She said durin' her forty years in
slavery she never got a whoopin'. She was a field hand. After she come
to Mississippi they was so good to her they called her free. She was a
midwife. She doctored the rich white and colored. She rode horseback,
she said, far and near. In Grenada after freedom she walked. They called
her free her master was so good to her. I don't know how she learned to
be a midwife. Her master was Henry Pernell. He owned a small place
twelve miles from Grenada and another place in the Mississippi bottoms.
My folks become renters after freedom. I don't know if they rented from
him but I guess they did.
"The Ku Klux never bothered them that I ever heard them mention."
Interviewer: Pernella Anderson
Person interviewed: Frank Fikes, El Dorado, Arkansas
Age: About 88
"My name is Frank Fikes. I live between El Dorado and Strong and I am 79
years old if I make no mistake. I know my mama told me years ago that I
was born in watermelon time. She said she ate the first watermelon that
got ripe on the place that year and it made her sick. She thought she
had the colic. Said she went and ate a piece of calamus root for the
pain and after eating the root for the pain behold I was born.
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