"The way I understand it there came a rumor all at once that the Negroes
were free. It seems that they throwed up their hands. They had a great
fight at Pine Bluff and Helena and De Valls Bluff. Then came peace. The
rumor came from Helena. Meade and Thomas winded the thing up some way.
Sherman made his march somewhere. The colored soldiers and the white
soldiers came pouring in from Little Rock. They come in a rush and said,
'Tell them niggers they're free.' They run into the masters' and
notified them they were going to take all the Negroes to Little Rock. It
wasn't no time afterwards before here come the teams and the wagons to
take us to Little Rock.
"When they brought us here, they put us in soldiers' camps in a row of
houses up just west of where the Arch street graveyard is now. They put
us all there in the soldiers' buildings. They called them camps. They
seemed to be getting us ready for freedom. It wasn't long before they
had us in school and in church. The Freedmen's Bureau visited us and
gave us rations just like the Government has been doing these last
years. They gave us food and clothes and books and put us in school.
That was all done right here in Little Rock.