hat want to stay on and work for him can, iffen he
make enough to feed dem. I stays with Marse Ed, but he give me a patch
of twenty acres and a sorghum mill to make a livin' on. Dat how I gits
on my way after freedom.

"I gits dat sorghum mill to workin' good and works de Roseborough land
and my patch, and raises corn and cotton and wheat. I was plumb good at
farmin'. I allus had a piece or two of money in my pocket since I can
'member, but now de old man's too old. De gov'ment gives me seven or
eight dollars a month and I has a few chickens and gits by, and de good
white folks nigh by sees dat dis old boy don't git cold.

420059

[Illustration: Anne Clark]

MOTHER ANNE CLARK, 112 years old, lives at 3602 Alameda Ave., El
Paso, Texas. She is too crippled to walk, but a smile lights up the
tired old eyes that still see to sew without glasses. One tooth of
a third set is in her upper gum. She is deaf, but can hear if you
speak close to her ear. She says, "Lemma git my ears open, bofe of
'em," wets her finger, then pulls so hard on the ear lobes it seems
they would be injured.

"I'll be 112 years old, come first day of June (1937). Bo'n in
Mississippi. I had two marsters, but I've been free nearly 80 years. I
was freed in Memphis.

"My marster was a Yankee. He took me to Louisiana and made a slave outta
me. But he had to go to war. He got in a quarrel one day and grabbed two
six-shooters, but a old white man got him down and nearly kilt him. Our
men got him and gave him to the Yankees.

"Capt. Clark, my second marster, took a shot at him and he couldn' come
south no more. You don' know what a time I seen! I don' wanna see no
more war. Why, we made the United States rich but the Yankees come and
tuk it. They buried money and when you bury money it goes fu'ther down,
down, down, and then you cain't fin' it.

"You know, the white folks hated to give us up worse thing in the world.
I ploughed, hoed, split rails. I done the hardest work ever a man ever
did. I was so strong, iffen he needed me I'd pull the men down so the
marster could handcuff 'em. They'd whop us with a bullwhip. We got up
at 3 o'clock, at 4 we done et and hitched up the mules and went to the
fiel's. We worked all day pullin' fodder and choppin' cotton. Marster'd
say, 'I wan' you to lead dat fiel' today, and if you don' do it I'll put
you in de stocks.' Then he'd whop me iffen I didn' know he was talkin'