"Dr. Wright was awful good to his slaves.
"I don't know just how freedom came to my folks. I never heard my father
say. They were set free, I know. They were set free when the War ended.
They never bought their freedom.
"We lived on Tenth and near to Center in a one-room log house. That is
the earliest thing I remember. When they moved from there, my father had
accumulated enough to buy a home. He bought it at Seventh and Broadway.
He paid cash for it--five hundred and fifty dollars. That is where we
all lived until it was sold. I couldn't name the date of the sale but it
was sold for good money--about three thousand eight hundred dollars, or
maybe around four thousand. I was a young man then.
"I remember the Brooks-Baxter War.
"I remember the King White fooled a lot of niggers and armed them and
brought them up here. The niggers and Republicans here fought them and
run them back where they come from.
"I know Hot Springs when the main street was a creek. I can't remember
when I first went there. The government bath-house was called 'Ral
Hole', because it was mostly people with bad diseases that went there.
"After the War, my father worked for a rich man named Hunter. He was
yardman and took care of the horse. My mother was living then.
"Scipio Jones and I were boys together. We slept on pool tables many a
time when we didn't have no other place to sleep.
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