vote--the Republican ticket. We ain't nothin'
now, we can't vote. I never had any trouble 'bout votin' here but in the
old country we had some trouble. The Democrats tried to keep us from
votin'. Had to have the United States soldiers to open the way. That was
when Hays and Wheeler was runnin'.

"Here in the South the colored folks is free and they're not free. The
white folks gets it all anyway--in some places.

"But they ain't nobody bothered me in all my life--here or there.

"I went to school some after the war. Didn't have very much, but I
learned to read and write and 'tend to my own affairs.

"I have done farm work all my life and some public work. I got the same
ambition to work as I used to have but I can't hold it. I start out but
I just can't hold it.

"Just to pass my opinion of the younger generation, some of 'em
level-headed, but seems to me like they is a little rougher than they
was in my day.

"I think every one should live as an example for those coming behind."

MAY 11 1938
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: George Greene
Temporary--1700 Pulaski St., Little Rock, Ark.
Permanent--Wrightsville, Ark.
Age: 85?

Birth and Age

"I don't know when I was born. I don't know exactly, but I was born in
slavery time before the War began. I was big enough to wait on the table
when they was fighting. I remember when they was setting the Negroes
free. I was born in Aberdeen, Mississippi, in Monroe County. Seven miles
from the town of Aberdeen, out on the prairies, that is where I was
born.

"I figure out my age by the white woman that raised me. She sent me my
age. When they was working the roads, my road boss, I told him I was
forty-five years old and he didn't believe it. So I sent to the white
woman that raised me from a month-old child. When I left her, I'd done
got grown. Her name was Narcissus Stephenson; she had all our ages and
she sent mine to me.

"She may be dead now. I could've stayed right there if she isn't dead,
because she never did want me to come away. Right out in Arkansas, I
come,--to my sorrow. Well, I done right well till I got crippled. Got
hit by an automobile. That's what I'm doin' here now."

Parents and Relatives

"My father's name was Nathan Greene. I reckon he went by that name, I
can't swear to it. I wasn't with him when he died. I was up in
Mississippi on the Mississippi River and didn't ge