to keep livin' their selves. They wastes a heap they outer save fur
rainy days. They ain't takin' no advice from old folks. I don't know
whut goiner become of them."




Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Will Ann Rogers
R.F.D., Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 70


"I was born three years after the surrender. I was born at Fryers Point,
Mississippi. The reason I ain't got the exact date when I was born, my
ma put it down in the Bible and the house burned up and everything in it
burned to ashes. No mam she got somebody what could write real nice to
write all the names and ages for her.

"When ma was a young woman, she said they put her on a block and sold
her. They auctioned her off at Richmond, Virginia. When they sold her,
her mother fainted or drapped dead, she never knowed which. She wanted
to go see her mother lying over there on the ground and the man what
bought her wouldn't let her. He just took her on. Drove her off like
cattle, I recken. The man what bought her was Ephram Hester. That the
last she ever knowed of any of her folks. She say he mated 'em like
stock so she had one boy. He livin' down here at Helena now. He is Mose
Kent. He was born around Richmond, Virginia jes' lack dat she say.

"When it nearly 'bout time for freedom a whole army of Yankees come by