Slave Narrative of Vera Roy Bobo

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person Interviewed: Vera Roy Bobo (Mulatto, almost white)
Location: Holly Grove, Arkansas
Age: 68

“My parents come from Macon, Georgia. My mother was Margaret Cobb. Her people were owned by the Cobbs. They reared her. She was a house girl and a seamstress. She sewed for both white and black. She was light color.

“My father was St. Roy Holmes. He was a C.M.E. preacher in Georgia and later in Arkansas. He came on the train to Forrest City, 1885. He crossed the Mississippi River on a ferry boat. Later he preached at Wynne. He was light color.

“I never heard them say very much about slavery. This was their own home.

“My husband’s father was the son of a white man also—Randall Bobo. He used to visit us from Bobo, Mississippi. The Bobo a owned that town and were considered rich people. My husband was some darker and was born at Indian Bay, Arkansas. He was William Bobo. I never knew him till two months before I married him. We had a home wedding and a wedding supper in this house.”


Surnames:
Bobo, Cobbs, Holmes,

Collection:
Federal Writers' Project. WPA Slave Narratives. Web. 2007-2024. The WPA Slave Narratives must be used with care. There is, of course, the problem of confusion in memory resulting from (73+ years) of the participants. In addition, inexperienced interviewers sometimes pursued question lines related to their own interests and perspectives and attempted to capture the colloquialism of the informant's speech. The interviews provide fascinating insight and surprisingly candid information, however.

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