I been here in Pine Bluff about
fifty or sixty years.
"If justice was done everybody would have a living. I earned the money
to buy this place and they come and wanted me to sign away my home so I
could get the old age pension but I just had sense enough not to do it.
I'm not goin' sign away my home just for some meat and bread."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: John Young
925 E. 15th Ave., Pine Bluff, Ark.
Age: 92
"Well, I don't know how old I is. I was born in Virginia, but my mother
was sold. She was bought by a speculator and brought here to Arkansas.
She brought me with her and her old master's name was Ridgell. We lived
down around Monticello. I was big enough to plow and chop cotton and
drive a yoke of oxen and haul ten-foot rails.
"Oh Lord, I don't know how many acres old master had. He had a
territory--he had a heap a land. I remember he had a big old carriage
and the carriage man was Little Alfred. The reason they called him that
was because there was another man on the place called Big Alfred. They
won't no relation--just happen to be the same name.
"I remember when the Yankees come and killed old master's hogs and
chickens and cooked 'em. There was a good big bunch of Yankees. They
said they was fightin' to free the niggers.
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