Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Ivory Osborne
Route 5, Box 158, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 85
"Know about slavery? Sho I do — I was born in '52. Born in Arkansas? No ma'm, born in Texas.
"Oh yes, indeed, I had a good master. Good to me, indeed. I was that high when the war started. I member everything. Take me from now till dark to tell you everything I know bout slavery.
"I put in three years and five months, choppin' cotton and corn. I member the very day, on the 10th of May, old mistress blowed the conk and told us we was free.
"Oh Lord, I had a good time.
"I never was whipped.
"Ku Klux used to run me. Run me clear from the plum orchard bout a mile from the house. Run to my mistress at the big house.
"Miss Ann had eight darkies and told her stepmother, 'Don't you put your hand on em.' She didn't either.
"I went to school since 'mancipation in Nacitosh. Learned to read and write. Was in the eighth grade when I left. Stood at the head of every class. They couldn't get me down. I done got old and forgot now.
"I didn't know the difference between slavery and free, I never was whipped.
"Did I ever vote? You know I voted, old as I am. Ain't voted in over forty years. I ain't nobody. My wife's eighty. I've had her forty years. Cose I voted the Republican ticket. You never seed a colored person a Democrat in your life.
"In slavery days we killed seventy-five or eighty hogs every year. And I don't mean shoats, I mean hogs. I ain't lost my membrance."