)
"My mother-in-law was sold in Aberdeen, Mississippi on a tall stump. She
clem up a ladder. Her ma was at the sale and said she was awful uneasy.
But she was sold to folks close by. She could go to see her.
"Freedom come on. The colored folks slip about from place to place and
whisper, 'We goiner be set free.' I think my mama left at freedom and
come to twenty or twenty-two miles from Oxford, Mississippi. I don't
know where I was born. But in Mississippi somewheres.
"There is something wrong about the way we are doing somehow. It is from
hand to mouth. We buys too many paper sacks. They say work is hard to
get. One thing now didn't used to be, you have to show the money before
you can buy a thing. Seem like we all gone money crazy. Automobiles and
silk stockings done ruined us all. White folks ought to straighten this
out."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Mary Williams, Clarendon, Arkansas
Age: Born 1872
Light color
"My father was a slavery man two and one-half miles from Somerville,
Tennessee. Colonel Rivers owned him. Argile Rivers was papa's name.
"He went to war. His job was hauling food to the soldiers. He lay out in
the woods getting to his soldiers with provisions. He'd run hide under
the feed wagon from the shot. Him and old master would be together
sometimes.
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