Annie Page
From:
Arkansas
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Annie Page
412-1/2 Pullen Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 86
"I was born 1852, they tell me, on the fifteenth of March. I was workin'
a good while 'fore surrender.
"Bill Jimmerson was my old master. He was a captain in Marmaduke's army.
Come home on thirty days furlough once and he and Daniel Carmack got
into some kind of a argument 'bout some whisky and Daniel Carmack
stabbed him with a penknife. Stabbed him three times. He was black as
tar when they brought him home. The blood had done settled. Oh Lawd,
that was a time.
"My eyes been goin' blind 'bout six years till I got so I can't excern
(discern) anything.
"Old miss used to box me over the head mightily and the colored folks
used to hit me over the head till seem like I could hear a bell for two
or three days. Niggers ain't got no sense. Put 'em in authority and they
gits so uppity.
"My brother brought me here and left me here with a colored woman named
Rachael Ross. And oh Lawd, she was hard on me. Never had to do in
slavery times what I had to do then.
"But the devil got her and all her chillun now I reckon. They tell me
when death struck her, they asked if the Lawd called her, and they say
she just turned over and over in the bed like a worm in hot ashes."
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