The old lady's style was kind of cramped by the presence of her husband.
Every once in a while, when she would be about to paint something in
lurid colors, he would drop in a word and she would roll her phrases
around in her mouth, so to speak, and shift and go ahead in a different
direction and on another gear.

Very pleasant couple though--with none of the bitterness that old age
brings sometimes. The daughter's name is Searles.




Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person Interviewed: Thomas Ruffin
1310 Cross Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 82 or 84


"I was born in North Carolina, Franklin County, near Raleigh. My
father's name really I don't know. Folks said my master was my daddy.
That's what they told me. Of course, I don't know myself. But then white
folks did anything they wanted to in slavery times.

"My mother's name was Morina Ruffin. I don't know the names of my
grandparents. That is too far back in slavery for me. Of course, old man
Ruffin my father's father, which would have been my grandfather, he died
way back yonder in slave times before the war. My father gotten kilt in
the war. His name was Tom Ruffin. I was named after him. He died trying
to hold us. That man owned three hundred slaves. He never married.