Occupational Experiences

“The first thing I ever did was farming.  I farmed all up till 1879.  I worked on steamboat till 1881, and then I went out railroading.  I worked at that a long time.  I married in 1883.  I was about twenty-seven years old then, and a few months over.

“While I was farming, I did some sharecropping, but I never got cheated out of anything.

Ku Klux

“I remember the folks had been off to see their people and the Ku Klux taken the stock while they were gone.  I don’t remember the Ku Klux Klan interfering with the Negroes much.  I never saw them.

Voting

“I never voted till Cleveland began his campaign for President.  I voted for eight presidents.  Nobody ever bothered me about it.

Family

“There were six children in my mother’s family.  My father had six brothers.  He made the seventh.  I had nine children in all.  Four of them are living now.  One is here; one, in St. Louis; and two, in Chicago.  My boy is in Chicago.

Opinions

“The majority of the young people are just growing up.  Lots of them are not getting any raising at all.”

Interviewer’s Comment

Wise is between eighty-one and eighty-five years old.  The data he gives conflict, some of it indicating the earlier and some of it later years.

He doesn’t talk much and has to be pumped.  He doesn’t lose the thread of the discourse.  His failure to talk on details of his early life seem to the interviewer due to unwillingness rather than lack of memory.  While his age is advanced, his mind is sharp for one who has had such limited training.

He has no definite means of support, but states that he has been promised a pension in September—­he means old age assistance.

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Lucy Withers, Brinkley, Arkansas
Age:  86

I was born 5-1/2 miles from Abbeville, South Carolina, in sight of Little Mountain.  I do remember the Civil War.  I never seen them fight.  They come to about twenty or thirty miles from where I lived.  They didn’t bother much in the parts where I lived.  All the white men folks went to war.  My mama’s master was Edward Roach and his wife was Miss Sarah Roach.  My papa’s master was Peter Radcliff and Miss Nancy Radcliff.  They give me to her niece, Miss Jennie Shelitoe.  When she married she wanted me.  After freedom I married.  In 1866 we come to a big farm close to Pine Bluff.  Then we lived close to Memphis and I been living here in Brinkley a long time.

The Ku Klux put down a Governor in South Carolina right after the war.  They rode everywhere night and day scaring everybody.  They wouldn’t let no colored people hold office.  That governor was a colored man.  The Ku Klux whipped both black and white folks.  They run the Yankees plumb out er that country.