who had his arm off at the elbow called for the three near-by
plantations to meet at our place. Then he got up on a platform with
another man beside him and declared peace and freedom. He p'inted to a
colored man and yelled, 'You're free as I am.' Old colored folks, old as
I am now, that was on sticks, throwed them sticks away and shouted.

"Right after freedom I stayed with that white woman I told you about. I
was with her about four years. I worked for twelve dollars a month and
my food and clothes. Then I figured that twelve dollars wasn't enough
and I went to work in the field. It was a mighty nice woman. Never hit
me in her life. I never have been whipped by a white woman. She was good
to me till she died. She died after I had my second child--a girl child.

"I have been living in this city fifteen years. I come from Chicot
County when I come here. We come to Arkansas in slavery times. They
brought me from Copiah County when I was six or eight years old. When
Mrs. Toliver married she came up here and brought my mother. My mother
belonged to her son and she said, 'Agnes (that was my mother's name),
will you follow me if I buy your husband?' Her husband's name was John
Beasley. She said, 'Yes.' Then her old mistress bought Beasley and paid
fifteen hundred dollars to get my mother to come with her. Then Peachy
went to war and was shot because he come home of a furlough and stayed
too long. So when he went back they killed him. My mother nursed him
when he was a baby. Old man Toliver said he didn't want none of us to be
sold; so they wasn't none of us sold. Maybe there would have been if
slavery had lasted longer; but there wasn't.

"Mother really belonged to Peachy, but when Peachy died, then she fell
to her mistress.