"We left Alabama in the same year Tom Ivory got killed. More than fifty
colored people left on the train and come off when we did. People was
leaving Alabama something terrible. I never did know what happened to
Tom's killers. I heard afterwards that Alabama got broke, they had to
pay for so many men they killed."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Cornelia Ishmon
3319 W. Second Avenue
Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 78
"I was born in Mississippi and I can member seein' the Yankees goin' by.
I was a little bit of a girl and Betsy Hardy, that was old Miss, she
kep' the Yankees from gettin' me. She told me many a time if it hadn't
been for her I'd a had my brains beat out against a tree. When I didn't
do to suit her, she'd tell me bout dat. I stayed right in the house.
"I member when they was lookin' for Johnson's brigade and when they saw
it was the Yankees they just flew. The Yankees was goin' through there
doin' what they wanted.
"I never got no further than the third grade."