307()6	. 73
~	Interviewer	~~--	mUj~~ - - --
	Person interviewed.	Bett~[JO1~fl8Ofl	~
1920 Dennison Street, LittleRoek, Arkansas
	Age  83






	“I wa~ born in Mon~tgomery, Alabama, within a block of the statehouse. We were the only colored people in the neighborhood. I s‘a ei~hty..three years old. I was born free. I have never been a slave. I never met any slaves when I was small, and never talked to any. I didn‘t live near theni and didn‘t have any contacts with them.

	“My father carried my mother to Pennsylvania before I was born and set her free. Then he carried her back to Montgomery, Alabama, and all her children were born free there.

	“We had everythinß that life needed. He was one of the biggest planters around in that part of the country and did. the shipping for everybody. “My mother‘s naine was J‘osephine Hassell. ~he had nine children. All of them are dead except three. One is in Viashington, D. G.; another is in

Chicago, Illinois, and then I am here. One of my brothers was a mail clerk for the government for fifty years, and then he went to Washington and worked in the dead letter office.

	“My father taken my oldest brother just before the Civil War and entered him in Yale and he stayeU there till he finished. Later he became a freight conductor and lost his life when his train was eau~ht in a cy.-. clone. That‘s been years ago.

	“My sisters in Washington and Chicago are the only two living besides myself. All the others are dead. All of them were government workers.