"My name's Rosa Washington and my husban' was Joe Washington. He's been dead a long time. I was bo'n on a big plantation, white man's name Bill Watson, wife Ann Watson, seven miles from St. Joe. Mama had four chillen and…

"I'll be 112 years old, come first day of June (1937). Bo'n in Mississippi. I had two marsters, but I've been free nearly 80 years. I was freed in Memphis. "My marster was a Yankee. He took me to Louisiana and made a slave…