Ma said her
owners was good to her. Ma never had but one husband.
"I come to Arkansas 1921. Mr. Passler in Coldwater, Mississippi had
bought a farm at Onida. We had worked for him at Lula, Mississippi. Me
and my husband come here. My husband died the first year. I cooked some
in my younger days but field work and washing was my work mostly. I
like' field work long as I was able to go.
"My first husband cleared up eighty acres of land. He and myself done
it, we had help. We got in debt and lost it. He bought the place. That
was in Pinola County close to Sardis. I had four children. One daughter
living.
"What I think it was give me rheumatism was I picked cotton, broke it
off frozen two weeks on the sleet. I picked two hundred pounds a day. I
got numb and fell and they come by and got a doctor. He said it was from
overwork. I got over that but I had rheumatism ever since.
"I learned to read. I went to Shiloah School--and church too--several
terms. Mr. Will Dunlap was my first teacher. He was a white man. He run
the school a good while but I don't know how long. My name is Frances
Christiana Fluker. I been farming all my life, nothin' but farmin'.
Never thought 'bout gettin' sick 'cause I knowed I couldn't.
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