West and mother's name was Lear West. He was a crack hand at
making ginger cakes. He sold wagon loads in town on Saturday till he
died. I was a boy nearly grown. They had ten children in all. I was born
in Tate County, Mississippi.

"Mr. Miller had land here. I didn't work for him but he wanted me to
come here and work his land. He give us tickets. He said this was new
land and we could do better. We work a lot and make big crops and don't
hardly get a living out of it. We come on the train here.

"We come in 1920. The way we got down here now it is bad. We make big
crops and don't get much for it. We have no place to raise things to
help out and pay big prices for everything. I work. But times is hard.
That is the very reason it is hard. We got no place to raise nothing.
(Hard road and ditch in front and cotton field all around it except a
few feet of padded dirt and a wood pile.) Times is good and if a fellow
could ever get a little ahead I believe he could stay ahead. Since my
wife been sick we jes' can make it.

"We never called for no help. She cooked and I worked. She signed up but
it will be a long time, they said, till they could get to her."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Mary Mays West, Widener, Arkansas
Age: 65

"My parents' names was Josie Vesey and Henry Mays. They had ten children
and five lived to be full grown. I was born in Tate County, Mississippi.
Mother died in childbirth when she was twenty-eight years old. I'm the
mother of twelve and got five living. I been cooking out for white
people since I was nine years old. I am a good cook they all tell me and
I tries to be clean with my cooking.

"Mother died before I can remember much about her. My father said he had
to work before day and all day and till after night in the spring and
fall of the year. They ploughed with oxen and mules and horses all. He
said how they would rest the teams and feed and still they would go on
doing something else. They tromped cotton at night by torchlight.
Tromped it in the wagons to get off to the gin early next morning.

"In the winter they built fences and houses and got up wood and cleared
new ground. They made pots of lye hominy and lye soap the same day. They
had a ashhopper set all time. In the summer is when they ditched if they
had any of that to do. Farming has been pretty much the same since I was
a child. I have worked in the field all my life. I cook in the morning
and