Paddyrollers run us home from dancin' one night.
"I member one song we used to sing:
'Hop light lady
Cake was all dough--
Never mind the weather,
So the wind don't blow.'
"How many chillun I have? Les see--count em up. Ida, Willie, Clara--had
six.
"Some of the young folks nowadays pretty rough. Some of em do right and
some don't.
"Never did go to school. Coulda went but papa died and had to go to
work.
"I thinks over old times sometimes by myself. Didn't know what freedom
was till we was free and didn't hardly know then.
"Well, it's been a long time. All the Brewsters and the Bransons dead
and I'm still here--blind. Been blind eight years."
Waters Brooks
1814 Pulaski Street, Little Rock, Ark.
Retired railroad worker, No. Pac. 75
[TR: Information moved from bottom of each page.]
[HW: A Railroad Work History]
I was only three years old when peace (1865) was declared. I was born in
1862. Peace was declared in 1865. I remember seeing plenty of men that
they said the white folks never whipped. I remember seeing plenty of men
that they said bought their own freedom.
I remember a woman that they said fought with the overseer for a whole
day and stripped him naked as the day he was born. She was Nancy Ward.
Her owner was named Billie Ward. He had an overseer named Roper. Her
husband ran away from the white folks and stayed three years.
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