRESS OF INFORMANT--Lewis Brown, 2100 Pulaski Street, Little
Rock.

"I was born in 1855, April 14, in Kemper County, Mississippi, close to
Meridian. I drove gin wagons in the time of the war in a horse-power
gin. I carried matches and candles down to weigh cotton with in slavery
times.

"They had to pick cotton till dark. They had to tote their weight
hundred pounds, two pounds, whatever it was down to the weighing place
and they had to weigh it. Whatever you lacked of having your weight, you
would get a lick for. On down till they called us out for the war, that
was the way it was. They were goin' to give my brother fifty lashes but
they come and took him to the army, and they didn't git to whip him.

"My father was Lewis Bronson. He come from South Carolina. My mother was
stole. The speculators stole her and they brought her to Kemper County,
Mississippi, and sold her. My mother's name was Millie. My father's
owner was Elijah McCoy. Old Elijah McCoy was the owner, but they didn't
take his name. They went back to the old standard mark after the
surrender. They went back to the people where they come from, and they
changed their names--they changed off of them old names. McCoys was my
masters, but my father went back to the name of the people way back over
in there in South Carolina, where he come from. I don't know nothin'
bout them. He was the father of nine children. He had two wives. One of
them he had nine by, and the other one he had none by. So he went back
to the one he had the nine children by.

Early Life

"I was ten years old when war was ended. I had to carry matches and
candles to the cotton pickers. It would be too dark for them to weigh
up. They couldn't see. They had tasks and they would be picking till
late to git their tasks done. Matches and candles come from the big
house, and I had to bring it down to them. That was two years before the
war.

"I wasn't big enough to do nothing else, only drive to the gin. I drove
hor