My
papa was a shoemaker so he made our shoes. We raised everything that we
ate when I was a chap. We ate a plenty. We raised plenty of whippowell
peas. That was the only kind of peas there was then. We raised plenty
Moodie sweet potatoes they call them nigger chokers now. We had cows so
we had plenty of milk and butter. We cooked on the fireplace. The first
stove I cooked on was a white woman's stove, that was 1890.
I never chanced to go to school because where we lived there wasn't no
school. I worked all of the time. In fact that was all we knew. White
people did not see where negroes needed any learning so we had to work.
We lived on a place with some white people by the name of Dunn. They
were good people but they taken all that was made because we did not
know. I ain't never been sick in my life and I have never had a doctor
in my life. I am in good health now.
We traveled horseback in the years of 1800. We did not ride straddle the
horse's back we rode sideways. The old folks wore their dreses dragging
the ground. We chaps called everybody old that married. We respected
them because they was considered as being old. Time has made a change.
--Dina Beard, Douglas Addition.
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Annie Beck, West Memphis, Arkansas
Age: 50
"I was born in Mississippi. Mama was born in Alabama and sold to
Holcomb, Mississippi.
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