She took and pulled a plank up so she could
slip through.
"I would drink any kind of water that I saw if I wanted a drink. If the
white folks poured out wash water and I wanted a drink that would do me.
It just made me fat and healthy. Most we played was tussling, and
couldn't no boy throw me. Nobody tried to whip me cause they couldn't.
"We always cooked on fireplaces and our cake was always molasses cakes.
At Christmas time we got candy and apples, but these oranges and bananas
and stuff like that wasn't out then. Bananas and oranges just been out a
few years. And sugar--we did not know about that. We always used sugar
from molasses. I don't think sugar been in session long. If it had I did
not get it.
"I got married when I was pretty old, I lived with my husband eight
years and he died. I had some children, but I stole them. The biggest
work I ever done was farm and we sure worked."
Interviewer: Watt McKinney
Person interviewed: Joe Clinton, Route 2, Marvell, Arkansas
Age: 86
"Uncle Joe" Clinton, on ex-Mississippi slave, lives on a small farm that
he owns a few miles north of Marvell, Arkansas. His wife has been dead
for a number of years and he has only one living child, if indeed his
boy, Joe, who left home fifteen years ago for Chicago and from whom no
word has been received since, is still alive.
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