nts, who they were nor
where they were. All I know he would have this child there what he'd
done bought.

"If there would be about five or six come in, here's this nigger sitting
up here. Here's a lot of folks waitin' to buy him. One would say, 'I bid
so much.' Another would say, 'I bid so much.' That would go on till the
biddin' got as high as it would go. Then the little nigger would go to
the highest bidder if the bid suited master.

"My mother and father didn't know their age. The white folks kept the
ages, and that was something they didn't allow the slaves to handle. I
must have been four or five years old when my mother was in the field,
because I wasn't allowed to take the baby out of the cradle but just to
sit and rock it.

Arkansas

"When I come to Arkansas, stages was running from Little Rock down
toward Pine Bluff. Jesse James robbed the Pine Bluff train. That about
the first train came in. They cut down the trees across the train track.
They had a wooden gun and they went in there and robbed that train with
it. They sent him to the pen and he learned a trade making cigars.

"The Union Station was just like that hillside. It was just one street
in the town. I don't know what year nor nothing about it because when I
came here it was just like somebody didn't have any sense.

Plantation

"The slave quarter was a row of houses. The plantation was high land.
The houses were little log houses with one room. They had fire arches.
They would hang pots over the fire. They would have spiders that you
call ovens. You would put coals on top of the spider and you would put
them under it and you could smell that stuff cooking! The door was in
the top of the spider and the coals would be on top of the door.

"You couldn't cook nothin' then without somebody knowin' it. Couldn't
cook and eat in the back while folk sit in the front without them
knowin' it. They used to steal from the old master and cook it and they
would be burning rags or something to keep the white folks from smelling
it.

The riding boss would come round about nine o'clock to see if you had
gone to bed or not. If they could steal a chicken or pig and kill and
cut it up, this one would take a piece and that one would take a piece
and they would burn the cotton to keep down the scent. The rider would
come round in June and July too when they thought the people would be
hunting the watermelons.

"When the soldiers came, the niggers run and h