Anna Hall
From:
More Arkansas
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Anna Hall (mulatto)
Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 68
"I don't know nuthin' cept what I heard folks talk 'bout when I was a
child. I was born good while after that war. My folks lived in Scott
County near Jackson, Mississippi when I was little and in slavery times
too. My mother's mistress was Miss Dolly Cruder. She was a widow and run
her own farm. I don't remember her. She give her own children a cotton
patch apiece and give the women hands a patch about and they had to work
it at night. If the moon didn't give light somebody had to hold a literd
(lantern) not fur from 'em so they could see to hoe and work it out. I
think she had more land then hands, what they made was to be about a
bale around for extra money. It took all the day time working in the big
field for Miss Dolly. I heard 'em say how tired they would be and then
go work out their own patches 'fore they go to bed. I don't remember how
they said the white girls got their cotton patches worked. And that is
about all I remembers good 'nough to tell you.
"They didn't expect nothing but freedom out the war. The first my mother
heard she was working doing something and somebody say, 'What you
working fur don't you know you done free?' That the first she knowed she
was free. They just passed the word round; that's how they heard it and
the soldiers started coming in to their families. Some of them come back
by themselves and some come riding several of them together.
"I know they didn't give my mother nothing after the war. She washed and
ironed 'bout all her life.
"The young generation is doing better than we old folks is. If there is
any work to get they gets it in preference to us. Education is helping
some of 'em here in Brinkley. Some of the young ones gets good money.
They teaches and cooks. Times is hard for some.
"I live wid my son. Yes he own his house. I gets $8 from the relief. We
has 'bout 'nough to live on and dat is all."
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Ellie Hamilton
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Linley Hadley
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