ive you some blue mass and turn
you loose.

"I remember when old marster's son Sam went to war and got shot in the
leg. Old marster was cryin' 'Oh, my Sam is shot'. He got in a scrummage
you know. He got well but he never could straighten out his leg.

"When freedom come, I heard 'em prayin' for the men to come back home.
Miss Mary called us all up and told us our age and said, 'You all are
free and can go where you want to go, or you can stay here.'

"Oh yes, the Ku Klux use to run my daddy if they caught him out without
a pass, but I remember he could outrun them--he was stout as a mule.

"I been here so long and what little I've picked up is just a little
fireside learnin'. I can read and write my name. I can remember when we
thought a newspaper opened out was a bed-cover. But a long time after
the war when the public school come about, I had the privilege of going
to school three weeks. Yes mam, I was swift and I think I went nearly
through the first reader.

"I am a great lover of the Bible and I'm a member of Mount Calvary
Baptist Church.

"I'm glad to give you some kind of idea 'bout my age and life. I really
am glad. Goodbye."

Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Ben Hite
1515 Ohio Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 74

"Well, I didn't zactly live in slavery times. I was born in 1864, the
4th of July. They said it was on the William Moore place four miles from
Chattanooga but I was in Georgia when I commenced to remember--in Fort
Valley--just a little town.

"I been in Arkansas sixty-five years the first day of January. Come to
the old Post of Arkansas in 1873. I been right here on this spot
forty-three years. Made a many a bale of cotton on the Barrow place.

"Went to school three weeks right down here in 'Linkum' County. I could
read a little but couldn't write any much.

"I been married to this wife forty years. My fust wife dead.

"I lived in 'Linkum' County eight years and been in Jefferson County
ever since.

"Three years ago I was struck by a car and I been blind two years. I can
just 'zern' the light. When I was able to be about I used to vision what
it would be like to be blind and now I know.

"Yes'm, I just come here on the eve of the breakin' up. I seed the
Yankees in Georgia after freedom. They called em Bluejackets.

"All my life I have farmed--farmed."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person Interviewed: Betty Ho