e my leg and
it's two inches shorter than the other one. I walked on crutches 'bout
five years. Got my jawbone broke too. Couldn't eat? I ain't never
stopped eatin'. Ain't no way to stop me from eatin' 'cept to not give it
to me.

"I compressed after I got my leg broke. And I was a noble good
bricklayer.

"I never have voted. Nobody ever pushed me up to it and I ain't never
been bothered 'bout anything like that. Everythin was a satisfaction to
me. Just whatever way they went was a satisfaction to me.

"I have never heard my folks give my white folks no 'down the hill'. My
daddy was brought from Charleston, South Carolina. He was a ship
carpenter. He did all of Payne's carpenter work from my baby days up.

"The last of the Paynes died since I came here to Arkansas. He was a
A. M. Payne, too.

"I can 'member the soldiers marchin' by. They wore yellow shirts and
navy blue coats. I know the coats had two little knobs right behind,
just the color of the coat.

"I don't know what to think of the younger generation. I don't know why
and what to think of 'em. Just don't know how to take 'em. Ain't comin'
like I did. Lay it to the parents. They have plenty of leaders outside
the family.

"I'm lookin' for a better time. God's got His time set for 'em on that.

"I belong to St. James Methodist Episcopal Church."

#737
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Marie E. Hervey
1520 Pulaski Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 62

"I have heard my father and mother talk over the War so many times. They
would talk about how the white people would do the colored and how the
Yankees would come in and tear up everything and take anything they
could get their hands on. They would tell how the colored people would
soon be free. My mama's white folks went out and hid when the Yankees
were coming through.

"My father's white people were named Taylor's--old Job Taylor's folks.
They lived in Tennessee.

"My mother said they had a block to put the colored people and their
children on and they would tell them to tell people what they could do
when the people asked them. It would just be a lot of lies. And some of
them wouldn't do it. One or two of the colored folks they would sell and
they would carry the others back. When they got them back they would
lock them up and they would have the overseers beat them, and bruise
them, and knock them 'round and say, 'Yes, you can't talk, huh?