SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

! 30461
Interviewer Miss Irene Robertson
Person Interviewed Laura Rowland
(Bright Mulatto)
Age 65? Address Brinkley, Arkansas
"My parents name was Mary Ann and Sam Billingslea. Mother's
father lived with us when I first remember. His name was Robert
Todd. He was a brown skin Negro, They said he was a West Indian*
He talked of olden times but I don't remember well enough to tell
you. Father owned a home that we was living on when I first re-
member. Mother was bright color, too, Vaden, Mississippi was our
trading post. Mother had twenty children. She was a worker. She
would work anywhere she was put. My folks never talked much about
slavery. I don't know how they got our place,
"I know they was bothered by the Ku Klux. One night they
heard or saw the Ku Klux coming. The log house set low on the ■
ground but was dug out to keep potatoes and things in - a cellar
like. The planks was wide, bout a foot wide,, rough pine, not
nailed down. They lifted the planks up and all lay down and put
the planks back up. The house look like outside nothing could go
under it, it was setting on the hard ground. When they got there
and opened the doors they saw nobody at home and rode off.
"Another time, one black night, a man - he must have been a
soldier - strided a block step with his horse and ordered supper.
She told him she didn't have nothing cooked and very little to
cook. He cursed and ordered the supper. Told her to get it. She
Pretended to be fixing it and slipped out the back door down the
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