ck, Arkansas
Age: 63

"I was born in Marianna, Lee County, in Arkansas. I wasn't born right in
the town but out a piece from the town in the old Bouden place, in 1875.
My father kept a record of all births and deaths in his Bible. He never
forgot whenever a new baby would come to get down his glasses and
pen and ink and Bible. My daddy learned to read and write after the
emancipation.

"My father's name was Frank Johnson and my mother's name was Henrietta
Johnson. I don't know the given names of my father's and mother's
parents. I do know my mother's mother's name. Lucinda, and my father's
mother was named Stephens. I don't know their given names. My mother's
master was a Trotter.

"My father was a free man. He hired his own time. He told me that
his father hired his own time and he would go off and work. He made
washpots. He would go off and work and bring back money and things. His
mother was free too. When war was declared, he volunteered to go. He
was with the Yankees. My father worked just like my grandfather did.
Whenever he had a job to do. He never had a lick from anybody, carried
his gun strapped down on his side all the time and never went without
it.

"After the War, he worked on a steamboat. They used to kick the
roustabouts about and run them around but they never laid the weight of
their hands on him.

"They wouldn't allow him to go to school in slavery time. After the War,
he got a Blue Back Speller and would make a bowl of fire and at night
he would study--sometimes until daybreak. Then he found an old man that
would help him and he studied under him for a while. He never went to
any regular school, but he went to night school a little. Most of what
he got, he got himself.

"He was born in Louisville, Kentucky. I don't know how he happened to
meet my mother. During the time after the War, he went to running on the
boat from New Orleans to Friar Point, Mississippi. Then he would come
over to Helena. In going 'round, he met my mother near Marianna and
married her.

"Mother never had much to say, and the other girls would have a big time
talking. He noticed that she was sewing with ravelings and he said,
'Lady, next time I come I'll bring you a spool of thread if you don't
mind.' He brought the thread and she didn't mind, and from then on, they
went to courting. Finally they married. They married very shortly after
the War.

"My mother was a motherless girl. My daddy said he looked at her
str