to
fighting over it. You know, jus like hogs! They would be eatin and
sometimes one person would find somethin and get holt of it and
another one would want to take it, and they would get to fightin over
it. Sometimes blood would get in the trough, but they would eat right
on and pay no 'tention to it.

"I don't know whether they fed the old ones that way or not. I jus
heered my father tell how he et out of the trough hisself.

"I have heered my father talk about the pateroles too. He talked about
how they used to chase him. But he didn't have much experience with
them, because they never did catch him. That was after the war when
the slaves had been freed, but the pateroles still got after them. My
father remember how they would catch other slaves. One night they went
to an old man's house. It was dark and the old man told them to come
on in. He didn't have no gun, but he took his ax and stood behind the
door on the hinge side. It was after slavery. When he said for them to
come in, they rushed right on in and the old man killed three or four
of them with his ax. He was a old African, and they never had been
able to do nothin' with him, not even in slavery time. I never heard
that they did nothin' to the old man about it. The pateroles was
outlaws anyway.

"I heard my father say that in slavery time, they took the finest and
portlies' looking Negroes--the males--for breeding purposes. They
wouldn't let them strain themselves up nor nothin like that. They
wouldn't make them do much hard work."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Sam Keaton,
Brinkley, Ark.
Age: 78

"I was born close to Golden Hill down in Arkansas County. My parents
names was Louana and Dennis Keaton. They had ten children. Their
master was Mr. Jack Keaton and Miss Martha. They had four boys. They
all come from Virginia in wagons the second year of the war--the Civil
War. I heard 'em tell about walking. Some of em walked, some rode
horse back and some in wagons. I don't know if they knowed bout slave
uprisings or not. I know they wasn't in em because they come here wid
Mr. Jack Keaton. It was worse in Virginia than it was down here wid
them. Mr. Keaton didn't give em nothing at freedom. They stayed on
long as they wanted to stay and then they went to work for Mr. Jack
Keaton's brother, Mr. Ben Keaton. They worked on shares and picked
cotton by the hundred. My parents staid on down there till they di