ng by taking in a
little washing now and then.

"My mother's name was Eliza Johnson and my father's name was Joe
Johnson. I don't know a thing about none of my grandparents. And I
don't know what my mother's name was before she married.

"A gentleman what worked on the place where I lived said that if you
didn't have a pass during slave times, that if the pateroles caught
you, they would whip you and make you run back home. He said he had to
run through the woods every which way once to keep them from catching
him.

"I have heard the old folks talk about being put on the block. The
colored woman I lived with in Champaign told me that they put her on
the block and sold her down into Ripley, Mississippi.

"She said that the way freedom came was this. The boss man told her
she was free. Some of the slaves lived with him and some of them
picked up and went on off somewhere.

"The Ku Klux never bothered me. I have heard some of the colored
people say how they used to come 'round and bother the church services
looking for this one and that one.

"I don't know what to say about these young folks. I declare, they
have just gone wild. They are almost getting like brutes. A woman come
by here the other day without more 'n a spoonful of things on and
stopped and struck a match and lit her cigarette. You can't talk to
them neither. I don't know what we ought to do about it. They let
these white men run around with them. I see 'em doing anything. I
think times are bad and getting worse. Just as that shooting they had
over in North Little Rock." (Shooting and robbing of Rev. Sherman, an
A. M. E. minister, by Negro robbers.)

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Ben Johnson
Near Holly Grove and Clarendon, Arkansas
Age: 73

"My master was Wort Garland. My papa's master was Steve Johnson. Papa
went off to Louisiana and I never seen him since. I guess he got
killed. I was born in Madison County, Tennessee. I come to Arkansas
1889. Mother was here. She come on a transient ticket. My papa come
wid her to Holly Grove. They both field hands. I worked on the
section--railroad section. I cut and hauled timber and farms. I never
own no land, no home. I have two boys went off and a grown girl in
Phillips County. I don't get no help. I works bout all I able and can
get to do.

"I have voted. I votes a Republican ticket. I like this President. If
the men don't know how to vote recken the w