Occupations

We always worked in the field in slave time. I don't know nothin about
share cropping because I always did days work. I used to get four and
five dollars a week for washing. But now they wants the young folks and
they don't pay them five dollars for everything. I can't get a pension.
Why you reckon they won't give me one. They don't understand that that
little house I own doesn't even keep itself up. My daughter-in-law is
good to me but she needs everything she makes. I can't get much to do
now, and what little I gets, they don't pay me much for.

I don' remember nothin' else.




Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Jennie Washington, DeValls Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 80


"My mother was a slave and my father too I recken. They belonged to Jack
Walton when I remembered. I was born at St. Charles. My mother died in
time of the war at St. Louis. This is whut I remembers. My mother was
sold twice. The Prices owned her and the Wakefields owned her before she
was owned by old Jack Walton. I was the youngest child. I had one
brother went to war and he drawed a pension long as he lived. We
children all got scattered out. Mr. Walton bout the age of my father and