"In Texas I worked for some good white folks. John Worth Bennet was the
man who owned the ranch. I stayed there seven years and saved my money.
I was just nacherly a good nigger. That was in Hopkins County, Texas.
"I've got a good memory. That's all I got to study bout is how to take
care of the situation. I was livin' there in that country in 1882, fore
the Spanish-American War.
"I come back here to Arkansas in 1900. My father was named Nelson Brown.
He preached. My mother's name was Sally Brown.
"Long in that time we tried to vote but we didn't know 'zactly what we
was doin. I think I voted once or twice, but if a man can't read or
write and have to have somebody make out his ticket, he don't know what
he's votin', so I just quit tryin' to vote.
"Now about this younger generation, you've asked me a question it's hard
for me to answer. With all these nineteenth century niggers, the more
education they got, the bigger crooks they is.
"We colored people are livin' under the law, but we don't make no laws.
You take a one-armed man and he can't do what a two-armed man can. The
colored man in the south is a one-armed man, but of course the colored
man can't get along without the white folks. But I've lived in this
world long enough to know what the cause is--I know why the colored man
is a one-armed man."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Lewis Brown
708 Oak Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 83
"Yes'm my name is Brown--Lewis Brown.
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