somebody might bring it
to her. Her hands are too stiff and shaky to cook. Her eye sight is so
bad she cannot clean her room. Two WPA county visitors, girls, bathe her
at intervals.

"I was born between Jackson and Brandon. Sure I was born down in
Mississippi. My mother's name they tole me was Rosie. She died when I
was a baby. My father named Richard Chamber. They called him Dick. He
was killed direckly after the war by a white man. He was a Rebel scout.
The man named Hodge. I seed him. He shot my father. Them questions been
called over to me so much I most forgot 'em. Well some jes' lack 'em. My
father's master was Hal Chambers and his wife Virginia. Recken I do
'member the Ku Klux. They scared me to death. I go under the bed every
time when I see them about. Then was when my father was killed. He went
off with a crowd of white men. They said they was Rebel scouts. All I
know I never seed him no more since that evening. They killed him across
the line, not far from Mississippi. Chambers had two or three farms. I
was on the village farm. I had one brother. Chambers sent him to the
salt works and I never seed him no more. I was a orphant.

"Chambers make you work. I worked in the field. I come wid a crowd to
Helena. I come on a boat. I been a midwife to black and white. I used to
cook some. I am master hand at ironin'. I have no children as I knows
of. I never born none. I help raise some. I come on a fine big steamboat
wid a crowd of people. I married in Arkansas. My husband died ten or
twelve years ago. I forgot which years it was. I been livin' in this
bery house seben years.

"The Government give me $10 a month. I would wash dishes but I can't see
'bout gettin' 'round no more.

"Don't ax me 'bout the young niggers. They too fast fo me. If I see 'em
they talkin' a passel of foolish talk. Whut I knows is times is hard wid
me shows you born.

"You come back to see me. If you don't I wanter meet you all in heaben.
By, by, by."

Interviewer: Watt McKinney
Person interviewed: Dock Wilborn
A mile or so from Marvell, Arkansas
Age: 95

Dock Wilborn was born a slave near Huntsville, Alabama on January 7,
1843, the property of Dan Wilborn who with his three brothers, Elias,
Sam, and Ike, moved to Arkansas and settled near Marvell in Phillips
County about 1855.

According to "Uncle Dock" the four Wilborn brothers each owning more
than one hundred slaves acquired a large body of wild, unde