FF-2-94
DAVID BETTS JACKSON (“POP” JACKSON)
b. 1874
I’m setting around here free this coming. Ain’t nobody got no pistol on me. Ain’t nobody running up behind me, “Pull over there”. The white man always wanted to know what you doing – where you been last night. “Put your hands on that car”, and they go around putting stuff in your pocket. You better take that stuff out of my pocket.
Everybody that come up that want to do something for a nigger they shot him. They shot Martin Luther [King] for trying to talk for his race. They killed the two Kennedy brothers for trying to talk for the people. Shot him right through the head. And you tell me… ahh, shit. They say, “This is the white man’s world”. As long as you work with the white man, you live. If you didn’t, they do you just like Martin Luther, you’re shot.
You know one thing. I seen white folks just come right out and just kill niggers. A nigger passes church one Sunday morning on his way home and he was whistling and he got in his car and went ’round that way and cut that nigger off. He got right out of his car – the nigger was whistling a tune, you know – and went right up behind him and shot him through the head. That was in Shreveport, Louisiana. He killed that nigger dead as a hammer. The police come and said, “Who done this?” The man said, “Me”, the policeman said, “You done a good job”. You think I wanted to live in a place like that??
I could spend my life telling you because I spent my life back there. And all the dirty things I’m telling you they happened. Now, when it comes to Jonestown, I’m telling you it’s the best place that ever was. I had never been to a place like this. It ain’t been took up and dried up and you take the best and I took the worst. I want Jonestown to be cared for because it cared for me. When I came here it was just getting started. I been fooling around the United States for a hundred years and it didn’t do a thing for me. me United States is the last place you ought to stop to. You in danger. You should go around that because if you go around, you’ll live longer.
I was just laying down last night in my bed looking up in the roof and I say, “Free at last, free at last”. One hundred years under slavery. They used to hire me out and they draw the money in [several words illegible in typing] in the river. You’re gonna drown or you’re gonna get killed. So what you gonna do? Do what they say do. Last hired and the first knocked off. If the white man made $2.00, I made 50 cents.
I had some land back there and they done took it. It had some oil on it. They done took it. My wife had land with a oilfield on it – they done took it. They took it and put us outdoors. No, I ain’t goin back there. One hundred years of slavery is enough for me. You don’t know – you really don’t know – just how much Jonestown means to me after that.