ictory Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: About 85

"I was born in Helena, Arkansas. Not exactly in the town but in hardly
not more than three blocks from the town. Have you heard about the
Grissoms down there? Well, them is my white folks. My maiden name was
Burke. But we never called ourselves any name 'cept Grissom.

"My mother's name was Sylvia Grissom. Her husband was named Jack
Burkes. He went to the Civil War. That was a long time ago. When they
got up the war, they sold out a lot of the colored folks. But they
didn't get a chance to sell my mother. She left. They tell me one of
them Grissom boys has been down here looking for me. He didn't find me
and he went on back.

My mother's mistress was named Sylvia Grissom too. All of us was named
after the white folks. All the old folks is dead, but the young ones
is living. I think my mother's master was named John. They had so many
of them that I forgit which is which. But they had all mama's children
named after them. My mother had three girls and three boys.

"When the war began and my father went to war, my mother left Helena
and came here. She run off from the Grissoms. They whipped her too
much, those white folks did. She got tired of all that beating. She
took all of us with her. All six of us children were born before the
war. I was the fourth.

"There is a place down here where the white folks used to whip and
hang the niggers. Baskin Lake they call it. Mother got that far. I
don't know how. I think that she came in a wagon. She stayed there a
little while and then she went to Churchill's place. Churchill's place
and John Addison's place is close together down there. That is old
time. Them folks is dead, dead, dead. Churchill's and Addison's places
joined near Horse Shoe Lake. They had hung and burnt people--killed
'em and destroyed 'em at Baskin Lake. We stayed there about four days
before we went on to Churchill's place. We couldn't stay there long.

"The ha'nts--the spirits--bothered us so we couldn't sleep. All them
people that had been killed there used to come back. We could hear
them tipping 'round in the house all the night long. They would blow
out the light. You would kiver up and they would git on top of the
kiver. Mama couldn't stand it; so she come down to General Churchill's
place and made arrangements to stay there. Then she came back and got
us children. She had an old man to stay there with us until she come
back and got us. We couldn