soldiers
give out news of freedom. They was shouting 'round. I jes' stood around
to see whut they goiner do next. Didn't nobody give me nuthin'. I didn't
know what to do. Everything going. Tents all gone, no place to go stay
and nothin' to eat. That was the big freedom to us colored folks. That
the way white folks fightin' do the colored folks. I got hungry and
naked and cold many a time. I had a good master and I thought he always
treated me heap better than that. I wanted to go back but I had no way.
I made it down to St. Charles in 'bout a year after the surrender. I
started farmin'. I been farmin' ever since. In Little Rock I found a job
in a tin pin alley, pickin' up balls. The man paid me $12 a month, next
to starvation. I think his name was Warren Rogers.

"I went to Indian Bay 'bout 1868 and farmed for Mr. Hathway, then Mr.
Duncan. Then I come up to Clarendon and been here ever since.

"One time I owned 40 acres at Holly Grove, sold it, spent the money.

"I too old, I don't fool wid no votin'. I never did take a big stock in
sich foolishness.

"I live wid my daughter and white folks. The Welfare give me $8 a month.
We got a garden. No cow. No hog. No chickens.

"The present conditions seem pretty bad. Some do work and some don't
work. Nobody savin' that I sees. Takes it all to live on. I haben't give
the present generation a thought."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: John Goodson (Goodrum)
Des Arc, Arkansas
Age: Born in 1865

"My master was Bill Goodrum. I was born at Des Arc out in the country
close by here. My mother was a house woman and my father was overseer. I
was so little I don't remember the war. I do remember Doc Rayburn. I
seed him and remember him all right. He was a bushwacker and a Ku Klux
they said. I don't remember the Ku Klux. Never seed them.

"I heard my parents say they expected the government to divide up the
land and give them a start--a home and some land. They got just turned
out like you turn a hog out the pen and say go on I'm through wid you.

"I heard them set till midnight talking 'bout whut all took place during
the Civil War. The country was wild and it was a long ways between the
houses. There wasn't many colored folks in this country till closin' of
the war. They started bringing 'em here. Men whut needed help on the
farms.

"All my life I been cooking. I cooked at hotels and on boats. I cooked
some in restau