Mother Anne Clark

Anne Clark, called Mother Anne, said she would be 112 on June 1, 1937. She was interviewed at 3602 Alameda Avenue in El Paso, Texas, too crippled to walk but still able to sew without glasses. She was born in Mississippi and said her first enslaver was a Northerner who took her to Louisiana and "made a slave out of me"; her second was a Captain Clark. She was freed in Memphis and had been free nearly 80 years.

She was so strong that she plowed, hoed and split rails, "the hardest work ever a man did," and could pull down saplings for the others to cut. They rose at three, ate at four and were in the fields by first light, and were whipped with a bullwhip; the enslaver threatened her with the stocks if she didn't lead the field. Her father, she said, was a strong man who had never been struck. When the enslaver told him he had to take a whipping, he answered that he'd never had one and wouldn't, and the enslaver shot him dead. Her mother, who did the washing for the big house, had two children by the enslaver, and they were sold. She said pregnant women were made to lie with their stomachs in a hole dug in the ground so they could be beaten.

She was trusted to ride into town carrying money for the store and never took a thing. She never married and had two children. For her birthday she asked for nothing fine, just some candy, and said she was waiting for the Lord to take her home.