Martin, Angeline

The following data is extracted from Arkansas Slave Narratives.

Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden Person interviewed: Angeline Martin, Kansas City, Missouri Visiting at 1105 Louisiana St., Pine Bluff, Arkansas Age 80


"Well, I was livin' then. I was born in Georgia. Honey, I don't know what year. I was born before the war. I was about ten when freedom come. I don't remember when it started but I remember when it ended. I think I'm in the 80's-that's the way I count it.

"My master was dead and my mistress was a widow-Miss Sarah Childs. She had a guardeen.

"When the war come, old mistress and her daughter refugeed to Mississippi. The guardeen wouldn't let me go, said I was too young.

"My parents stayed on the plantation. My white folks' house was vacant and the Yankees come and used it for headquarters. They never had put shoes on me and when the Yankees shot the chickens I'd run and get em. They didn't burn up nothin', just kill the hogs and chickens and give us plenty.

"I didn't know what the war was about. You know chillun in them days didn't have as much sense as they got now.

"After freedom, my folks stayed on the place and worked on the shares. I want to school right after the war. I went every year till we left there. We come to this country in seventy something. We come here and stopped at the Cummins place. I worked in the field till I come to town bout fifty years ago. Since then I cooked some and done laundry work.

"I married when I was seventeen. Had six children. I been livin' in Kansas City twenty-three years. Followed my boy up there. I like it up there a lot better than I do here. Oh lord, yes, there are a lot of colored people in Kansas City."

Source: Arkansas Slave Narratives

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