SLAVE NARRATIVES Volume 6

Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden Person interviewed: John Young 923 E. Fifteenth, Pine Bluff, Arkansas Age: 89 “I know I was born in Arkansas. The first place I recollect I was in Arkansas. “I was a drummer in the Civil War. I played the little drum. The bass drummer was Rheuben Turner. “I run off from home in Drew County. Five or six of us run off here to Pine Bluff. We heard if we could get with the Yankees we’d be free, so we run off here to Pine Bluff and got with some Yankee soldiers—the twenty-eighth Wisconsin. “Then we went to Little Rock and I j’ined the fifty-seventh colored infantry. I thought I was good and safe then. “We went to Fort Smith from Little Rock and freedom come on us while we was between New Mexico and Fort Smith. “They mustered us out at Fort Leavenworth and I went right back to my folks in Drew County, Monticello. “I’ve been a farmer all my life till I got too old.”