Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 6
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Title: Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 6
Author: United States. Work Projects Administration
Release date: March 1, 2004 [eBook #11709]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11709
Credits: Produced by Andrea Ball and PG Distributed Proofreaders. Produced
from images provided by the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division.
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SLAVE NARRATIVES: A FOLK HISTORY OF SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES FROM INTERVIEWS WITH FORMER SLAVES, VOLUME II, ARKANSAS NARRATIVES, PART 6 ***
[TR: ***] = Transcriber Note
[HW: ***] = Handwritten Note
SLAVE NARRATIVES
A Folk History of Slavery in the United States
From Interviews with Former Slaves
TYPEWRITTEN RECORDS PREPARED BY
THE FEDERAL WRITERS' PROJECT
1936-1938
ASSEMBLED BY
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS PROJECT
WORK PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
SPONSORED BY THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
WASHINGTON 1941
VOLUME II
ARKANSAS NARRATIVES
PART 6
Prepared by
the Federal Writers' Project of
the Works Progress Administration
for the State of Arkansas
INFORMANTS
Quinn, Doc
Ralls, Henrietta
Rankins, Diana
Rassberry, Senia
Reaves, Clay
Reece, Jane
Reed, Frank
Reeves, James
Rhone, Shepherd
Richard, Dora
Ricks, Jim
Rigger, Charlie
Rigley, Ida
Ritchie, Milton
Rivers, Alice
Roberts, Rev. J.
Robertson (Robinson?), George
Robinson, Augustus
Robinson, Malindy
Robinson, Tom
Rogers, Isom
Rogers, Oscar James
Rogers, Will Ann
Rooks, William Henry
Ross, Amanda
Ross, Cat
Ross, Mattie
Rowland, Laura
Rucker, Landy
Ruffin, Martha
Ruffin, Thomas
Rumple, Casper
Russell, Henry
Rye, Katie
Samuels, Bob
Sanderson, Emma
Scott, Mary
Scott, Mollie Hardy
Scott, Sam
Scroggins, Cora
Sexton, Sarah
Shaver, Roberta
Shaw, Mary
Shaw, Violet
Shelton, Frederick
Shelton, Laura
Shores, Mahalia
Simmons, Rosa
Sims, Fannie
Sims, Jerry
Sims, Victoria
Sims, Virginia
Singfield, Senya
Sloan, Peggy
Smallwood, Arzella
Smiley, Sarah
Smith, Andrew
Smith, Caroline
Smith, Caroline
Smith, Edmond
Smith, Emma Hulett
Smith, Ervin E.
Smith, Frances
Smith, Henrietta Evelina
Smith, Henry
Smith, J.L.
Smith, John H.
Snow, Charlie and Maggie
Solomon, Robert
Spikes, James
Stanford, Kittie
Stanhouse, Tom
Starnes, Isom
Steel, Hezekiah (Ky)
Stenhouse, Maggie
Stephens, Charlotte E.
Stevens, William J.
Stewart, Minnie Johnson
Stiggers, Liza
Stith, James Henry
Stout, Caroline
Street, Felix
Tabon, Mary
Tanner, Liza Moore
Tatum, Fannie
Taylor, Anthony
Taylor, Lula
Taylor, Millie
Taylor, Sarah
Taylor, Warren
Teague, Sneed
Teel, Mary
Thermon, Wade
Thomas, Dicey
Thomas, Mandy
Thomas, Omelia
Thomas, Omelia
Thomas, Tanner
Thomas, Wester
Thompson, Annie [TR: Corrected from "Thomas"]
Thompson, Ellen Briggs
Thompson, Hattie
Thompson, Mamie
Thompson, Mike
Thornton, Laura
Tidwell, Emma (Bama?)
Tillman, Joe
Tims, J.T.
Travis, Hannah
Trotter, Mark C.
Tubbs, James
Tucker, Mandy
Turner, Emma
Turner, Henry
Tuttle, Seabe
Texarkana District
FOLKLORE SUBJECTS
Name of Interviewer: Cecil Copeland
Subject: Social Customs--Reminiscences of an Ex-Slave
Subject: Foods
This Information given by: Doc Quinn
Place of Residence: 1217 Ash Street, Texarkana, Arkansas
Occupation: None [TR: also reported as Ex-slave.]
Age: 93 [TR: also reported as 94.]
[TR: Information moved from bottom of first page.]
[TR: Repetitive information deleted from subsequent pages.]
Several months ago, I called at 1217 Ash Street, Texarkana, Arkansas
where I had been informed a voluble old negro lived. An aged,
gray-haired, negro woman came to the door and informed me her father was
in the wood shed at the back of the house. Going around to the wood shed
I found him busily engaged in storing his winter supply of wood. When I
made known my mission he readily agreed to answer all my questions as
best he could. Seating himself on a block of wood, he told this almost
incredible story, along with lengthy discourses on politics, religion
and other current events:
"I wuz born March 15, 1843, in Monroe County, Mississippi, near
Aberdeen, Mah Mahster wuz Colonel Ogburn, one ob de bigges' planters in
de state of Mississippi. Manys de time he raised so much cotton dat dem
big steamers just couldnt carry it all down to N'Awlins in one year.
But den along came de Civil War an' we didn't raise nothin' fo' several
years. Why? Becase most uf us jined the Confederate Army in Colonel
Ogburn's regiment as servants and bodyguards. An' let me tell yo'
somethin', whitefolks. Dere never wuz a war like dis war. Why I 'member
dat after de battle of Corinth, Miss., a five acre field was so thickly
covered wid de dead and wounded dat yo' couldn't touch de ground in
walkin' across it. And de onliest way to bury dem wuz to cut a deep
furrow wid a plow, lay de soldiers head to head, an' plow de dirt back
on dem."
"About a year after de war started de Mahster got one ob dese A.W.O.L.'s
frum de Army so we could come to Miller County, where he bought de place
on Red River now known as de Adams Farm.
"When we fust came here dis place, as well as de rest ob de Valley, wuz
just a big canebrake--nothin' lived in dere but bears, wolves, and
varmints. Why de Mahster would habe to round up de livestock each
afternoon, put dem in pens, and den put out guards all night to keep de
wolves and bears frum gettin' em. De folks didn't go gallivatin' round
nights like dey do now or de varmints would get them. But den we didn't
stay here but a few months until de Mahster's A.W.O.L. wuz up, so we had
to go back and jine de army. We fought in Mississippi Alabama, Georgia,
and South Carolina."
"When de war ended de Mahster moved us to Miller County, but not on de
Adams farm. For de man whut used to own de farm said Uncle Sam hadn't
made any such money as wuz paid him for de farm, so he wanted his farm
back. Dat Confederate money wuzn't worth de paper it wuz printed on, so
de Mahster had to gib him back de farm. Poor Massa Ogburn--he didn't
live long after dat. He and his wife are buried side by side in Rondo
Cemetery."
"Not long after de negroes wuz freed, I took 86 ob dem to de votin'
place at Homan and voted 'em all straight Democratic. On my way back
home dat evenin' five negroes jumped frum de bushes and stopped me.
Dey 'splained dat I wuz too 'fluential wid de negroes and proceeded to
string me up by de neck. I hollers as loud as I could, and Roy Nash and
Hugh Burton, de election officers, just happen to be comin' down de road
and hear me yell. Dey ran off de niggers and cut me down, but by dat
time I had passed out. It wuz several weeks befo' I got well, and I can
still feel dat rope 'round my neck. Iffen dey had known how to tie a
hangmans knot I wouldn't be here to tell you about it."
"It wuzn't long after dis dat I jined Colonel' Baker's Gang for
'tection. 'Colonel' Baker wuz a great and brave man and did mo' fo de
white folks of dis country den any other man. Why iffen it hadn't been
fo' him de white folks couldn't hab lived in dis country, de negroes wuz
so mean. Dey wuz so mean dat dey tied heavy plow shoes aroun' de necks
ob two little white boys and threw dem in de lake. Yes suh. I wuz dere."
"And another time I wuz wid a bunch of niggers when dey wuz plannin' on
killin a white man who wuz a friend ob mine. As soon as I could I slips
away and tips him off. When I got back one ob dem niggers looks at me
suspicious like and asks, "where yo been, nigger?" I wuz shakin' like a
leaf in a storm, but I says: "I ain't been nowhere--just went home to
get some cartridges to help kill dis white man."
"Not long after I jined Colonel Baker's Gang, we wuz comin' frum Fulton
to Clipper through de Red River bottoms. De river wuz overflowin' an' as
we wuz crossin' a deep, swift slough, Colonel Baker and his horse got
tangled up in some grape vines. Colonel Baker yelled, and I turned my
mule around and cut all de grape vine loose wid my Bowie knife. Dere
ain't nothin' like a mule for swimmin'. Dey can swim circles aroun' any
horse. As long as he lived, Colonel Baker was always grateful to me fo'
savin' his life."
"De Colonel hated de sight ob mean niggers. We would ride up to a negro
settlement, and tell de niggers we wuz organizing a colored militia to
catch Cullen Baker and his gang. Most ob de negroes would join, but some
ob dem had to be encouraged by Colonel Baker's big gun. De recruits
would be lined up in an open field fo' drilling. And dey sho wuz
drilled. Colonel Baker and his men would shoot them by the score. Dey
killed 53 at Homan, Arkansas, 86 at Rocky Comfort, (Foreman) Arkansas, 6
near Ogden, Arkansas, 6 on de Temple place, 62 at Jefferson, Texas, 100
in North Louisiana, 73 at Marshall, Texas, and several others."
"All of de big planters wuz friendly to Cullen Baker. I have carried
supplies many times frum de big plantations--Hervey, Glass, and
others--to Cullen Baker. De Colonel always carried a big double-barrel
shotgun. It must have been de biggest shotgun in de world, not less den
a number eight size. He whipped 16 soldiers at Old Boston wid dis gun
one time."
"I saw Colonel Baker killed. We had just arrived at his father-in-law's
house and I wuz in the horse lot, about 50 yards from de house, when Joe
Davis. Thomas Orr and some more men rode up."
"De Colonel wuz standin' by de chimney an did not see dem come aroun' de
house. Dey killed him befo' he knew dey wuz aroun'. One ob de men asked
Mr. Foster, "Where at dat d--n nigger?" I ducked down and crawled in
under de rail fence and ran--I didn't stop 'til I wuz deep in the
Sulphur River bottoms. Every minute my heart seemed like it wuz goin'
to jump right out uv my mouth. I wuz the worst scared nigger that ever
lived."
"I have lived many years since dat time. De times and ways of livin'
have changed. I 'member killing deer where the Texarkana National Bank
stands, way befo' Texarkana wuz even thought of. This place wuz one of
my favorite deer stands. Nix Creek used to be just full ob fish. What
used to be the best fishing hole aroun' here is now covered by the
Methodist Church (Negro), in East Texarkana. Dr. Weetten had a big
fine home out where Springlake Park is. He wuz killed when thrown by a
buckin' horse. All of de young people I knew den have been dead many
years."
Foods
The question of eating special food on a particular day immediately
brings in mind Thanksgiving Day, when turkey becomes the universal dish.
Perhaps no other day in the year can be so designated, except among a
few religious orders when the eating of meat is strictly prohibited on
certain days.
The belief that negroes are particularly addicted to eating pork is well
founded, as witness the sales of pork to colored people in most any meat
market. But who could imagine that cotton-seed was once the universal
food eaten in this vicinity by the colored people? That, according to
Doc Quinn, a former slave, and self-styled exmember of Cullen Baker's
Gang, was the custom before and shortly after the Civil War.
The cotton-seed would be dumped into a hugh pot, and boiled for several
hours, the seed gradually rising to the top. The seed would then be
dipped off with a ladle. The next and final step would be to pour
corn-meal into the thick liquid, after which it was ready to be eaten.
Cotton-seed, it must be remembered, had little value at that time,
except as livestock feed.
"Yes suh, Cap'n," the old negro went on to explain. "I has never eaten
anything whut tasted any better, or whut would stick to your ribs like
cotton-seed, and corn-meal cake. Rich? Why dey's nuthin dat is more
nutritious. You never saw a healthier or finer lookin' bunch of negroes
dan wuz on Colonel Harvey's place.
"I 'member one time tho' when he changed us off cotton-seed, but we
didn't stay changed fo' long. No suh. Of all de grumblin' dem niggers
did, becase dey insides had got so used to dat cotton-seed and corn-meal
dey wouldn't be satisfied wid nothing else."
"One mornin' when about forty of us niggers had reported sick, de
Mahster came down to de qua'ters. 'Whut ailin' ye' lazy neggers?' he
asked. Dem niggers los' about fifty pounds of weight apiece, and didn'
feel like doin' anything. 'Mahster,' I say. 'Iffen you'll have de wimmen
folks make us a pot full of dat cotton-seed and corn-meal, we'll be
ready to go to work.' And as long as I work fo' Colonel Harvey, one uv
de bes' men whut ever lived, we always had cotton-seed and corn-meal to
eat."
Texarkana District
FOLKLORE SUBJECTS
Name of Interviewer: Mrs. W.M. Ball
Subject: Anecdotes of an Aged Ex-Slave.
Subject: Superstitious Beliefs Among Negroes. (Negro lore)
Story:--Information:
Information given by: Doc Quinn
Place of Residence: 12th & Ash Sts., Texarkana, Ark.
Occupation: None (Ex-Slave)
Age: 92
[TR: Information moved from bottom of second page.]
[TR: Repetitive information deleted from subsequent pages.]
"Mah young marster wuz Joe Ogburn. Me and him growed up togedder an' I
wuz his body guard durin' de wahr. Many's de day I'ze watched de smoke
ob battle clear away an' wait fo' de return ob mah marster. All de time
I felt we wuz born to win dat wahr, but God knowed bes' an' you know de
result.
"Three years ago I went to Little Rook wid Mr. Fisher. Lac' all folks
whut goes to dis city, we wend our way to de Capitol to see de Governor.
Gov. Futtrell sittin' bac' in his great fine office, saw me and jined me
in conversation. De fus' question he axed me wuz 'whut party does yo'
'filiate wif?' I sez, 'de Democrat--de party whut's a frien' to de
nigger.' De Governor axed me how does I lac' dis life? I sez 'very well,
tho' things has changed since slavery days. Those wuz good ole days for
de black man; didn't hafter worry about nuthin'. Now, I sho' does mah
share ob worryin'. I worries from one meal to de odder, I worries about
whure I'ze gwine get some mo' clothes when dese wears out?'
"I tole de Governor mah 'sperience wif de Republican Party durin' de
wahr. I been hung fo' times in mah life an' one ob de times by de
Republicans. Long time ago, Mr. Roy Nash an' Mr. Hugh Sutton wuz a
settin' ovah de ballot box on 'lection day, when I voted 80 Democrats.
Yas, suh; I jus' marches 'em in an' tells 'em how to cas' dey vote. Dat
night, on mah way home frum de votin', goin' down de lonely road, I wuz
stopped an' strung up to a tree by de neck. Dey 'splained dat I wuz too
'fluential wid de niggers. When I wuz hangin' dere I did some manful
howlin'. Dat howlin' sho brought de white folks. When dey see mah
distres' dey 'leased de rope an' I wuz saved. Dat is when I 'pealed to
Col. Baker for 'tection. He wuz mah frien' as long as he lib, and he wuz
a good frien' ob de South 'cause he saved lots ob white folks frum de
wrath ob de mean niggers."
(Note: The Col. Baker referred to was Cullen Baker, the leader of a
ruthless gang of bushwhackers that operated in this section shortly
after the Civil War.)
Doc Quinn tells a "ghost story" connected with the old church at Rondo,
built in 1861.
"De Masonic Hall wuz built up ovah dis buildin' an' ever month dey had
dey meetin'. One night, when dey was 'sembled, two men wuz kilt. Dat
sho' did scatter dat lot ob Masons and frum dat time on de spirits ob
dese men roamed dis chu'ch. Sometime in de dead ob night, dat bell wud
ring loud an' clear, wakin' all de folks. Down dey wud come, clos' like,
to de chu'ch,--but scared to go closer. Mr. Bill Crabtree, a rich man
an' a man whut wuz scared too, offered anybody $100.00 to go inside dat
chu'ch an' stay one hour. Didn't nobody need dat $100.00 dat bad!"
The old negro tells the following grave yard story:
"One dark, drizzly night, de niggers wuz out in de woods shootin' craps.
I didn't hab no money to jine in de game. One nigger say, "Doc, effen
you go down to de cemetey' an' bring bac' one ob dem 'foot boa'ds' frum
one ob dem graves, we'll gib yo' a dollar." I ambles off to de cemete'y,
'cause I really needed dat money. I goes inside, walks careful like, not
wantin' to distu'b nuthin', an' finally de grave stone leapt up in front
ob me. I retches down to pick up de foot boa'd, an' lo! de black cats
wuz habin' a meetin' ovah dat grave an' dey objected to mah intrudin',
but I didn't pay 'em no mind; jus' fetched dat boa'd bac' to dem
niggers, an'--bless de Lawd,--dey gib me two dollars!"
Superstitious Beliefs Among Negroes
Some aged Negroes believe that many of the superstitious ideas that are
practiced by their race today had their origin in Africa. A practice
that was quite common in ante bellum days was for each member of the
family to extract all of their teeth, in the belief that in doing so the
family would never disagree. Fortunately, this and similar practices of
self mutilation have about become extinct.
An old custom practiced to prevent the separation of a husband and wife
was to wrap a rabbit's forefoot, a piece of loadstone, and 9 hairs from
the top of the head in red flannel, and bury it under the front door
steps.
As a preventitive against being tricked or hoo-dooed, punch a hole
through a dime, insert a string through the hole, and tie it around the
left ankle.
To carry an axe or hoe into the house means bad luck. An itching nose
indicates some one is coming to see you, while an itching eye indicates
you will cry.
Interviewer: Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Henrietta Ralls
1711 Fluker St.
Pine Bluff, Ark.
Age: 88
"Yes ma'am, I was here in slavery times. I was born in Mississippi, Lee
County, March 10, 1850. Come to Arkansas when I was ten years old. Had
to walk. My old master was Henry Ralls. Sometimes we jump up in the
wagon and he'd whip us out.
"My old mistes name was Drunetta. She was good to us. We called her Miss
Netta. Old master was mean. He'd whip us. One day he come along and
picked up sand and throwed it in my eyes. He was a mean old devil. He
thought I was scared of him. Cose I was. That was before the war.
"I recollect when the Yankees come. I knowed they was a'ridin'. White
folks made me hide things. I hid a barrel of wool once--put meal on
top. They'd a'took it ever bit if they could have found it. They wanted
chickens and milk. They'd take things they wanted--they would that.
Would a'taken ever bit of our wool if they could have found it.
"They wouldn't talk to old mistes--just talk to me and ask where things
was. She didn't notice them and they didn't notice her.
"I reckon the Lord intended for the Yankees to free the people. They was
fightin' to free the people.
"I hear em say war is still goin' on in the world.
"The owners was tryin' to hide the colored people. Our white folks took
some of us clear out in Texas to keep the Yankees from gettin' em. Miss
Liza was Miss Netta's daughter and she was mean as her old daddy. She
said, 'Oh, yes, you little devils, you thought you was goin' to be free!
She had a good brother though. He wanted to swap a girl for me so I
could be back here with my mammy, but Miss Liza wouldn't turn me loose.
No sir, she wouldn't.
"After freedom I hired out--cooked, milked cows and washed and ironed.
"I went back to Mississippi and stayed with my father. Old Henry Ralls
sold my father fore we come to Arkansas.
"I never been married. I could have married, but I didn't. I don't know
hardly why.
"I been makin' my own livin' pretty much since I left my father.
"Biggest majority of younger generation looks like they tryin' to get
a education and tryin' to make a livin' with their brain without usin'
their hands. But I'd rather use my hands--cose I would.
"I went to school some after the war, but I had to pay for it.
"I been disabled bout five or six years. Got to have somethin' to take
us away, I guess."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Diana Rankins, Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 66
"I was born at Arlington, Tennessee but when I was a chile the depot was
called With. My parents' name Sarah and Solomon Green. There was seven
girls and one boy of us. My sister died last year had two children old
as I was. I was the youngest chile. Folks mated younger than they do now
and seem like they had better times when there was a big family.
"Adam Turnover in Charleston, South Carolina owned my papa. When he died
they sold him. He was one year and six months old when he was sold.
"I think S.C. Bachelor, around Brownsville, Tennessee, owned mama first.
She said they put her upon the block and sold her and her mother was
crying. The man after he sold her ask her if she didn't want him to sell
her. She said she didn't care but said she knowed she was afraid to say
she cared cause she was crying. She never seen her mama no more. She was
carried off on a horse. She was a little girl then. General Hayes bought
her and he bought papa too. They played together. General Hayes made the
little boys run races so he could see who could run the fastest.
"Papa said they picked him up and carried him off. He said they pressed
him into the breastworks of the war. He didn't want to go to war. Mr.
Hayes kept him hid out but they stole him and took him to fight. He come
home. He belong to Jack Hayes, General Hayes' son. They called him
Mr. Jack or Mr. Hayes when freedom come. Mr. Jack sent him to Como,
Mississippi to work and to Duncan, Arkansas to work his land. I was
fifteen years old when we come to Arkansas. Mr. Walker Hayes that was
president of the Commercial Appeal over at Memphis lost his land. We
been from place to place over Arkansas since then. Mr. Walker was
General Hayes' grandson. We worked field hands till then, we do anything
since. I nursed some for Mr. Charles Williams in Memphis. I have done
house work. I got two children. My son got one leg off. I live with him.
This little gran'boy is the most pleasure to us all.
"The Ku Klux never did interfere with us. They never come to our house.
I have seen them.
"When papa come from war it was all over. We knowed it was freedom.
Everybody was in a stir and talking and going somewhere. He had got
his fill of freedom in the war. He said turn us all out to freeze and
starve. He stayed with the Hayes till he died and mama died and all of
us scattered out when Mr. Walker Hayes lost his land.
"Ladies used to be too fine to be voting. I'm too old now. My men-folks
said they voted. They come home and say how they voted all I know about
voting.
"Walker Avenue in Memphis is named for Mr. Walker Hayes and Macremore
was named for him or by him one.
"We never was give a thing at freedom but papa was buying a place from
his master and got in debt and sold it. I don't own a home.
"I have high blood pressure and the Welfare gives me $8 a month. I'm not
able to work. When you been used to a good plenty it is mighty bad to
get mighty near helpless."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Senia Rassberry
810 Catalpa Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 84
"Yes'm, I know what I hear em say. Well, in slavery times I helped make
the soldiers' clothes.
"I was born on the old Jack Hall place on the Arkansas River in
Jefferson County.
"I know I was 'leven years old when peace declared. I reckon I can
member fore the War started. I know I was bastin' them coats and pants.
"My old master's name was Jack Hall and old mistress' name was
Priscilla. Oh, yes'm, they was good to me--just as good to me as they
could be. But ever' once in awhile they'd call me and say, 'Senia.' I'd
say, 'What you want?' They say, 'Wasn't you out there doin' so and so?'
I'd say, 'No.' They say, 'Now, you're tellin' a lie' and they'd whip me.
"I was the house girl, me and my sister. My mammy was the cook.
"Old master had two plantations. Sometimes he had a overseer and
sometimes he didn't.
"Oh, they had plenty to eat, hog meat and cracklin' bread. Yes ma'am. I
loved that, I reckon. I et so much of it then I don't hardly ever want
it now. They had so much to eat. Blackberry cobbler? Oh Lawd.
"How many brothers and sisters? Me? My dear, I don't know how many I had
but I heard my mother say that all the chillun she did have, that she
had 'leven chillun.
"Our white folks took us to Texas durin' of the War. I think my old
master said we stayed there three years. My mother died there with a
congestive chill.
"We come back here to Arkansas after freedom and I think my father
worked for Jack Hall three or four years. He wouldn't let him leave. He
raised my father and thought so much of him. He worked on the shares.
"After freedom I went to school. I learnt to read and write but I
just wouldn't _do_ it. I learnt the other chillun though. I did
_that_. I was into ever'thing. I learnt them that what I could do.
Blue Back? Them's the very ones I studied.
"In slavery times I had to rise as early as I could. Old master would
give me any little thing around the house that I wanted. They said he
was too old to go to war. Some of the hands run off but I didn't know
where they went to.
"Some of the people was better off slaves than they was free. I don't
study bout things now but sometimes seems like all them things comes
before me.
"I used to hear em talkin' bout old Jeff Davis. I didn't know what they
was talkin' bout but I heered em.
"I was sixteen when I married and I had eleven chillun. All dead but
four.
"Yes'm, I been treated good all my life by white and black. All of em
loved me seemed like.
"I been livin' in Arkansas all my life. I never have worked in the
field. I always worked in the house. I always was a seamstress--made
pants for the men on the place.
"After I come here to Pine Bluff I worked for the white folks. Used to
cook and wash and iron. Done a lot of work. I _did_ that.
"I been blind 'leven years but I thank the Lord I been here that long.
Glory to Jesus! Oh, Lord have mercy! Glory, glory, glory to Jesus!"
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Clay Reaves, (light mulatto, large man)
Palestine, Arkansas
Age: 80
"I will be eighty years old my next birthday. It will be July 6th.
Father was bought from Kentucky. I couldn't tell you about him. He
stayed on the Reaves place that year, the year of the surrender, and
left. He didn't live with mother ever again. I never did hear no reason.
He went on Joe Night's farm. He left me and a sister older but there was
one dead between us. Mother raised us. She stayed on with the Reaves two
years after he left. The last year she was there she hired to them. The
only thing she ever done before freedom was cook and weave. She had her
loom in the kitchen. It was a great big kitchen built off from the house
and a portico joined it to the house. I used to lay up under her loom.
It was warm there in winter time. I was the baby. I heard mother say
some things I remember well.
"She said she was never sold. She said the Reaves said her children need
never worry, they would never be sold. We was Reaves from back yonder.
Mother's grandfather was a white man. She was a Reaves and her children
are mostly Reaves. She was light. Father was about, might be a little
darker than I am (mulatto). At times she worked in the field, but in
rush time. She wove all the clothes on the place. She worked at the loom
and I lay up under there all day long. Mother had three girls and five
boys.
"Mr. Reaves, we called him master, had two boys in the army. He was a
real old man. He may have had more than two but I know there was two
gone off. The white folks lived in sight of the quarters. Their house
was a big house and painted white. I've been in there. I never seen no
grand parents of mine that I was allowed to claim kin with.
"When I got up some size I was allowed to go see father. I went over to
see him sometimes. After freedom he went to where his brothers lived.
They wanted him to change his name from Reaves to Cox and he did. He
changed it from James Reaves to James Cox. But I couldn't tell you if
at one time they belong to Cox in Kentucky or if they belong to Cox in
Tennessee or if they took on a name they liked.
"I kept my name Reaves. I am a Reaves from start to finish. I was raised
by mother and she was a Reaves. Her name was Olive Reaves. Her old
mistress' name was Charlotte Reaves, old master was Edmond Reaves. Now
the boys I come to know was John, Bob; girls, Mary and Jane. There was
older children. Mother was a sensible, obedient woman. Nobody ever
treated her very wrong. She was the only one ever chastised me. They
spoiled me. We got plenty plain rations. I never seen nobody married
till after the surrender. I seen one woman chastised. I wasn't close. I
never learned what it was about. Old Master Reaves was laying it on.
"Mother moved to New Castle, Tennessee from Mr. Reaves' place. We
farmed--three of us. We had been living southeast of Boliver, Tennessee,
in Hardeman County. I think my kin folks are all dead. Father's other
children may be over in Tennessee now. Yes, I know them. Mother died
over at Palestine with me. She always lived with me. I married twice,
had one child by each wife. Both wives are dead and my children are
dead.
"Mother said I had three older brothers went to the Civil War and never
come back home. She never heard from them after they went off. I don't
know but it was my understanding that they was to be soldiers. I don't
recollect them.
"Mother got so she wasn't able to work in the field several years before
she died. She worked in the field long as she was able. She lived with
me all my whole life till she died. But I farmed. Some years we done
well and some years we jess could live. I farmed all my life but a few
years. I love farm life. It is independent living. I mean you are about
your own man out there. I work my garden out at my shop now. I make
baskets and bottom chairs at Palestine. A few years I kept Mrs.
Wilkerson's yard and garden. Her husband died and she moved off to
Memphis. They did live at Palestine.
"I heard it said that Reaves said he could keep his own farm. The Ku
Klux never bothered us. I have heard a lot of things but I am telling
you what I know. I don't know nothing about the Civil War nor the Ku
Klux. I was most too small a boy at that time to know much.
"I used to vote. Can't write my name. Don't fool with it.
"I went to school on rainy days. I went a few other days. People used
to have to work. I always wanted to work. I piddle around all the time
working now. I went to colored teachers all together. I can read a
little.
"I had a brother-in-law in Arkansas. I heard a lot of talk. I come on
a visit and stayed three months. I went back and moved here. I come to
this State--over at Palestine--March 11, 1883 on Sunday. I have a good
recollection, or I think I have for my age. I've lived a pretty sensible
life, worked hard but had good health. If I had another life to live now
I would go to the farm. I love farm life.
"I chop wood, garden, go in the woods get my splints for baskets,
chairs. I live by myself. I eat out some with I call them kin. They are
my sister's children. I get some help, $10 and commodities.
"When I did vote I voted Republican or I thought I did. But now if I did
vote, I might change up. Times have changed.
"I don't know much about the young generation. I do talk with
them--some. They are coming up in a changed time. I wouldn't talk
against the colored race of people. Some of them work--are good. Some
don't. I think some will not work. Maybe they would. I come to know
mighty little about them--no more than I know about the white girls and
boys. I see them on the streets about as much as I ever see colored
folks anywhere."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Jane Reece
819 W. Ninth Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 85
"I know this--I'm 85. I was born in North Carolina.
"Oh, yes'm, I 'member the War.
"I'm three thousand miles from my home.
"Old John Blue (Belew?) was my white folks.
"I did have good white folks. Yes ma'am, I'll say that. Stayed there a
long time after we was sot free. They was good to us.
"My mother was the mother of twelve chillun--she was a fast breeder.
"I was the onliest girl and old missis was just wild about me. I had
good owners. I don't remember no hard treatment among 'em.
"I 'member she used to have me runnin' from house to house totin' a
little note. That's the reason I had such a good time. Heap of times I
slept up at the big house with old missis.
"I got a good memory. We was allowed to sing and pray. I know our white
folks was good that way. I'll say that for 'em. I won't go back on 'em.
"Our folks stayed right on there a long time.
"My father died three years after ever'thing had done got quiet and
peaceful.
"I left my husband back there and come here to Arkansas with my mother.
"The bigges' work I done--I used to be terrible 'bout cookin', washin'
and ironin', and field work. Ever'thing a man ever done I've done--cut
wood, cut down sprouts, barn brush--I've done ever'thing.
"Oh yes, I went to school a whole lot. Got so I could read. Used to
write too, but all that done left me.
"I'm gwine tell you the truth, lady. I don't know whether the folks is
better off free or not. They is better off in one way--they is free--but
this young race is the devil."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Frank Reed,
1004 Missouri Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 78
"I was a little boy pickin' up chips and helpin' feed the hog in slavery
times for old master. Name was George Houston. That was in Alabama.
"I reckon I do remember George Houston. As far as I know he was good to
us. I remember when he died.
"Our people stayed right there after freedom. My mother was a Houston
till she married.
"I reckon I do remember the paddyrollers. I remember the hounds runnin'
too. I never thought I would remember that no more.
"They didn't get after me 'cause I was too little. It didn't last long
enough for 'em to get after me.
"I'm sick and not able to help myself. I got run over by a wagon.
"I'm livin' here with my daughter. Her husband is a preacher and they
got eight children, so you can imagine how much they can do for me.
"One word of the white folks is worth a thousand of ours."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: James Reeves
2419 W. Twentieth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 68
Occupation: Preacher
"I was born in 1870 down in Ouachita County about fourteen miles south
of Camden going on toward El Dorado. They didn't have no railroad then.
I was a young man when they put the branch through. You see, I was born
five years after slavery, but I remember my mother, my grandmother, and
my great-grandmother. They taken me and talked to me freely and I know
everything they knew.
Great-Grandmother on Mother's Side
"My great-grandmother belonged to the Goodmans. Her master was named
Bob Goodman. She lived to get one hundred thirteen years old. From the
children of the old master, I got the information concerning her age.
I looked it up after emancipation. One of old master's sons was named
Frank Goodman, and another was named Norphleet Goodman, and there was
another whose name I don't recall.
"My grandmother, great-grandmother, was named Frankie Goodman. I wasn't
here in slavery time, but I knew her after emancipation.
Grandmother on Mother's Side
"My grandmother was named Hannah Goodman. These were different Goodmans
but they were kin to these others. There was a large family of them.
I don't know the correct age of my grandmother but she was up in the
eighties when she died.
Mother
"My mother was born a Goodman, but she married Reeves, my father. The
record of their marriage I ain't got. Back there, they didn't keep up
like you and I do, and we don't keep up like these younger folks do.
Near as I could get it, she lived to be about seventy-one years old.
Father
"My father was named Adam Reeves. His master was named Rick Reeves. My
father was born in Union County about ten miles from El Dorado. You
might say north of El Dorado because he lived south of Camden. He lived
there all his life. I have known him to move out of Ouachita County into
Union, and from Union back to Ouachita.
Grandfather on Mother's Side
"My grandfather on my mother's aide was Henry Goodman. His mistress was
a woman by the name of Lucy Goodman. She was the same woman who owned my
mother. There was a big family of them Goodmans.
"His age--he lived to be about eighty years old. He died in Hot Spring
County.
Grandmother on Father's Side
"My grandmother on my father's side was named Hetty. Her master was
named Sam Abbott. She lived right close to seventy-four or seventy-five
years. She been gone quite a while now. She used to live with papa.
Other Ancestors
"I don't know so much about another of my ancestors.
Wife
"My wife didn't have many people. She knows her mother, her mother's
mistress, and all. Her ma was named Martha Henson. That was her married
name. Her mistress' last name was Stribling. Martha Henson was a
well-treated slave. The Striblings lived in Rockport, Arkansas, but
their native home was Georgia. I don't know where the Striblings are
now. The old man died before the Civil War broke out. I guess they are
all dead and in torment. My wife's grandmother and grandfather on her
mother's side were gone so far back that neither she nor I know anything
about them.
Whippings
"My great-grandmother on my mother's side was in Union County when I
knew anything of her--close to El Dorado. I was about twenty-two years
old when she died. She was tall and spare built, dark ginger cake color.
Coarse straight black hair that had begun to mingle with gray. She never
did get real gray, and her hair was never white. Even when she died, at
a hundred and thirteen years, her hair was mostly black mingled with
gray.
"The overseer knocked her in the head in slavery times, and they had to
put a silver half-dollar in her head to hold her brains in. I have seen
the place myself. When I was a little fellow she used to let me feel the
place and she would say, 'That's where the overseer knocked granny in
the head, son. I got a half-dollar in there.' I would put her hair
aside--my but she had beautiful hair!--and look at the place.
"My wife could tell you what my mother told her. She has seen the marks
on my mother's back and has asked, 'Mama, what's all these marks on your
back?' And mama would say, 'That's where I was whipped in slavery times,
daughter.' She never did like to tell the details. But the scars were
awful.
"My grandmother was roughly treated and she had pretty near lost her
eyesight from the ill treatment. She got so before she died that she
could hardly see to go nowhere. I don't know what it was they done to
her that made her eyesight bad, but she insisted that it was due to bad
treatment in slavery time.
Patrollers
"I have heard that the pateroles used to run the slaves if they didn't
have a pass from their mistress and master. The pateroles would run them
and catch them and whip them.
How Freedom Came
"All my mother knew was that it got out that the Negroes were free. The
day before the old woman told them that they were free, my grandfather,
Henry Goodman who was a teamster, old mis' called him and told him to
tell all the darkies to come up to the house the next day.
"Next morning, she said, 'Henry, you forgot what I told you. I want you
to call all the darkies up here this morning.' Henry had a voice like a
fog-horn. He started hollering. I wish I could holler the way he did,
but I got to consider the neighbors. He hollered. 'Tention, 'tention,
hey; Miss Lucy says she wants you all up to the big house this morning.
She's got somepin to tell you.'
"They all come up to the yard before the house. When they got there, she
says to him--not to them; she wouldn't talk to them that morning; maybe
she was too full--'Henry, you all just as free now as I am. You can stay
here with Miss Lucy or you can go to work with whomsoever you will. You
don't belong to Miss Lucy no more.'
"She had been sick for quite a bit, and she was just able to come to the
door and deliver that message. Three weeks after that time, they brought
her out of the house feet foremost and took her to the cemetery. The
news killed her dead. That's been seventy years ago, and they just now
picking up on it!
Slave Time Amusements
"The old people say they used to have breakdowns in slave
time--breakdown dances with fiddle and banjo music. Far after slavery,
they had them. The only other amusement worth speaking about was the
churches. Far as the churches was concerned, they had to steal out and
go to them. Old man Balm Whitlow can tell you all about the way they
held church. They would slip off in the woods and carry a gang of
darkies down, and the next morning old master would whip them for it.
Next Sunday they would do the same thing again and get another whipping.
And it went on like that every week. When old man Whitlow came out from
slavery, he continued to preach. But the darkies didn't have to steal
out then. He's dead now, him and the old lady both.
Houses
"The slaves lived in old log houses. Some of them would be hewed and put
up well. I have seen lots of them. Sometimes they would dob the cracks
with mud and would have box planks floors, one by eight or one by ten,
rough lumber, not dressed. Set 'em as close together as they could but
then there would be cracks in them. I can carry you to some old log
houses down in Union County now if they haven't been torn down recently.
"One old log house there used to be old lady Lucy Goodman's home. It
has four rooms. It has a hall running through it. It was built in slave
times. There is a spring about two hundred yards from it. That is about
ten or twelve feet deep. There is a big cypress tree trunk hollowed out
and sunk down in it to make a curbing. That cypress is about two or
three feet across. The old man, Henry Goodman, sunk that cypress down in
there in slavery time. He drove an ox team all the time. That is all the
work he done. She would tell all the overseers, 'Now, don't you fool
with Henry because we ain't never whipped him ourselves.'
"I don't know who it is that is living now. It's been fifty years ago
since I was there.
Right After Freedom
"Right after freedom, when the surrender came, my mother was just a girl
'bout fifteen or sixteen. She married after freedom. Her and her husband
farmed for a living--you know, sharecropped.
Ku Klux Klan
"The Ku Klux and the pateroles were the same thing, only the Klan was
more up to date. It's all set up with a hellish principle. It's old
Pharaoh exactly.
"The Ku Klux Klan didn't have no particular effect on the Negro except
to scare him.
"When the emancipation came about, the people of the South went to work
to see what they could do about it. The whole South was under martial
law. Some of the people formed the Ku Klux Klan to keep the Negro down.
I never remember that they bothered any of our family or the people in
our house. But they scared some and whipped more, and killed some.
Political Trouble about 1888
"The darkies and the white folks in Union County had an insurrection
over the polls about the year 1888. In them days, when you wanted to put
a Republican man in, you didn't have to do much campaigning. They
just went to the polls and put him in. Everybody that could vote was
Republican. In the fall of 1888 they had a great trouble down there, and
some of them got killed. They went around and commanded the Negroes not
to go to the polls the next day. Some of the Negroes would tell them,
'Well, I am going to the polls tomorrow if I have to crawl.' And then
some of them would say, 'I'd like to know how you goin' to vote.' The
nigger would ask right back, 'How you goin' to vote?' The white man
would say, 'I'm goin' to vote as I damn please.' Then the nigger would
say, 'I'm going to do the same thing.' That started the trouble.
"On Sunday before the election on Monday, they went around through that
county in gangs. They shot some few of the Negroes. As the Negroes
didn't have no weapons to protect theirselves, they didn't have no
chance. In that way, quite a few of the Negroes disbanded their homes
and went into different counties and different portions of the state and
different states. Henry Goodman, my grandfather, came into Hot Spring
County in this way.
Opinions
"Roosevelt has got himself in a predicament. They are drunk and don't
know what to do. The whole world is stirred up over why one-fourth of
the world should rule the other three-fourths. One-fourth of the world
is white. The Bible says a house divided can't stand. The people don't
know what to do. Look how they fight the Wage Hour Bill. Look at the
excitement they raised when it was first suggested that the Union and
Confederate veterans meet together.
"We were savages when we came over here. Everything we got and
everything we know, good and bad, we got from the white folks. Don't
know how they can get impatient with us when everything we do they
learnt us.
"Roosevelt has done more than any Democrat that has ever been in the
Chair. He had to do something to keep down a rebellion. Then we like to
had one as it is through the labor question.
"The poor white man always has been in a tight [HW: place]. He was
almost as much oppressed as the Negro.
"The young people of today ain't got no sense. They don't give no
thought to nothing. They don't know how to think at all. All the
schools and education they give don't make them think. If I had as much
education as they have, I would be able to accomplish something. The
teachers don't press down on them and make them know what they go over.
There is a whole lot of things happening now.
Old People in Pulaski County
"Out in Pulaski County, going west out the Nineteenth Street Pike till
you strike the Saline County line, there are quite a few old colored
people. I guess you would find no leas than twenty-five or thirty out
that way. There is one old man named Junius Peterson out that way who
used to run a mill. If you find him, he is very old and has a good
memory. He is a mulatto. You could get out to him by going down till you
come to a place that is called the Henderson Lane. You turn to the right
and go off the pike less than a mile and you come to a big one-story
house settin' on a hill where Peterson lives. Right on beyond that about
three-fourths of a mile on the right side of the road, you come to
George Gregory's. The mother of my church is about eighty-one years old
but she is over in Saline County. Her name is Jane Joyner.
"There are quite a few old persons around Woodson that can give you
information. But that is in Saline County, I think. Sweet Home,
Wrightsville, Toltec--all of them have a few old colored persons on the
farm that was here in slavery times."
Interviewer's Comment
Reeves' story was taken because of his clear memories of his parents
and grandparents. He described to me an old log house still standing in
Union County.
I got all agog with excitement. I asked him for the exact location. He
gave it. Then I suggested that maybe he would go down with me sometime
to visit it. He agreed. Then at the last moment caution began to assert
itself, and I said, "When was the last time you saw the cabin?"
He reflected a moment; then he said, "Waal, I guess it was a little more
'an fifty years ago."
I lost my enthusiasm.
Reeves told the Phill-la-me-york story which was told by Austin Pen
Parnell. You will find it in his story. The only difference between his
story and Parnell's is that Reeves had the conclusion. He claimed that
the old master got in a fight with one of the slaves present and yelled
out his identity when he was getting badly beaten. The story sounds
like it came from the Arkansas folklore collection or from someone who
contributed it to that collection.
An aftermath of Reeves' story is finding out that most people consider
Henry Banner, whose story has been previously given and whose age was
given as eighty-nine, is considered by many persons to be ninety-four.
Neely, one of the adult school-teachers, says that he has gone over
Banner's life carefully with him, and that he must have been twenty-one
or twenty-two at the close of the War because during slavery, he had
experience at logging, or rather at logrolling, a work so difficult that
only full-grown men were used at it. Since Banner is slightly built,
there is scarcely a possibility that he did such work before the normal
time.
[HW: Cf. 30715 for interview with Parnell.]
Interviewer: Bernice Bowden
Person Interviewed: Shepherd Rhone
10th and Kentucky
Pine Bluff, Ark.
Age: 75
"Yes ma'am, I was bred and born in 'sixty-three in Phillips County,
Arkansas, close to Helena, on old Judge Jones' plantation. Judge Jones,
he was a lawyer. Remember him? I ought to, he whiped me enough. His
wife's name was Caroline Jones. She used to smack my jaws and pull
my ears but she was a pretty good woman. The old judge was a raw one
though. You had to step around or he'd step around for you.
"I stayed right there till I was grown. My mother was named Katie Rhone
and my father was named Daniel Rhone. My mother was born in Richmond,
Virginia and my father in Petersburg, Virginia.
"Judge Jones brought em here to Arkansas. My father was a bodyguard for
old Judge Jones' son Tom in the War. My father stuck with him till peace
declared--had to do it.
"They was thirteen of us chillun and they is all gone but me, and I'll
soon be gone.
"I know when the Yankees come I run from em. When peace declared, the
Yankees come all through our house and took everything they could get
hold of to eat.
"The only reason the Yankees whipped the South was they starved em.
"I know one time when peace declared I caught afire and I run and jumped
in a tub of water and I had sense enough not to tell my mother. A girl I
was raised up with went and told her though.
"After freedom I worked for old Judge Jones on the half system. He give
me everthing that was due me. When he was eighty years old, he called
all his old tenants up and give em a mule and twenty-five dollars. He
was pretty good to em after all.
"I went to free school in the summertime after the crops was laid by, I
can read and write pretty good.
"I came here to Jefferson County in 'eighty-six and I put in thirty-six
years at the Cotton Belt Shops. When that strike come on they told us
colored folks to quit and I never went back. I worked for em when she
was a narrow gauge.
"I worked in the North three years. I nightwatched all over St. Louis
and Madison, Illinois. I liked it fine up there--white folks is more
familiar up there and seems like you can get favors. If I don't get
somethin' here, I'm goin' back up there.
"When I got big enough I voted the Republican ticket and after they got
this primary. I think the colored people ought to vote now cause they
make em pay taxes.
"I'll tell you right now, the younger generation is goin' to the dogs.
We'll never make a nation of em as long as they go out to these places
at night. They ought to be a law passed. When nine o'clock comes they
ought to be home in bed, but they is just gettin' started then.
"I belong to the Catholic Church. I think it's a pretty good church. We
have a white priest and I'll tell you one thing thing--you can't get a
divorce and marry again and stay in the Catholic Church."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Dora Richard
3301 W. 14th Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 76
"I was born in South Carolina and I was my mother's baby chile.
"Jacob Foster was our old master and he sold my mother over in east
Tennessee. Now of cose she wasn't put upon the block and sold. She was
the house woman and spin and wove. After they sold her my father run
off. Oh sure, they caught him and I know old mistress said, 'Now, Jacob,
if you want to go where Lydia is, you can go.' So they sold him near
her.
"I stayed with the Fosters till peace was declared and ever'thing was
declared free. Then my father come after me.
"I can just sketch things. I try to forget it. My mother and father was
pretty agreeable when they was set free.
"In Tennessee we stayed at the foot of Lookout Mountain and I can
remember seein' the cannon balls.
"Here's the way I want to tell you. Some of the white people are as good
to the colored people as they could be and some of em are mean. My own
folks do so bad I'm ashamed of em.
"So many of the colored of the South have emigrated to the North. I have
lived there and I don't know why I'm here now.
"Some of my color don't like that about the Jim Crow Law, but I say if
they furnish us a nice comfortable coach I would rather be with my own
people. And I don't care to go to the white folks' church.
"My mother used to tell me how they used to hide behind trees so the
boss man couldn't see em when they was prayin' and at night put out the
light and turn the pot down.
"I went to school in Tennessee. I never will forget it. I had a white
teacher. He was in the War and he had a leg shot off. I went through the
sixth grade and was ready for the seventh Ray's Arithmetic. I walked
four miles there and four miles back--eight miles a day.
"I can remember too when my mother and father was baptized. I know mama
come out of the water a shoutin'. Oh, that was good times then. I felt
better when I was under my mother cause when I married my life was over.
I raised about ten children.
"I remember when the Ku Klux come to my sister's house lookin' for her
husband. I know I was in the bed and I raised up. I was scared you know.
"When I hear some colored folks say they wish the old slavery times was
back, I just knows they is lazy. They don't want any responsibility."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Jim Ricks
517 E. 22nd Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 79
"I was born in slavery times. I 'member runnin' from the Yankees when
they wanted to carry me off. Just devilin' me, you know. You know how
little chillun was 'bout white folks in them days.
"I went to school three weeks and my daddy stopped me and put me to
work.
"Old master was named Jimmie Ricks. They named me after him, I think.
"My mother said he was a mighty good master. Didn't 'low his niggers
whipped.
"Yes'm, I was born and raised in Arkansas, down here in Calhoun County.
"I had a chance to learn but I was a rowdy. I wanted to hunt. I was a
mighty huntsman.
"I was a good worker too. White folks was all stuck on me 'cause I was a
good worker.
"I did farm work and then did public work after the crops was laid by.
But now I got too old to work.
"I seen the Ku Klux once or twice when they was Ku Klukin' around. Some
of 'em would holler 'Kluk, kluk, kluk.' I was quite small, but I could
remember 'am 'cause I was scared of 'em.
"I farmed all my life till year before last. I was a good farmer too.
"I used to vote years ago. I voted Republican. Yes ma'am.
"Younger generation ain't near like they was when I was young. I was
well thought of. Couldn't be out after sundown or they'd bump my head.
My stepfather would give me a flailin'. I thought he was mean to me but
I see now he done right by whippin' me.
"I know in slavery times they got plenty of somethin' to eat. Old master
fed us well."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Charlie Rigger
R.F.D., three miles, Palestine, Arkansas
Age: 85 plus, doesn't know age
"I was born six miles from Mounticellar close to the line of Morgan and
Jasper County. Mother belong to the Smiths. Her father was part Creek
(Indian). They all was sold to Floyd Malone. His wife was Betsy Malone.
They had five children.
"When I was a child I lay under the loom day after day picking up the
sickle. Ma was a cook and a weaver too.
"Malone was a good man but his wife was one of 'em. She was a terrible
piece of humanity. Father was a farm hand. They had a gin, a shoe shop,
and a blacksmith shop all on Floyd Malone's place. I picked a little
cotton before 'mancipation. Floyd Malone had to buy my mother to git her
where my father was.
"Some of the boys wore dresses till they was twelve or fifteen years
old. One fellar rode a mule or cow one the other to preaching. While
he sit talking to his gal at the window a steer cone up and et off his
dress tail. Boys got to courting before they got to take off their long
shirts.
"They wasn't so good to mother. She run off several times. She went
'bout one and one-half miles to her mother on the Compton place. They
didn't whoop her. They promised her a whooping. They whooped her and me
too but I never knowed 'em to whoop my father. When they whoop my mother
I'd run off to place we lived and crawl under the house.
"We chillun had nothing to do wid coffee. We drunk milk out little
bowls. We'd turn it up or lap it out which one could do the best. They
fed us. We'd ask for more till we got filled up.
"I recollect the soldiers come by in July 1863 or 1864 and back in
December. I heard talk so long 'fore they got there I knowed who they
was. They took my oldest brother. He didn't want to go. We never heard
from him. He never come back. My white master hid out. He didn't go
to war. One son went and come back. It was the Yankees made my oldest
brother go. The first crowd in July swapped their wore-out scrub stock
for our good stock. That second crowd cleaned them out, took our hogs.
Miss Betty had died 'fore they come in July. That second crowd come in
December. They cleaned out everything to eat and wear. They set the
house 'fire several times with paper and coal oil (kerosene). It went
out every time. One told the captain. He come up behind. It went out
every time. He said, 'Let's move on.' They left it clean and bare. We
didn't like them. We had meat hid in the cellar. We got hungry that
spring sure as you born.
"The old man married pretty soon after freedom. He married young to what
he was.
"I didn't find much fault to slavery 'cepting the abuse. We et three
times a day and now if I get one piece I do well. Mother cooked, washed,
ironed and spun four cuts a day. We all et at the master's kitchen three
times a day. We had thirty-two families. I've heard that ag'in time and
ag'in so as I recollect it till now. We didn't have to work no harder
'en we do now if you have a living.
"Master waited till all there. He had a horn made sorter like a bugle
for that business. Called us to our meals. We stayed a year. Went to his
brother's one year, then to Major Lane's big farm. We had to work about
the same as b'fore freedom. Not much change.
"The Ku Klux come 'round right smart. Some had on skin coverings, cow
heads and horns. Some wore white sheets and black dresses on white
horses. They was scary looking. They would whoop and kill too. I was too
scared to get caught off at night.
"Mother died. I was traveling about. I spent thirteen months in
Mississippi. Three winters right in Memphis. I married in Mississippi. I
left two daughters in Georgia. My wife died. I come to Arkansas in 1902.
I live all alone.
"This present generation is traveling too fast. It-is-to-be. Fast
traveling and education. Times not good as it always have been b'fore
that last war (World War). When the white folks start jowing we black
folks suffers. It ain't a bit our fault. Education causes the black man
to see he is bit (cheated) but he better not say a word. It very good
thing if it is used right. Fast traveling is all right in its place. But
too many is traveling and they all want to be going. We got into pretty
fast time of it now. It-is-to-be and it's getting shoved on faster."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Ida Rigley, Forrest City, Arkansas
Age: 82
"I was born in Richmond, Virginia. Colonel Radford and Emma Radford
owned my mother. They had a older girl, Emma and Betty and three boys. I
called her Miss Betty.
"My mother was Sylvia Jones and she had five children. Bill Jones was my
father. He was a born free man and a blacksmith at Lynchburg, Virginia
in slavery times.
"He asked Colonel Radford could he come to see my mama and marry her.
They had a wedding in Colonel Radford's dining room and a preacher on
the place married them. They told me. My father was a Presbyterian
preacher. I heard papa preach at Lynchburg. He had a white principle but
no white blood. I never knew him very much till long after freedom.
"Miss Betty Radford was raising me for a house girl. I was younger
than her children. Mother was a weaver for all on the place. Old aunt
Caroline was the regular cook but my mother helped to cook for hands he
hired at busy seasons of the year. My sisters lived in the quarters and
mama slept with them. She helped them. They worked in the field some.
They was careful not to overwork young hands. They cooked down at the
quarters. They had a real old man and woman to set about and see after
the children and feed them. The older children looked after the babies.
When Miss Betty went off visiting she would send me down there. I did
love it.
"Emma and Betty went to school at Richmond in a buggy. They had a
colored boy driver. He was the carriage driver. Emma and Betty would
play with me too. Miss Betty fed me all the time. She made me a bonnet
and I can't get shed of my bonnet yet. I got four bonnets now.
"When the white folks had a wedding it lasted a week. They had a second
day dress and a third day dress and had suppers and dinner receptions
about among the kin folks. They had big chests full of quilts and
coverlets and counterpanes they been packing back. Some of them would
have big dances. A wedding would last a week, night and day.
"They had a farm right. We had peacocks, white guinea and big black
turkeys, cows, sheep, goats, hogs; he had deer. He kept their horns cut
off and some of the cow's horns were off. We had a acre in a garden and
had roses and all kinds of flowers. I like flowers now. Tries to have
'em. They had a gin on the place. He raised corn, rye, cotton, and
tobacco. The hands got their supplies on Saturday. On rainy days all the
women would knit, white and colored both. Miss Betty knitted some at
night in winter. They had a shop to sharpen and keep all the tools in. A
particular old man made the brooms and rakes.
"It seem like there wasn't so many flies. Miss Betty mixed up molasses
and flour and poison and killed flies sometimes. She spread it on brown
paper. We had fly weed tea to set about too sometimes. We didn't have
to use anything regular. We didn't have no screens. We had mighty few
mosquitoes. We had peafowl fly brushes. They was mighty pretty.
"One thing we had was a deep walled well and an ice-house. They cut ice
in blocks and put it up for winter[HW:?]. We had one spring on the place
I know.
"They kept hounds. Colonel Radford's boys and the colored boys all went
hunting. We had 'possum and potatoes all along in winter; 'possum grease
won't make you sick. Eat all you want. I'd hear their horn and the dogs.
They would come in hungry every time. I never seen no whiskey. He had
his cider and vinegar press and made wine. We had cider and wine all
along. Colonel Radford was his own overseer and Charlie his oldest boy.
They whooped mighty little. They would stand up and be whooped. Some of
the young ones was hard-headed and rude. He advised them and they minded
him pretty well.
"Our yards was large and beautiful; some had grass and some clean spots
about in the shade. Friday was wash day. Saturday was iron day. Miss
Betty would go about in the quarters to see if the houses was scrubbed
every week after washing. They had to wear clean clothes and have clean
beds about her place. She'd shame them to death.
"Colonel Radford had a colored church for us all. It was a log house and
he had a office for his boys to read and write and smoke cob pipes in.
The white folks' church was at the corner of his place. I went there
most. They shouted and pat their hands. Colonel Radford was a Baptist.
"Nearly every farm had a fiddler. Ever so often he had a big dance in
their parlor. I'd try to dance by myself. He had his own music by the
hands on his place. He let them have dances at the quarters every now
and then. Dancing was a piece of his religion.
"I don't think our everyday frocks was stiffened but our dress up
clothes was. It was made out of flour--boiled flour starch. We had
striped dresses and stockings too. We had checked dresses. We had
goobers and a chestnut grove. We had a huckleberry patch. We had maple
sugar to eat. It was good. We had popcorn and chinquapins in the fall
of the year, I used to pick up chips to use at the pot. I had a little
basket. I picked up corn cobs. They burnt them and made corn cob soda to
use in the bread and cakes. We parched peeled sweet potatoes slice thin
and made coffee.
"The Civil War was terrible. One morning before we was all out of bed
the Yankees come. It was about daylight. He and the three boys were
there. They didn't burn any houses and they didn't hesitate but they
took everything. They took all Miss Betty's nice silverware. They took
fine quilts and feather beds. That was in the fall of the year. They
drove off a line of our slaves (a block long) fer as from me to that
railroad. Made them go. They walked fast in front of the cavalrymen.
They took mama and my sisters. She got away from them with her girls and
found her way back to papa at Lynchburg.
"Colonel Radford went and took some of the slave men and his boys. They
brought home plenty beds and a barrel of salt. He brought back plenty.
He sent his slave man to town any time. They had no notion leaving.
"One time some Yankees come. I run hid around Miss Betty's long dress.
She was crying. They was pulling her rings off her fingers. I told them
to quit that. One of the mean things said, 'Little nigger, I shoot your
head off.' They took all her nice clothes. They said they took all
niggers. I sassed them. They went in another room. I shot under Miss
Betty's big skirt. They looked about for me but they thought I run off
to my mama. She was gone but they didn't know it. I seen my best times
then. We had a good time there. Miss Betty was good and kind to me. Good
as I wanted. I wish I had that good now.
Freedom
"The soldiers come and I knowed it was the Yankees I hated. They took
all they could find and wasted a lot of it. I was scared. I kept hid
about. The slaves put their beds and clothes up on the wagons and went
off behind them and some clumb up in the wagons. I heard Miss Betty say,
'They need not follow them off, they are already free.' The way she said
it, like she was heart broken, made me nearly cry and I remember her
very words till this day. She was a good woman.
"Mama come and got me long time after that and I didn't want to go nor
stay neither. It was like taking me off from my own home. Papa was
freeborn and freedom I couldn't understand till I was long grown. I
never got a whooping in my life. I was taught politeness.
"During slavery we bought mighty little. Flour in barrels, salt. We had
Maple sugar and sorghum molasses in bounty. We was happy and had plenty
to eat and wear.
"I learned to make the fine cakes from a Jew woman (Jewess), Mrs. Isaac.
I've been called a cook here in Forrest City. I was taught by Mrs. Isaac
to make angel food, coffee cake, white bread and white cakes. From that
I made the other kinds my own self."
Interviewer's Comment
People in Forrest City send for Ida and keep her a week or two baking
Christmas and wedding cakes.
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Milton Ritchie
R.F.D., Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 78
"I was born in Marietta Hotel at Marietta, Georgia. The hotel belong to
Milton Stevens. He had two sons. One died fo I was born and Pink was in
the war. Mistress Thursday was old moster's wife. We all had to refugee.
My sister was down in the bottoms with all the slaves and cattle when
she died. She took sick and died suddenly. They heard the soldiers was
coming to Atlanta and knowed they would come by Marietta. Moster Stevens
sold the hotel just at the beginning of the war. He moved to the
country. Mama cooked at the hotel and in the country both. The hotel was
a brick house on the railroad where they fed a lot of people every day.
Moster Milton used to take me bout where he went, rode me on his foot
when I was a baby. After they went to the farm every evening Mistress
Thursday come get me, take me to the house. She got bread and butter,
sugar, give it to me and I slept on a pallet in her room. I never did
know why she done that. Mama had a little house she slept in. She
cooked. They never whooped me. They never whooped mama.
"One time the Federal army camped not a great ways from us. One time I
was playing in a gully--big red ditch. I spied the Federals coming. I
flew out the ditch up the hill and across the field. They was calvary
men camped back of our field. We all left that place and refugeed to
another place. They didn't burn the house but they sent two bullets
through the walls or that house. 'Old Granny' was too old to refugee.
She kept living by herself in a house on the place. They never bothered
her. She wasn't kin to us but Moster Milton owned her and kept her fed.
We raised sugar-cane, hogs, corn, and goobers. The sugar-cane had
no top. I got a whooping every Monday. Mama whoop me. We go drink
sugar-cane juice in the trough at the mill. We got up in there with our
feet. They had to wash out the troughs. It was a wood house. It was a
big mill. He sold that good syrup in Atlanta. It wasn't sorghum. The men
at the mill would scare us but we hid around. They come up to the house
and tell on us.
"We had moved from the farm when they burned Atlanta. From the place
where Moster Milton refugeed I could hear a roaring all the time nearly,
sometimes clearer, and the roaring was broke sometimes.
"Moster Milton ran the farm when he run the hotel cept I was born at
the hotel and Mistress Thursday lived there then too. He had all Negro
overseers. Each overseer had a certain lot of hands to do what he told
them. He didn't have no trouble. He told them if they made something for
them and him too it would be fine, if they didn't work they would have
to do without. They had plenty they said.
"My mama was sold on the block in Virginia when she was twelve years
old. She and her little brother sold the same day. Moster Milton Stevens
bought her. The same man couldn't buy them both, didn't have money
enough. They had a little blanket and she and her brother cut it into
and put it around their shoulders. They been sleeping together and
Moster Milton brought her home on his horse up behind him. Her mama was
crying when she left her. She never heard nor seen none of her folks no
more she told me. (The old Negro cried.)
"My mama and papa was dark but both was mixed. They never told me if it
was white or Indian. Papa was a tall, big bony man. Mama wasn't so big
and stouter. He never tried to get away from his owners. He belong to
Sam Ritchie five or six miles away. I never beard much about them. They
had Negro overseers. Papa was a foreman. He tanned the cow hides and
made shoes for all the hands on Ritchie's place. He made our shoes over
there too. They said Stevens and Ritchies didn't keep bad dogs. Mistress
Eliza Ritchie was a Stevens before she married. Papa never was sold. He
said they was good to them. Mama was named Eliza too and papa George
Ritchie.
"When freedom was on papa went to Atlanta and got transportation to
Chattanooga. I don't know why. He met me and mama. She picked me up and
run away and met him. We went in a freight box. It had been a soldier's
home--great big house. We et on the first story out of tin pans. We had
white beans or peas, crackers and coffee. Meat and wheat and cornbread
we never smelt at that place. Somebody ask him how we got there and he
showed them a ticket from the Freedmans bureau in Atlanta. He showed
that on the train every now and then. Upstairs they brought out a stack
of wool blankets and started the rows of beds. Each man took his three
as he was numbered. Every night the same one got his own blankets. The
room was full of beds and white guards with a gun over his shoulder
guarded them all night long. We stayed there a long time--nearly a year.
They tried to get jobs fast as they could and push em out but it was
slow work. Mama got a place to cook at--Mrs. Crutchfield's. She run a
hotel in town but lived in the country. We stayed there about a year.
Papa was hired somewhere else there.
"Papa got us on a farm in middle Tennessee after that. We come to Mr.
Hooper's place and share cropped one year, then we went to share crop
for Wells Brothers close to Murfreesboro. I been on the farm all my life
since then.
"The Ku Klux never pestered us. I heard about them.
"The Welfare helps me and I would do work if I could get work I can do.
I could do light work. Times is hard. Hard to get a living. I don't mind
work. I couldn't do a day's work now.
"The young generation is beyond me. I don't be about them much."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Alice Rivers
W. 17th, Highland Addition, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 81
"Yes'm, I remember when the Yankees come. I ricollect when they throwed
out all the meat from old master's smokehouse. The colored folks was
tryin' to ketch it and I know I tried to ketch it too.
"Don't I look like I been here in Reb. time? I was born in Mississippi
on Colonel Reed's place in 1857.
"I just know the Yankees come through. Had on blue coats with gold
lookin' buttons. I never will forget it 'cause it was so frightening.
"I can ricollect way back there.
"I don't know whether the white folks was good or not, we hardly ever
saw 'em. Had a old woman that cooked for the chillun at the quarters.
I ricollect they had a big old kittle and she'd cook that full of
somethin'. I know the old lady give us plenty of somethin' to eat.
"All the white folks didn't treat their hands mean. Some of 'em was a
fool 'bout them little niggers.
"Old woman what cooked for the chillun was old Aunt Henie and she walked
half bent with a stick.
"I went to school some after freedom. Learned how to spell and read but
not much writin'.
"I can't tell you 'bout no whippin's 'cause if they whipped the folks
they didn't do it at the quarters where the chillun was.
"I been farmin' all my life till I come to Arkansas in 1916. Since then
I first cooked and washed. I ain't worked out in three years now.
"I gets a little pension from the Welfare and I make out on that. My
granddaughter lives with me. She will finish high school in May and then
she can take care of herself.
"I used to own this place but it was sold for taxes. Don't make any
difference if you is as old as Methuselah you got to pay them taxes. Old
Caeser started 'em and we've had to pay 'em ever since.
"Younger generation ain't mannerly now like they was when I was young.
Chillun used to be obedient but they got to have their way now. Old
folks done put the chillun where they is now and they ought to take care
of 'em.
"I don't know where the world gwine come to in the next five years. I
reckon they'll all be dead way they're gwine now. Storms takin' 'em away
here and war in them other countries."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: J. Roberts, Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 45 or 50
Occupation: Methodist preacher
"My father was a Federal soldier in the Civil War. He was from Winston,
Virginia. He went to war and soon after the end he came to Holly Grove.
He was in Company "K". He signed up six or seven papers for men in his
company he knew and they all got their pensions. Oh yes! He knew them.
He was an awful exact honest man. He was a very young man when he went
into the war and never married till he come to Arkansas. He married a
slave woman. She was a field woman. They farmed. Father sat by the hour
and told how he endured the war. He never expected to come out alive
after a few months in the war.
"John Roberts Collins was his owner in slavery. I never heard why he cut
off the Collins. I call my own self J. Roberts."
"The present times are hard times. Sin hath caused it all. Machinery has
taken so much of the work."
"The present generation are fair folks but wild. Yes, the young folks
today are wilder than my set was. I can't tell you how but I see it
every way I go."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: George Robertson? or George Robinson?
Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 81
"My papa named Abe Robertson. His owner named Tom Robertson. I was born
in middle Tennessee. My mama named Isabela Brooks. Her master named
Billy Brooks. His wife name Mary Brooks. My master boys come through
here six years ago wid a tent show. My papa went off wid the Yankees.
Last I seed of him he was in Memphis. They took my mama off when I was
a baby to Texas to keep the Yankees from gettin' her. My grandma raised
me. We stayed on the big plantation till 1880.
"I don't want no Sociable Welfare help till I ain't able to work. I
don't want none now."
(To be continued) [TR: no continuation found.]
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Augustus Robinson
2500 W. Tenth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 78
"I was born in Calhoun County, Arkansas in 1860, January 15th. I am
going according to what my daddy told me and nothing else. That is all I
could do.
How the Children Were Fed
"My grandmother on my mother's side said when I was a little fellow that
she was a cook and that she would bring stuff up to the cabin where the
little niggers were locked up and feed them through the crack. She would
hide it underneath her apron. She wasn't supposed to do it. All the
little niggers were kept in one house when the old folks were working in
the field. There were six or seven of us.
Sold
"My daddy was a white man, my master. His wife was so mean to me that my
master sold me to keep her from beating me and kicking me and knocking
me 'round. She would have killed me if she could have got the chance. He
[HW: My daddy] sold me to a preacher who raised me as though I were his
own son. Whenever he sat down to the table to eat, I sat down. He made
no difference at all. He raised me in El Dorado, Arkansas. His name was
James Goodwin. He sent me to school too.
Visited by Father
"When Harrison and Cleveland ran for President, my [HW: white] father
came to Little Rock. Some colored people had been killed in the campaign
fights, and he had been summoned to Little Rock to make some statements
in connection with the trouble. He stopped at a prominent hotel and had
me to come to see him. When I went up to the hotel to meet him, there
were a dozen or more white men at that place. When I shook hands with
him, he said, 'Gentlemen, he's a little shady but he's my son.' His name
was Captain I.T. Robinson. He lived in Lisbon, Arkansas.
Mother
"My mother's name was Frances Goodwin. She belonged to Captain Robinson.
I don't know but I think that when they came to Arkansas, they came from
Georgia. They were refugees. When the War started, people that owned
niggers ran from state to state to try to hold their niggers.
House
"I lived right in the yard. We had four houses in the yard and three of
them was made of logs and one was made out of one-by-twelve planks. I
lived in the one made out of planks. It had one big room. I reckon it
was about twenty by fifteen, more than that, I reckon. It was a big
room. There [HW: were] two doors and no windows. We had old candlesticks
for lights. We had old homemade tables. All food was kept in the
smokehouse and the pantry. The food house and the smokehouse were two of
the log cabins in the yard.
Schooling
"Goodwin schooled me. [TR: First sentence lined out.] He had a teacher
to come right on the place and stay there teaching. He raised me and
brought me up just as though I was his own child.
"I remember getting one whipping. I didn't get it from Mr. Goodwin
though. His brother gave it to me. His brother sent me to get a horse.
An old hound was laying in the way on the saddle and the bridle. He
wouldn't move so I picked up the bridle and hit him with it. He hollered
and master's brother heard him and gave me a whipping. That is the only
whipping I ever got when I was small.
Ku Klux
"I heard of the Ku Klux Klan but I don't know that I ever seen them. I
never noticed what effect they had on the colored people. I just heard
people talking about them.
Occupational Experiences
"The first work I did was farming--after the War. I farmed,--down close
to El Dorado, about six miles away from there. I kept that up till I was
about seventeen or eighteen years old or somewheres about there. That
was on James Goodwin's place--my last master, the man who raised me.
Then I left him and came to Little Rock. I don't remember in what year.
I went to school here in Little Rock. I had already had some schooling.
My grandmother sent me. The school I went to was called the Union
School. It was down on Sixth Street. After I left there, I went to
Capitol Hill School. I was going to school during the Brooks-Baxter War.
The statehouse was on Markham Street and Center. My grandmother's name
was Celie Robinson. She went by the name of her owner.
"After I had gone to school several years--I don't remember just how
many--I worked down town about ten or eleven years. Then I went to
railroading. First I was with the Iron Mountain and Southern. Later, it
changed its name to the Missouri Pacific. I worked for them from 1891
to 1935. On August 29th I received my last pay check. I have tried ever
since to get my railroad pension to which my years of service entitle me
but have been unable to get it. The law concerning the pension seems to
have passed on the same day I received my last check, and although I
worked for forty-four years and gave entire satisfaction, there has been
a disposition to keep me from the pension. While in service I had my
jaw broken in two pieces and four front teeth knocked out by a piece of
flying steel.
"Another man was handling the steam hammer. I was standing at my regular
place doing my regular work. When that happened, I was cut down like
a weed. There wasn't a man ever thought they would see me in that job
again after that piece of steel cut me down.
"Also, I lost my right eye in the service when a hot cinder from the
furnace flew in it while I was doing my regular work. Then I was
ruptured because of the handling of heavy pieces of iron at my work. I
still wear the truss. You can see the places where my jaw was broke and
you can see where my teeth were knocked out.
"Out of all the ups and downs, I stuck to the company just the same
until they retired me in 1935 because of old age. The retirement board
wanted to know when I asked for a pension, why did I think I was
entitled to a pension? I told them because I had been injured through
service with the company and had honorably finished so long a period of
service. It is now admitted that I am eligible to a railroad pension but
there seems to still be a delay in paying it for some reason or other.
Support Now
"I get a little assistance from the Welfare, and I get some commodities.
If it wasn't for that, I would be broke up."
[HW: Brooks-Baxter War was about 1872-74.]
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Malindy Robinson
8th Street, West Memphis, Arkansas
Age: 61
"I was born in Wilkerson County, Mississippi. My ma never was sold, She
said she was eleven years old when peace was declared. Master Sims was
grandma's owner. Grandpa was never sold. He was born in Mississippi. He
was a mulatto man. He was a man worked about the house and grandma was a
field woman. She said she never was whooped but worked mighty hard. They
was good to grandma. She lived in the quarters. My parents b'long to the
same owner. But far as I ever knowed they married long after freedom.
They was raised close to Woodville, Mississippi."
Interviewer: Mary D. Hudgins
Person interviewed: Tom Robinson
Aged: 88
Home: Lives with his son on outskirts of Hot Springs
As I entered Goldstein Grade school for colored I passed an old
fellow sitting on the sidewalk. There was somthing of that venerable,
dignified, I've-been-a-slave look about him, so much of it that I almost
stopped to question him. Inside I entered a classroom, where a young
woman was in conference with a couple of sheepish youngsters who had
been kept in after school.
Did she know the whereabouts of any ex-slaves? She beamed. Only the
other day an old man had appeared on the school grounds. She appealed to
her charges. Didn't they remember that she had told them about him and
about what slavery had meant. Sheepish looks were gone. They were agog
with interest. Yes 'um, they remembered. But none of the three knew his
name or where to find him.
Another teacher entered the room. No, she couldn't remember the name.
But the old man often came up to watch the children at play. He said it
made him happy to see them getting opportunities he never could have
had. Wait a minute--he might be outside at this very moment. A clatter
of heels and calls of triumph. "Yes! Yes! Here he is!"
Outside I dashed to _drop flat on the sidewalk_[HW:?] beside the
aged man I had passed a few minutes before. Out came my smile and a
notebook. With only a few preliminaries and amenities the interview was
in full swing. It neither startled nor confused him, to have an excited
young woman plant herself on a public sidewalk at his side and demand
his life's story. A man who had belonged to three different masters
before the age of 15 was inured to minor surprises. Tom Robinson long
since learned to take life as it came.
He is quite deaf in one ear and hears poorly with the other. Nobody
within a quarter of a block could have been in doubt of what was going
on. A youth moved closer. The kept-after-school pair emerged from the
building and stood near us, goggle-eyed thruout the interview. When
we were finished, Robinson turned to the children and gave them, a
grandfatherly lecture about taking advantage of their opportunities,
a lecture in which the white woman sitting beside him joined
heartily--drawing liberally on comments of ex-slaves in recent
interviews concerning the helplessness felt in not being able to write
and read letters from well loved friends.
"Where was I born, ma'am? Why it's my understanding that it was Catawba
County, North Carolina. As far as I remember, Newton was the nearest
town. I was born on a place belonging to Jacob Sigmens. I can just
barely remember my mother. I was not 11 when they sold me away from her.
I can just barely remember her.
"But I do remember how she used to take us children and kneel down in
front of the fireplace and pray. She'd pray that the time would come
when everybody could worship the Lord under their own vine and fig
tree--all of them free. It's come to me lots of times since. There she
was a'praying, and on other plantations women was a'praying. All over
the country the same prayer was being prayed. Guess the Lord done heard
the prayer and answered it.
"Old man Sigmens wasn't a bad master. Don't remember so much about him.
I couldn't have been 11 when he sold me to Pickney Setzer. He kept me
for a little while and then he sold me to David Robinson. All three of
them lived not so far apart in North Carolina. But pretty soon after he
bought me old men Dave Robinson moved to Texas. We was there when the
war started. We stayed there all during the war. I was set free there.
"We lived in Cass County. It was pretty close to the Arkansas border,
and 'twasn't far from Oklahoma--as is now. I remember well when they was
first gathering them up for the war. We used to hear the cannon often.
Was I afraid? To be sure I was scared, right at first. Pretty soon we
got used to it. Somebody even made up a song, 'Listen to the Home-made
Thunder'. They'd sing it every time the cannon started roaring.
"No, ma'am, there never was any fighting right around us. I never really
saw any fighting. Old man Dave Robinson was good to me. He didn't have
a big farm--just owned me. Treated me almost like I was one of his own
children. Course, I had to work. Sometimes he whipped me--but no more
than he had to. I was just a child and any child has got to be made to
mind. He was good to me, and old Miss was good to me. All my masters was
pretty good to me--lots better than the usual run. Which one I like the
best. Well, you might know. I kept the name Robinson, and I named my son
Dave. You might know which one I think the most of.
"One day I was out milking the cows. Mr. Dave come down into the field,
and he had a paper in his hand. 'Listen to me, Tom,' he said, 'listen to
what I reads you.' And he read from a paper all about how I was free.
You can't tell how I felt. 'You're jokin' me.' I says. 'No, I ain't,'
says he. 'You're free.' 'No,' says I, 'it's a joke.' 'No,' says he,
'it's a law that I got to read this paper to you. Now listen while I
read it again.'
"But still I wouldn't believe him. 'Just go up to the house,' says he,
'and ask Mrs. Robinson. She'll tell you.' so I went. 'It's a joke,' I
says to her. 'Did you ever know your master to tell you a lie?' she
says. 'No,' says I, 'I ain't.' 'Well,' she says, 'the war's over and
you're free.'
"By that time I thought maybe she was telling me what was right. 'Miss
Robinson,' says I, 'can I go over to see the Smiths?'--they was a
colored family that lived nearby. 'Don't you understand,' says she,
'you're free. You don't have to ask me what you can do. Run along
child.'
"And so I went. And do you know why I was a'going? I wanted to find out
if they was free too." (a chuckle and toothy smile) "I just couldn't
take it all in. I couldn't believe we was all free alike.
"Was I happy? Law Miss. You can take anything. No matter how good you
treat it--it wants to be free. You can treat it good and feed it good
and give it everything it seems to want--but if you open the cage--it's
happy.
"What did I do after the war was over? I farmed. I farmed all my life,
'til I got too old. I stopped three--four years ago. I lives with my
son--Dave Robinson--the one I named for my master.
"How did I farm? Did I share crop? No, ma'am!" (Sharply as tho
repramanding the inquirer for an undeserved insult.) "I didn't share
crop, except just at first to get a start. I rented. I paid thirds and
fourths. I always rented. I wasn't a share-cropper.[A]
[A: Socially and economically sharp distinctions are drawn between the
different classes of renters, both by owners and tenants themselves.
Families whom ambition and circumstances have allowed to accumulate
enough surplus to buy farm implements and have food for a year ahead
look with scorn on fellow farmers who thru inertia or bad luck must be
furnished food and the wherewithall to farm. In turn, families that have
forged ahead sufficiently to be able to pay cash rent on farms they
cultivate look down On both of the other groups.]
"It was awful hard going after the war. But I got me a place--had to
share-crop for a year or two. But I worked hard and saved all I could.
Pretty soon I had me enough that I could rent. I always raised the usual
things--cotton and corn and potatoes and a little truck and that sort of
thing--always raised enough to eat for us and the stock--and then some
cotton for a cash crop.
"My first wife, well it was kind of funny; I wasn't more than 19. She
had 11 children. Some of them was older than I was. No ma'am it wasn't
so hard on me. They was all old enough to take care of themselves. I
lived with that woman for 17 years. Then she died.
"I been married five times. Three of my children are living. One's
here--that's Dave. Then there's one in Texarkana and there's one in
Kansas City. Two of my children's dead. The youngest died just about
last year. All my wives are dead.
"Almost every day I comes up to sit here and watch the children. It does
me good to see 'em. Makes me feel good all over to think about all the
fine chance they has to get a good education. Sonny, you hear me? You
pay attention too, sonny. I'm watching you--you and all the other little
boys. You mind me. You learn all you can. You ought to be so thankful
you allowed to learn that you work hard. You mind me, sonny. When you're
grown up, you'll know what I'm talking about--and know I'm right. Run
along, sonny. No use hanging around the school yard too long."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Isom Rogers, Edmondson, Arkansas
Age: 67
"I was born in Tunica County, Austin, Mississippi. I been in Edmondson,
Arkansas ten years. I come to do better. Said farming was good here. My
folks' owners was Master Palmer and George Rogers. My parents was never
sold. They was young folks in slavery time and at time of freedom. They
was farm hands. Their names was Pat and Ely Rogers.
"I heard him say he made palings and went 'round mending the fences when
the ground was froze. He made boards to cover the houses with too--I
heard him say. He was strong and worked all the time at some jobs. Never
heard mother say very much.
"I been farming and I have worked on quarter-boat and back farming. I
been here ten years."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Oscar James Rogers, Wheatley, Arkansas
Age: Up in 70's
"I come to dis state in 1885. I run off from my parents back in North
Carolina. They was working in a turpentine forest there.
"When freedom was declared my folks heard 'bout a place where money was
easy to make. So they walked from down close to Charleston up there and
carried the children. I was 'bout nine or ten years old. I liked the
farm so I left the turpentine farm. I got to rambling round and finally
got to Arkansas. I run off from my folks cause they kept staying there.
I was a child and don't recollect much 'bout slavery. I was at the
quarters wid all the children. My mother b'longed to Bob Plat and my
father to a man named Rogers. My father could get a pass and come to see
us every Sunday providin' he didn't go nowhere else or stop long the
road. He came early and stay till bedtime. We all run to meet him. He
kiss us all in bed when he be leavin'.
"I heard them say they 'spected a home and freedom but when the time
come they master forgot 'bout home cause they just took the few clothes
in bundles and left. Then they had a hard time 'cause they never thought
how freedom would be. They never axed for nothin' and they never got
nothin'. They didn't understand how to hustle lest somebody tell them
what to do next. They did have a hard time and it was cold and rocky
up in North Carolina to what they had been used to down close to
Charleston.
"When I got out to Arkansas I like it better than any country I seed and
I say 'I'm stayin' here.' I meant to go back but I married and didn't
get no money ahead for a long time. Then I had a family of 11 children.
Jes' 'fore I married I got to go to school four months' close to Cotton
Plant, where I married.
"When I was young I sho could knock off de work. I cummulated 80 acres
land in Lee County. I paid $900 for it, got in debt and had let it fur
'bout ($247.50) Two hundred forty-seven and a half dollars. All I got
outen it. I had a bad crop and had a little provision bill. I made on
time, man agreed to run me on then took it 'bout all.
"Then I still was a strong man an' we bought 40 acres 14 miles from
Cotton Plant and I had it 27 years. Then lost it.
"My second wife owned a house and garden at Wheatley half a mile or so
from town. We live over there. Our children all gone. She say she cooked
and washed and farmed for it. It cost $100.00.
"I could do heap work if I could get it. Old man can't get 'nuff regular
work to cover my house or buy me a suit closes. The Government gives me
$10.00 a month. That's a help out but it don't go fir high as provisions
is. Me an' the old woman both too feeble to do much hard work. I gets
all the odd jobs the white folks give me. Misses, I ain't lazy, I jess
gettin' old and not able to hold out to do much. Whut I could do they
give it to the young fellows cause they do it in a hurry.
"I used to vote right smart when they needed me to help out. I voted
for Hoover. Don't think it right the way the men settin' round and deir
wives workin' fer livin' and votin'. The women can vote if they want to
but I don't think it right. Seems lack the cart in front ob de horse
now.
"It wouldn't do no more good to vote in the Primary than it do in the
General election. It don't do much good nohow.
"Fur as I ever knowed the slaves had no uprisin's. They thought well
enough of their masters. Everybody worked then hard as they could. The
master he worked all time in the shop making things jess like he needed,
boards and handles, plows and things. Missus, everybody worked hard dem
days, both black and white, and that is the reason folks had plenty. The
old grandmas done work whut suited them and helped out. Now lack me, I
can't get the right work whut I able to do 'nuff to keep me livin'. It
is bad.
"If times was bad as they was few years ago all old folks done been
rotten, starved to death. Times is better but they sho ain't all right
yet.
"This young generation livin' so fast they stop thinkin'. They do well
to keep livin' their selves. They wastes a heap they outer save fur
rainy days. They ain't takin' no advice from old folks. I don't know
whut goiner become of them."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Will Ann Rogers
R.F.D., Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 70
"I was born three years after the surrender. I was born at Fryers Point,
Mississippi. The reason I ain't got the exact date when I was born, my
ma put it down in the Bible and the house burned up and everything in it
burned to ashes. No mam she got somebody what could write real nice to
write all the names and ages for her.
"When ma was a young woman, she said they put her on a block and sold
her. They auctioned her off at Richmond, Virginia. When they sold her,
her mother fainted or drapped dead, she never knowed which. She wanted
to go see her mother lying over there on the ground and the man what
bought her wouldn't let her. He just took her on. Drove her off like
cattle, I recken. The man what bought her was Ephram Hester. That the
last she ever knowed of any of her folks. She say he mated 'em like
stock so she had one boy. He livin' down here at Helena now. He is Mose
Kent. He was born around Richmond, Virginia jes' lack dat she say.
"When it nearly 'bout time for freedom a whole army of Yankees come by
and seed Mose working. They told him if he come go wid them they give
him that spotted horse and pair red boots. He crawled up on the horse
an' was gone wid 'em for a fact she said. She started right after them,
following him. She followed them night and day. She nearly starved, jess
begged 'long the road all she could. I heard her say how fast she have
to walk to keep on trail of 'em and how many nights. She say some nights
when they camped she would beg 'round and try to fill up. But she
couldn't get to Mose without them seein' her. When they got to Fryers
Point she went an' got him. They jess laughed and never give him
nuthin'. They left that army fast as they could she say.
"She married at Fryers Point. She had jes' one boy and I had four or
five sisters. They all dead but me and Mose. He think he 'bout ninety
years old. He come here to see me last year. He sho is feeble.
"How come I here? When I was fourteen years old my family heard how fine
this State was and moved to Helena. I lived at Moro and Cotton Plant.
Then, the way I come here was funny. A man come up there and say a free
train was comin' to go back to Africa. All who wanted to go could go. My
pa sold out 'bout all we had an' we come here lack they say. No train
come yet goin' to Africa as I seed. My pa give the white man $5.00 to
pay fer the train. Tom Watson was one of 'em too. He was a sorter leader
'mong 'em wantin' to go back. Well when the day come that the train due
to start everybody come to the depot whar the train going to stop.
There was a big crowd. Yes mam, dressed up, and a little provisions and
clothes fixed up. Jes' could take along a little. They say it would
be crowded so. We stayed around here a week or two waitin' to hear
somethin' or be ready to go. Most everybody stayed prutty close to the
depot for two or three days. Yes mam there sho was a crowd--a whole big
train full from here 'sides the other places. I jes' stayed here an'
been here ever since. The depot agent, he told 'em he didn't know 'bout
no train going to Africa. The tickets was no good on his trains.
"How I owns this place, I'll tell you. A man here had all dis land
'round here (Negro town) laid off. He couldn't sell none of his lots.
They wouldn't buy his lots. So he got after me. We had made a good crop,
so I got up the money and bought this place. One hundred dollars is what
I give him. Others then started to settlin' in and about close to my
place.
"I guess it was Spotsells in Virginia what raised her. She say her name
was Lizzie Spotsell Johnson. Then when Ephram Hester bought her they
learned her to do about in their house. She cooked and swept and knocked
flies and tended to the children. She stayed with 'em a pretty long time
till she run off and went to Fryers Point.
"She may have told us about the Nat Turner rebellion but I don't
remember it. They sung a lot in my mother's time. Seemed lack they was
happier than we are somehow. She sung religious songs and one or two
field songs. I don't recollect 'em now.
"I never did vote. I never cared nuthin' about it. Some of 'em 'round
here wouldn't miss votin' for nothin'.
"Lawd me, chile, the times is done run ahead of me now. I'm so fur
behind I never expect to catch up. I don't pay no more attention to the
young folks, the way they act now, 'an I do my little dog there. They
don't want no advice and I would be afraid I would 'vise 'em wrong.
When my children come I tell 'em you are grown and you knows right from
wrong. Do right. That's all I know to say.
"The way I am supported is my husband gets all the jobs he able to do
and can and the governmint give me an' him $10 a month. We has a little
garden."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: William Henry Rooks
Baptist Preacher; Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 84
The slaves didn't spect nothing but freedom. Jes freedom! In Africa they
was free as wild animals and then they was so restricted. Jes put in
bondage for no reason at all.
No plantations was divided. I was born a slave and I remembers right
smart how it was.
My master was John Freeman and his wife's name was Fannie. I went to
Como, Mississippi twice a week to get the mail all durin the war. It was
eight miles. I rode a pony.
If you go to church you have to have a pass from the master. The
pattyrollers see you and you have to show it to them. It was just a
note. If you didn't have it they take or send you home. If they catch
you any more without a pass they whip you. They come to the church and
in all public places like the police stands around now. They rode around
mostly. Sometimes they went in droves.
They would let you go visiting sometimes and exchange work. Some masters
was good and some was mean jess like they are now and some slaves good
and some bad. That is the way they are now.
Some of the white men had a hundred slaves and had plenty money. The war
broke nearly all of them. The very worse thing I ever knowed about it
was some white men raised hands to sell like they raise stock now. It
was hard to have your child took off and never see or hear tell of it.
Mean man buy it and beat it up. Some of them was drove off to be sold at
auction at New Orleans. That was where some took them cause they could
get big money for them.
I never knowed of a master to give the slaves a dime when they become
free. They never promissed them nothing. The Yankees might have to toll
them off. The hands all stayed on John Freeman's place and when it was
over he give them the privilege of staying right on in their houses.
Some left after awhile and went somewhere they thought they could do
better.
They didn't have the Ku Klux but it was bout like it what they had.
They wore caps shine de coons eye and red caps and red garments. Red
symbolize blood reason they wore red. They broke up our preaching. Some
folks got killed. Some was old, some young--old devlish ones. They was
like a drove of varments. I guess you be scared. They run the colored
folks away from church a lot of times. That was about equalization after
the freedom. That was the cause of that.
There was uprisings like I'm telling you but the colored folks didn't
have nothing to go in a gun if he had one. White folks make them give up
a gun.
The first votin I done I was workin for young Henry Larson back in
Mississippi. He give my mother $120 a year to cook for his young wife
and give her what she eat and I worked on his farm. He told me to go
vote, it was election day. I ask him how was I going to know how to
vote. I could read a little. I couldn't write. The ballot box was at
Pleasant Mount. Ozan set over the box. He was a Yankee. He was the only
one kept the box. It was a wooden box nailed up and a slit in the top.
A.R. Howe and Captain Howe was two more Yankee white men there watching
round all day. Ozan was the sheriff at Sardis, Mississippi soon after
the war. Some more colored folks come up to vote. We stood around and
watched. We saw D. Sledge vote; he owned half of the county. We
knowed he voted Democrat so we voted the other ticket so it would be
Republican. I voted for President Grant. I don't believe in women
voting. They used to have the Australian Ballot System. It's a heap more
the man that's elected than it is the party. We all voted for Hoover;
he was a Republican and foe he got one term served out we was about on
starvation. I ain't voted since. That President claim to be a Democrat.
He ain't no Democrat. I don't know what he be.
I been farming and preaching. I started preaching in Mississippi. I
joined the conference in Arkansas in 1886 and started preaching at
Surrounded Hill (Biscoe). I come here in 1884 from Pinola County.
Mississippi. I had some stock and they was fencing up everything over
there. I had no land so I come to an open country. It wasn't long before
they fenced it in. I come to Brinkley and worked for Gun and Black
sawmill and I been here forty or fifty years. I don't know jess how
long. I couldn't starve to death in a whole year here. The people
wouldn't let me. I got lot of friends, both black and white, here.
I married December 17, 1874 in the Baptist church. Glasco Wilson was the
preacher married me. My wife died here in dis house nine years ago. We
had ten children but jes two livin now. My girl married a preacher and
live at Hope. Arkansas. My son preaches in Parson, Kansas.
I supports my own self. I works and I preaches a little yet. I saved up
some money but it nearly give out. The young generation, some of them,
do mighty bad. Some of them is all right. Some of them don't do much
and don't save nothing. I owns this house and did own another one what
burned down. A lamp exploded and caught it while I was going off up the
road but I never looked back or I would have seen it. It seem lack now
it takes more money to do than it ever did in times before. Seems like
money is the only thing to have and get. Folks gone scottch crazy over
money, money! Both is changing. The white folks, I'm speaking bout, the
white folks has changed and course the colored folks keeping up wid
them. The old white and colored neither can't keep up wid the fast
times. I say it's the folks that made this depression and it's the folks
keeping the depression. The little fellow is squeezed clear out. It out
to be stopped. Folks ain't happy like they used to be. Course they sung
songs all the time. Religious choruses mostly.
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Amanda Rosa
817 Schiller Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 82
"I was nine years old in the time of the surrender. I know I was here
in that time. I don't know nothin' 'bout their carryin'-on. I know they
whipped them with hobble rods. You don't know what hobble rods is!!!
Ain't you seen these here long thin hick'ry shoots? They called hobble
rods. I don't know why they called 'em hobble rods. I know they made you
hobble. They'd put 'em in the fire and roast 'em and twist 'em. I have
seen 'em whip them till the blood run down their backs. I've seen 'em
tie the women up, strip 'em naked to their waist and whip 'am till the
blood run down their backs. They had a nigger whipper, too.
"I was born in Salem, Alabama. I came up here about twenty-five years
ago.
"Isaac Adair was the name of the old man who owned me. He owned my
mother and father too, Hester and Scip. Their last name was Adair, the
same as their master's.
"I don't remember the names of my grandfather and grandmother, 'cause we
was crossed up, you see, One of my grandmothers was named Crecie and the
other was named Lydia. I don't remember my grandfather's name. I spect
I used to call 'im master. I used to remember them but I don't no more.
Nobody can't worry me 'bout them old folks now. They ast me all them
questions at the Welfare. They want to know your gran'pa and your
gran'ma. Who were they, what did they do, where did they live, where are
they now? I don't know what they did. That's too far back for me.
"My mother and father had nine children. I have only one sister living.
All the others done gone to heaven but me and her.
"My mother and father lived in a log cabin. They had one-legged beds
nailed to the wall. They had benches and boxes and blocks and all sich
as that for chairs. My daddy made the table we used. He made them
one-legged beds too. They kept the food in boxes and gourds. They had
these big gourds. They could cut holes in the top of them and put things
in them. My mammy had a lot of 'em and they were nice and clean too.
Wisht I had one of them now.
"Some folks didn't have that good. We had trundle beds for the children
that would run under the big bed when they wasn't sleeping in it. We
made a straw mattress. You know the white folks weren't goin' to let 'em
use cotton, and they didn't have no chickens to git feathers from; so
they had to use straw. Oh, they had a hard time I'm tellin' you. My
mother pulled greens out of the garden and field, and cured it up for
the mattress.
"For rations, we'd eat onions and vegetables. We et what was raised.
You know they didn't have nothin' then 'cept what they raised. All the
cookin' was done at one house, but there was two cooks, one for the
colored folks and one for the white folks. My grandma cooked for the
white people. They cooked in those big old washpots for the colored
people. We all thought we had a pretty good master.
"We didn't know nothin' about a master.
"I ain't positive what time the hands ate breakfast. I know they et it
and I know they et at the same time and place. I think they et after
sunrise. They didn't have to eat before sunrise.
"When they fed the children, they cook the food and put it in a great
big old tray concern and called up the children, 'Piggee-e-e-e-e,
piggee-e-e-e-e.' My cousin was the one had to go out and call the
children; and you could see them runnin' up from every which way, little
shirt tails flyin' and hair sticking out. Then they would pour the food
out in different vessels till the children could git around them with
those muscle-shell spoons. Many of them as could get 'round a vessel
would eat out of it and when they finished that one, they'd go to
another one, and then to another one till they all got fed.
"My master worked seventy hands they said. He had two colored overseers
and one white one. He didn't allow them overseers to whip and slash
them niggers. They had to whip them right. Didn't allow no pateroles to
bother them neither. That's a lot of help too. 'Cause them pateroles
would eat you up. It was awful. Niggers used to run away to keep from
bein' beat up.
"I knowed one gal that ran away in the winter time and she went up into
the hollow of a tree for protection. When she came in, she was in sich
a bad condition they had to cut off both her legs. They had froze out
there. They taken care of her. They wanted her to work. She was jus' as
nice a seamstress as you ever saw. And she could do lots of things. She
could get about some. She could go on her knees. She had some pads for
them and was just about as high as your waist when she was goin' along
on her hands and knees, swinging her body between her arms.
Ate in the Big House
"The cooks and my mother stayed in the white folks' yard. They weren't
in the quarters. My mother was seamstress and she was right in the house
all the day long sewing. The children like me and my sister, they used
us 'round the house and yard for whatever we could do. They didn't never
whip none of my father's children. If we done something they thought we
ought to been whipped for, they would tell father to whip us, and if he
wanted to, he would; and if he didn't want to, he wouldn't. They made a
big difference for some reason.
Marriage
"They married in that time by standing up and letting someone read the
ceremony to them. My master was a Christian. There wasn't no jumpin'
over a broomstick on my master's place. The white folks didn't have no
nigger preacher for their churches. But the colored folks had 'em. They
preached out of these little old Blue Back Spellers--leastways they was
little blue back books anyhow.
Freedom
"My folks was on the road refugeeing from Magnolia, Arkansas to
Pittsburg, Texas when the news came that the colored folks was free. And
my master came 'round and told the niggers they was free as he was. I
didn't hear him. I don't know where I was. I'm sure I was out playin
somewheres.
Slave Wages and Experiences after the War
"My father worked in a blacksmith shop right after the War. Before the
War, he went far and near to work for the white folks. They'd risk him
with their money and everything. They would give him part of it; I don't
know how much. He brought money to them, and they sure give him money.
"We didn't have to wear the things the other slave children had to wear.
He would order things for his family and my father would do the same for
us. When old master made his order, my father would put his in with it.
Family
"I am the mother of fifteen children--ten girls and five boys. That was
enough for me. I am willing to quit off. My husband is dead. He's been
dead for thirty-five years.
Opinions
"I don't know what to say about these young people. Mine are pretty
good. So, I'm 'fraid to say much about the others.
"Lord, I don't know what we'll do if we don't get some rain.
Vocational Experiences
When I was able I washed and ironed. I didn't have to do nothin' till
after my father and husband died. Then I washed and ironed and cooked
till the white folks set me out. They said I was too old. That is one
thing I hates to think of. They had the privilege to say I couldn't
work; they ought to a seen that I got somethin' to live on when I wasn't
able to work no more."
Interviewer's Comment
You can't get the whole story by reading the words in this interview.
You have to hear the tones and the accents, and see the facial
expressions and bodily movements, and sense the sometimes almost occult
influence; you have to feel the utter lack of resentment that lies
behind the words that sound vehement when read. You marvel at the quick,
smooth cover-up when something is to be withheld, at the unexpected
vigor of the mind when the bait is attractive enough to draw it out, and
at the sweetness of the disposition. Some old people merely get
mellowed and sweetened by the hardships through which they have passed.
Sometimes, you wonder if some of the old folk don't have dispositions
that they can turn off or on at will.
It is not hard to realize the reason why Amanda was treated better than
other children when you remember that she called her grandpa "Master".
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: "Cat" Ross
Brassfield, Ark.
Age: Born 1862
"I was born in Releford County on old Major Ross place. I was born
durin' a battle between the North and South at Murfreesboro. The house
was on the battle ground. Mama had five children. Her name was Susanna
Wade. Papa's name was Amos Ross. He belong to Major Bill Ross. Major
Ross had ten houses houses--one at the edge of the thicket, two on Stone
river, and they was scattered around over his land. Major Ross never
went to war. Papa went with Major Billy to bury his gold. It stayed
where they put it till after the war they went and dug it up. I seen
that. When they brought it to the house, it was a pot--iron pot--full of
gold. I didn't know where they had it buried nor how they fixed it.
"My folks was all field hands. They muster been blessed cause
they didn't get mixed up with the other nations. Grandfather's
mother--Grandma Venus--come from Africa. She'd been in bondage about
a hundred years. I recollect her well. My folks all lived to be old
people, over a hundred years old. They was all pretty well, all
Africans.
"I have seen the Ku Klux quarter mile long and two breasted on horses.
They scared me so bad I never had no experiences with them. They run my
uncle in. He was a big dancer. One time they made him dance. He cut the
pigeon-wing for them. That was the name of what he danced.
"I never was sold. I was give way. One of the Wades married into the
Mitchell family. Mama belong to the Wades. They give me and Mama and
Aunt Sallie--she wasn't my aunt but I called her that--to Wade's
daughter. She was the young mistress. The Wades wasn't so good to their
slaves. When freedom was declared, Papa come and got me and Mama and
took us on over to his place agin. We started sharecroppin' at Major
Ross's place. In 1881 Chick McGregor paid my way. I come to Arkansas.
I farmed all my life till 1922 to 1933 I been here in Brassfield
sawmilling. They took the mill away from here. I cain't plough, I'm not
able. I pick and hoe cotton. I work day labor. I never have got on the
Welfare."
Southfield
FOLKLORE SUBJECTS
Name of Interviewer: Pernella Anderson
Subject: Centennial Snow--Spring in St. Louis addition
Name: Mattie Ross
Occupation: Gardening
Residence: South Field, Oil Field.
Age: 74
[TR: Information moved from bottom of second page.]
Ah wuz born aftuh surrender. Ah guess ah'm about 74 years ole. Mah pa
wuz er slave an mah ma wuz too. Dey moster wuz name Green Traylor an dey
lived right down dar at _Tula_ Creek. Mah mistess wuz named Martha
Traylor an dey name me aftuh huh. Mah name is Martha Lee Traylor. Aftuh
she mahried huh name wiz Martha Tatum. We worked down dar. Oh! Mah Lawd!
How we did work--all ovah dat bottom. De puttiest fiel' ah evah did see.
De Traylor's owned hit den. Later on de Tatums bought hit fum dem and
years aftuh dat de Nash's bought hit fum de Tatums. But new all uv dat
place is growed up. Nothing but er pine thicket and er black berry
thicket. Ye caint hardly walk through de place. Later on de Cobbs owned
us. George Cobb wuz his name. He lived down in de Caledonia settlement.
Ah went behin' him er many er day wid de hoe or he'd crack mah haid.
He use tuh be de sheriff here de years uv de boom an his nephew is de
sheriff now--Grady Wosley. Later en while ah wuz a gull ah werked fuh
de Swilleys an wuz partly raised on dey plantation. De ole man wuz name
Lawson Swilley. His wife, Margaret Swilley, and I clare dem two people
treated me white. She mammied me er many er day. Ah wuz bred and born
right down dar er-round Caledonia. Ah wuz a big gull durin de time uv de
centennial snow. Dis snow wuz called dat cause hit wuz de bigges snow
dat evah been. Hit wuz ovah yo haid. We had tuh spade our way evah whah
we went. Tuh de wood gitting place, tuh de sping, tuh de hoss lot, and
evah whah. De anow wuz warm an soft. We piled up so much snow till hit
took hit er half er year tuh melt. Dat snow stayed on de groun two
months.
Ah am de muthah uv five gulls and fo' boys. Didn nairy one uv mah gulls
come in de pen till dey wuz mahried. Ah use tuh fish in er big ole fish
pond rat down whah de wesson depot is now. Years ergo people come fum
Camden an othuh places tuh fish in dat fish pond.
Mr. Sam Austin sole old man Burgy (Burgiss?) er piece uv groun' to bury
folks in and he wuz de first man tuh die an be buried dar. So dey name
hit de Burgy Cemetery.
Down dar in Memphis Addition atah the colored Prof. Dykes place dar use
tuh be one uv de bes' springs. Course at dat time hit wuz er big ole
fiel' den and de watuch wuz jes lak ice watuh.
Dat make me think. Mah pa sed he went tuh de wah tuh cook fuh his ole
moster, Green Traylor. Well pa said dar wuz er spring whar dey got
watuh. Said he went tuh git watuh outen de sping and had tuh pull dead
men outn de spring an dat day drinked of'n dem dead men all while de wah
wuz going on.
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person Interviewed: Laura Rowland
(Bright Mulatto)
Age: 65?
Address: Brinkley, Arkansas
"My parents name was Mary Ann and Sam Billingslea. Mother's father lived
with us when I first remember. His name was Robert Todd. He was a brown
skin Negro. They said he was a West Indian. He talked of olden times but
I don't remember well enough to tell you. Father owned a home that we
was living on when I first remember. Mother was bright color, too.
Vaden, Mississippi was our trading post. Mother had twenty children. She
was a worker. She would work anywhere she was put. My folks never talked
much about slavery. I don't know how they got our place.
"I know they was bothered by the Ku Klux. One night they heard or saw
the Ku Klux coming. The log house set low on the ground but was dug out
to keep potatoes and things in--a cellar like. The planks was wide, bout
a foot wide, rough pine, not nailed down. They lifted the planks up and
all lay down and put the planks back up. The house look like outside
nothing could go under it, it was setting on the hard ground. When they
got there and opened the doors they saw nobody at home and rode off.
"Another time, one black night, a man--he must have been a
soldier--strided a block step with his horse and ordered supper. She
told him she didn't have nothing cooked and very little to cook. He
cursed and ordered the supper. Told her to get it. She pretended to be
fixing it and slipped out the back door down the furrows and squatted
in the briers in a fence corner. Long time after she had been out there
hid, he come along, jumped the fence on his horse, jumped over her back,
down into the lane and to the road he went. If the horse hadn't jumped
over her and had struck her he would have killed her. Now I think he was
a soldier, not the Ku Klux. I heard my father say he was a yard boy.
"I married in Mississippi and came to Malvern and Hot Springs. He was a
mill hand. I raised three children of my own and was a chamber maid.
I kept house and cooked for Mrs. Bera McCafity, a rich woman in Hot
Springs. My husband died and was buried at Malvern. I married again, in
Hot Springs, and lived there several years. We went to the steel mill at
Gary, Indiana. He died. I come back here and to Brinkley in 1920. One
daughter lives in Detroit and one in Chicago. The youngest one is
married, has a family and a hard time; the other makes her living. It
takes it all to do her. I get $8.00 on the P.W.A.
"They all accuse me around here of talking mighty proper. I been around
fine city folks so much I notice how they speak.
"I don't fool with voting. I don't care to vote unless it would be some
town question to settle. I would know something about it and the people.
"I don't know my age. I was grown when I married nearly sixty years ago.
We have to show our license to get on the W.P.A. or our age in the Bible
you understand."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Landy Rucker
2315 W. Fourth Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 83
"I was born in 1854 in the State of Georgia, Elbert County.
"I member some about the war. I went to the field when I was twelve.
Pulled fodder, picked peas and tended to the cow pen. I had to go then.
We had _a good master_. _Our mistress wasn't good though_. She
wouldn't give us enough to eat. Old master used to ask if we had enough
to eat and he'd pull out great big hams and cut em all to pieces and
give em to us. Old mistress would cry and say, 'You're givin' away all
my good dinner.' But she repented since the war. She said she didn't do
right.
"We got here to Pine Bluff in '61.
"Oh yes, I remember comin' here on the train and on the boat.
"Old mistress whipped us when she thought we needed it. I been pretty
good all my life.
"My father was a blacksmith and one day when I was six or seven I was
takin' his dinner when some dogs smelled the dinner and smelled me too
and they got after me. I had to climb a tree and they stayed around till
they heard some other dogs barkin' and ran off. I come down then and
took my bucket and left. Nother time some hogs chased me. They rooted
all around the tree till they heard somethin' crackle in the woods and
run off and then I'd come down.
"After the war I went to school three days and the teacher whipped me. I
went home and I didn't go back. I went home and went to the field. I had
a mother and a sister and I tried to make a living for them.
"I went to school a little while after that and then went to the field.
Most I know I learned by myself.
"Yes'm, I seen the Yankees bout a year fore the war ceasted. They come
to get somethin' to eat and anything else they could get. Got the mules
and things and took my two brothers and put em in the war. One come back
after surrender and the other one died in the war. They said they was
fightin' to free the niggers from being under bondage.
"I seen the Ku Klux. Looked like their horses could fly. Made em jump a
big high fence. They come and took my father and all the other men on
the place and was goin' to put em in the Confederate army. But papa was
old and he cried and old mistress thought a lot of him so they let him
stay. I just lay down and hollered cause they was takin' my brothers,
but they didn't keep em long. One of my brothers, six years older than
me, come up here to Pine Bluff to jine the Yankees.
"We could hear the guns at Marks Mill.
"I been married twice. There was about eleven years betwixt the two
marriages.
"I worked on the farm till about '85. Then I worked in the planing mill.
I got hit by a car and it broke my hip so I have to walk on crutches
now. Then I got me a little shoe shop and I got along fine till I got so
I couldn't set down long enough to fix a pair of shoes. I bought this
house and I gets help from the Relief so I'm gettin' along all right
now."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Martha Ruffin
1310 Cross Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 80
"I was born in North Carolina, and I was seven years old when the
Surrender was. Every one of my children can tell you when they was born,
but I can't. My mother, Quinettie Farmer was her name. Brother Robert
Farmer is my cousin. He is about the same age as my husband. He got
married one week and me and my husband the next. My father's name was
Valentine Farmer. My grandmother on my mother's side was Mandy Harrison,
and my grandfather's name on my mother's side was Jordan Harrison. My
grandpa on my father's side was named Reuben Farmer, and his wife was
Nancy Farmer. I have seed my grandpa and grandma on my father's side.
But my mother didn't see them on my mother's side.
"I 'members my daddy's white folks' names, Moses Farmer. My father never
was sold. My daddy, Valentine Farmer, was a ditcher, shoemaker, and
sometimes a tanner. My mother was a house girl. She washed and ironed. I
couldn't tell exactly what my grandparents did. My grandparents, so my
parents told me, were mostly farmers. I reckon Moses Farmer owned about
three hundred slaves.
"I was born on Robert Bynum's place. He was my mother's owner. He
married one of the Harrison girls and my mother fell to that girl. My
mother done just about as she pleased. She didn't know nothin' about
workin' in the field till after the Surrender.
"The way my mother and father happened to meet--my old master hired my
daddy to do some work for him and he met my mama that way.
"The way my folks learned they was free was, a white school-teacher who
was teaching school where we stayed told my mother she was free, but
not to say nothing about it. About three weeks later, the Yankees come
through there and told them they was free and told my old boss that if
he wanted them to work he would have to hire them and pay them. The
school-teacher stayed with mother's folks--mother's white folks. The
school-teacher was teaching white folks, not niggers. She was a Yankee,
too. My mother was the house girl, and the school-teacher stayed with
her folks. The War was so hot she couldn't git no chance to go back
home.
"My daddy farmed after the War. He farmed on shares the first year. The
next year, he bought him a horse. He finally owned his own farm. He
owned it when he died. He had about one hundred acres of land.
"I have pretty fair health for an old woman like I am. I am bothered
with the rheumatism. The Lawd wouldn't let both of us git down at the
same time. (Here she refers to her husband who was sick in bed at
the time she made the statement. You have his story already. It was
difficult for her to tell her story, for he wanted it to be like
his--ed.)
"I belong to the Primitive Baptist Church. I haven't changed my
membership from my home.
"I got married in 1882, in February. How many years is that? I got so I
can't count up nothin'. Fifty-six years. Yes, that's it; that's how long
I been married. I had a little sister that got married with me. She
didn't really git married; she just stood up with me. She was just a
little baby girl. They told me I was pretty near twenty-three years old
when I married. I have a daughter that's been married twenty-five years.
We had older daughters, but that one was the first one married. I have
got a daughter over in North Little Rock that is about fifty years old.
Her husband is dead. We had ten children. My daughter is the mother of
ten children too. She got married younger than I did. This girl I am
living with is my baby. I have four children living--three girls and one
boy. A woman asked me how many children I had and I told her three. She
was a fortuneteller and she wanted to tell me my fortune. But I didn't
want her to tell me nothin'. God was gittin' ready to tell me somethin'
I didn't want to hear. I've got five great-grandchildren. We don't have
no great-great-grandchildren. Don't want none."
Interviewer's Comment
The old lady's style was kind of cramped by the presence of her husband.
Every once in a while, when she would be about to paint something in
lurid colors, he would drop in a word and she would roll her phrases
around in her mouth, so to speak, and shift and go ahead in a different
direction and on another gear.
Very pleasant couple though--with none of the bitterness that old age
brings sometimes. The daughter's name is Searles.
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person Interviewed: Thomas Ruffin
1310 Cross Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 82 or 84
"I was born in North Carolina, Franklin County, near Raleigh. My
father's name really I don't know. Folks said my master was my daddy.
That's what they told me. Of course, I don't know myself. But then white
folks did anything they wanted to in slavery times.
"My mother's name was Morina Ruffin. I don't know the names of my
grandparents. That is too far back in slavery for me. Of course, old man
Ruffin my father's father, which would have been my grandfather, he died
way back yonder in slave times before the war. My father gotten kilt in
the war. His name was Tom Ruffin. I was named after him. He died trying
to hold us. That man owned three hundred slaves. He never married.
Carried my mother round everywhere he went. Out of all his niggers, he
didn't have but one with him. That was in slavery time and he was a fool
about her.
"I couldn't tell you exactly when I was born. Up until the surrender I
couldn't tell how old I was. I am somewheres around eighty-two years
old. The old lady is just about the same. We guesses it in part. We
figure it on what we heard the old folks say and things like that. I
remember plenty of things about slavery that I saw.
"I never did much when I was a boy. The biggest thing I remember is a
mule got to kicking and jumped around in a stall. She lost her footing
and fell down and broke her neck right there in the stall. I remember
her name as well as if it was yesterday. Her name was Bird. That was
just before the war. I know I must have been at least four years old
then. You can figure that up and see what it comes to.
"I never did any work when I was a child. I jus went to the spring with
the young Mistress and danced for them sometimes. But they never did
give me any work to do,--like they did the others. I lived right in the
biggest house the biggest portion of my time.
"That day and time, they made compost heaps. Mixed dirt with manure.
They hoed cotton and crops. They didn't know what school was. They
helped with washing and ironing. Did every kind of work they had
strength enough to do till they got big enough to go to the field. That
was what the children did.
"When they were about seven years old, to the best of my recollection
they would go to the field. Seven or eight. They would pick up corn
stalks and brush. And from that on when they were about eight or nine,
they would pick cotton.
"My mother never did have to do anything round the farm. She lived about
seventy-five miles from it, there where the master had his office. He
was a lawyer. After I was born, she didn't come out to see me but once a
year that I recollect. When she did come, she would bring me some candy
or cakes or something like that.
"I didn't see the soldiers during the time of the war. But I saw plenty
of them afterwards--riding round and telling the niggers they were free.
They had some of the finest saddles I ever seed. You could hear them
creaking a block off. No, I didn't see them while they was fighting. We
were close enough to hear the guns crash, and we could see the light
from them, but I didn't actually see the fightin. The Yankees come
through on every plantation where they were working and entered into
every house and told us we was free. The Yankees did it. They told you
you were free as they were, that you didn't have to stay where you was,
that you didn't have no more master, that you could go and come as you
pleased.
"I got along _hard_ after I was freed. It is a hard matter to tell
you what we could find or get. We used to dig up dirt in the smokehouse
and boil it and dry it and sift it to get the salt to season our food
with. We used to go out and get old bones that had been throwed away and
crack them open and get the marrow and use them to season the greens
with. Jus plenty of niggers then didn't have anything but that to eat.
"Even in slavery times, there was plenty of niggers out of them three
hundred slaves who had to break up old lard gourds and use them for
meat. They had to pick up bones off the dung hill and crack them open to
cook with. And then, of course, they'd steal. Had to steal. That the bes
way to git what they wanted.
"They had a great big kitchen for the slaves. They had what you call pot
racks they could push them big pots in and out on. They cooked hog slop
there. They had trays and bowls to eat out of that were made out of gum
wood. It was a long house used as a kitchen for the hands to go in
and eat. They et dinner there and for supper they would be there. But
breakfast, they would have to eat in the field. The young niggers would
bring it out to them. They would bring it about an hour after the sun
rose and the slave hands would eat it right out in the field; that was
the breakfast. You see the hands went to the field before sunup, and
they didn't get to eat breakfast in the kitchen and it had to be et in
the field. Little undergrowth of children--they had plenty of them on
the place--had to carry their meals to them.
"They would usually give them collars [HW: collards] in green times,
potatoes in potato time. Bread,--they didn't know what that was. White
folks hardly knew theirselves. They didn't have butter and they didn't
have no sugar. Didn't know much about what meat was yet. They would give
the little bits of children pot liquor. That's the most I ever seed them
git. Of course I was treated differently. You couldn't judge them by
me. I was the only half-white youngun round there, and they said I was
half-brother to ol Marse's chillun. And the white chillen would git me
up to the house to dance for them and all like, and they would give me
biscuits or anything good they had. I never seed the others eatin nothin
but pot liquor.
"Most of the slaves lived in log cabins. You know they never had but
one door. In general where they had large families, they would have two
rooms with a chimney in the middle of the house. The chimney was built
out of mud and straw. I can remember them sawin the timber. Two pulled a
big ol crosscut saw. Didn't have no saw mills then. This world has come
from a long ways. They used to didn't have no plows. It was without
form. You made it at home.
"They had ol homemade bedsteads to sleep in. They had a little rope
that ran back and forth instead of slats. That was called a corded bed.
Cheers were all made at home and were split bottoms.
"They didn't many of the slaves have food in their homes. But when they
did, they would jus have a little wooden box and they would put their
food in it.
"It seems like the white people got to burying their money during the
time of the war. That never come out till after the war. Then they got
to wantin that money and started looking for it. There never was any
talk of buried treasure before the war.
"My folks didn't give me any schoolin before the surrender. I never
got any before the surrender and a mighty little afterwards. No nigger
knowed anything. I started to farming when I was thirteen years old. I
used to be a fertilizer, and then a cotton sower. That was the biggest
I knowed about farming when I was a boy. My mother lived about fifteen
years after slavery. I reckon.
"In the time of slavery, you couldn't marry a woman. You just took up
with her. Mother married the same man she had been going with after
freedom. She had four children after the surrender as fer as I can
tell--three girls and two boys.
"I moved from North Carolina to Louisiana. Stayed there one year and
then moved here. Bought forty acres of land. Bought it after I'd been
here a year. It took me four years to pay for that. Then next time I
bought eighty acres and paid for them. Paid them out in two years. Then
I bought eighty acres more and paid for them in two years. Couldn't pay
for them cash at first, but could have paid for the last eighty when I
bought them if I had a wanted to. Then I bought eighty more and then I
bought eighty again and then forty and on till I had five hundred and
three acres of farm land. I got the three over when I got the sorghum
mill.
"I left my farm and come to the city for doctor's treatment. My old
lady and I worked out five hundred and three acres of land. I got five
children living. I gave each one of them forty acres of land. Most of
the rest I sold. I got a fellow here that owes me for one of the places
now. He lives over on Third and Dennison. His name is Wright. My old
lady an me held on to that and didn't lose it even in all these hard
years.
"My daughter kept after me to come here and she built this little house
out here where I could holler or do anything I wanted to do and not
disturb nobody. I couldn't feel at home up in a big house with other
people. Four or five months ago it would take two people to put me to
bed. I would get off from home and have to carry me back. But I
am gettin along fine now. This high blood pressure keeps me from
remembering so well. Ol lady where's my pipe? You didn't find it up to
daughter's? Ain't it in the kitchen? Can't you find it nowheres? What
_didju_ do with it? Well, you needn't look for it no longer. It's
here in my pocket. That's my high blood pressure workin. That whut it
does to you.
"I belong to the Primitive Baptist Church and have been belonging to it
altogether about sixty-three years. I used to be a Missionary. I been a
member of the church a long time.
"I think times are jus fulfilling the Bible. The people are wiser now
than we ever known them to be and wickeder. I don't believe the times
you see now will be always. People are getting so wise and so wicked
that I think the end is near at hand. You notice the Germans now are
trying to make slaves out of the Jews. There's the Japans that is jus
slaughtering up the Chinese like they was nothin but dumb brutes. The
world is wickeder than it ever has been before.
"The young people today! I'd hate to tell you what I do think of them.
The business is going to fall."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Casper Rumple, De Valls Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 78
"I will be, providin' the good Lord spare me, 79 years old the first day
of January. I was born in Lawrence County, South Carolina. The Big road
was the dividing line between that and Edgefield County. My mother
belonged to John Griffin. His wife named Rebecca. My father was a
Irishman. Course he was a white man--Irishman. Show I did know him. He
didn't own no slaves. I don't guess he have any land. He was a overseer
in Edgefield County. His name was Ephraim Rumple. What become of him?
He went off to fight the Yankees and took Malaria fever and died on Red
River. I could show you bout where he died.
"My mother had a big family. I can't tell you much bout them. I was the
youngest. She cooked up at John Griffins. He was a old man and the land
was all his wife's. She was old too. She had some grown girls. He had
no children. They called him Pa and I did too. I stayed round with him
nearly all the time helping him.
"He had a room and she had a room. I slept on a bed--little
bed--home-made bed--in the room wid him and she slept in the room with
her two girls and my mother slept in the kitchen a whole heap so she
be there to get breakfast early. They riz early every mornin'. John
Griffins wife owned four plantations more than 160 acres in each one,
but I couldn't say how much.
"My mother was a field hand in busy times too. Miss Rebecca had all the
slaves clothes made. She seed to that. She go to the city, Augusta, and
bring back bolts cloth. One slave sewed for Miss Rebecca and her family.
She didn't do all the sewing but she sewed all the time. One woman done
all the weavin'. At night after they work in the field Miss Rebecca give
em tasks--so many bats to card or so much spinnin' to do.
"Master John didn't want em to work at night but she made em work all
the same. They b'long to her. Another thing the women had to do was work
in the garden. It was a three acre garden. They always had plenty in
thar. Had it palinged so the young chickens couldn't squeeze through the
cracks.
"They had plenty stock and made all the fertilizer needed in the garden
and patches. They had goober patch, popcorn patch, sorghum patches,
several of em, pea patches but they was field cabbage patch and
watermellon patch. They had chicken house, goose house, duck house and
way off a turkey pen. It had a cover on it. They had to be cleaned and
all that manure moved to the garden and patches. Old man John Griffin
was a good man. Things went on pretty quiet bout the place. They had
to do their own cooking. They got for the grown ups 3 pounds meat, 1
pk.[TR:?] meal a week. They fed the young chaps plenty so they wouldn't
get stunted. They keep em chunky till they get old nough to grow up tall
and that make big women and big men. They stunt em then when they
start runnin' up, it cause em to be low. The owners was mighty careful
(not)[HW: ?] to feed the chaps nough to eat so they make strong hands.
"Men come long the road peddlin' from out the cities, men come long with
droves of horses and mules. They was called horse traders. Then once in
a while they come long tradin' and selling slaves. Nother way they sell
em was at public auction. Iffen a slave steal from another master, like
go in his smoke house or crib and steal, the sheriff have to whip him.
They would have public whippin'.
"How'd they know was freedom? How'd they not know it was freedom?
Everybody went wild. They was jes' crazy cause they was free. Way I
knowd for certain it was freedom Mr. John Griffin had all the slaves
that hadn't done went off come to the house and he told them they was
all free. Some of em just started walking the roads till they nearly
starved. The government didn't start feeding the slaves till so many
nearly starved. My mother cooked on nearly a year. Then she went to work
for Vaughn in Edgefield County.
"They didn't give them no land. The white folks was land pore.
"They didn't have no money. When the masters had money they give the
slaves a little spending money. Nearly all the slaves had a little money
long. They get a pass to split rails for a neighbor and make money.
That was befo freedom. After freedom nobody had money but the Yankee
soldiers. They keep it closer than the folks you been livin' with.
"Mr. Griffin, he was called General by all the young men. He was too old
to fight so he trained soldiers. He didn't wear a uniform but they did.
They met certain days every week. They wore gray uniforms.
"They had a battle at Lawrence. It was 17 miles. The soldiers passed
long the Big road. I didn't see the battles. I heard plenty talk about
that conflict at Lawrence though.
"I heard the slaves was goin' to get 40 acres and a mule. I tell you
they didn't wait to see if they was going to get another meal. They went
wild, walking and hooping up and down the road. They found out when they
nearly starved they had got the bad end of the game somehow. Then to
keep em from starvin' they had certain days to go to Lawrence and get a
little rations. Not much I tell you. They started stealin' and the Ku
Klux started up bout that.
"The President got killed (Abraham Lincoln). Then they knowed the gig
was up. They had to go to work hard as ever and mighty little to eat.
The slaves did vote. It was the color of the paper they used way they
knowed how to vote. The Republican government had full sway 12 years.
All the offices at Edgefield nearly was Negroes cept the sheriff. The
Yankees tell em what to do way they knowed how. Butler went to Congress.
He was a Negro--(???). That was what the Ku Klux was mad bout. They run
the Yankees out and took holt of the offices soon as they could.
"Our master had no Ku Klux comin' on our place. He protected us, It
wasn't no different than slavery till I was nearly grown and a drove was
walking going west to better place. I got in with them and come on. The
Ku Klux had killed several Negroes. That scared them all up. I remember
Tuscaloosa, Alabama when we cone through there. We was walking--a line
a mile long--marching and singing. They was building back in a hurry
seemed like to me. The town had been burned up. Some dropped out to get
work along. Some fell out sick. Some so weak they died long the road.
Had to keep up. Some stopped; they never caught up no more. Mostly old
folks or half starved folks couldn't keep going. The Ku Klux whoop and
shoot you down for any little thing. They started at night, fraid of the
Yankees but they whooped and run them out and the Negroes left. The Ku
Klux got so bold they didn't dress up nor go at night neither. At first
they was careful then they got bold. The Yankee soldiers bout all they
was afraid of. The Negroes found out who some of the Ku Klux was and
told the Yankees but it didn't do much good. After bout twelve years all
the Yankees gone back home. The white folks down in Carolina thought
bout as little of them as Negroes. They wouldn't let them have no land
if they did have money to pay any price for it. They didn't want them
living amongst them. They say they rether have a Negro family.
"The biggest Negro uprisin' I ever seed was at freedom. They riz up in a
hurry.
"I had to stop and work all along. I got to Arkansas in 1881. I never
went no further. I been all my life farmin'. I cut and sell wood, clear
land. The best living was when I farmed and sold wood. I bought a 10
acre farm and cleared it up graduly, then I sold it fer $180.00 cause I
got blind and couldn't see to farm it. I had a house on it. I own this
here house (a splendid home). My daughter and her husband come to take
care me. They come from Cincinatti here. She made $15.00 a week up there
three years. I get $8.00 a month now from the Social Welfare. If I could
see I could make money.
"I never seen times like this. Sin is causin' it. Unrest and
selfishness. No neighborly spirit. I don't bother no young folks. I
don't know how they will come out. If they caint get a big price they
won't work and the white folks are doing their own work, and don't help
like they did. I could get along if I could see. I had a light stroke
keeps me from talkin' good, I hear that."
Interviewer: Thomas Elmore Lucy
Person interviewed: Henry Russell, Russellville, Arkansas
Age: 72
"My father's name was Ed Russell, and he was owned by Dr. Tom Russell,
de first pioneer settler of Russellville--de' man de town got its name
from.
"My name is Henry, and some folks call me 'Bud.' I was born at Old
Dwight de 28th of October, 1866. Yes suh, dat date is correct.
"I was too young to remember much about happenings soon after de War,
but I kin ricollect my father belongin' to de militia for awhile during
de Reconstruction days. Both Negroes and whites were members of de
militia.
"My folks come here from Alabama, but I don't know much about them
except dat my grandmother, Charlotte Edwards, give me an old wash pot
dat has been in de family over one hundred years. Yes suh, it's out here
in de ya'd now. Also, I owns an old ax handle dat I keep down at de
store jist for a relic of old days. It's about a hundred years old, too.
"My wife was Sallie Johnson of Little Rock, and she was a sister of Mrs.
Charley Mays, de barber you used to know, who was here sich a long time.
"For a long time I worked at different kinds of odd jobs, sometimes in
de coal mines and sometimes on de farms, but for several years I've run
a little store for de colored folks here in Russellville. Ain't able to
do very much now.
"I remember very well de first train dat was ever run into Russellville.
Must have been 68 or 69 years ago. A big crowd of people was here from
all over de country. Of course dere was only a few families living in de
town, and only one or two families of colored folks. People come in from
everywhere, and it was a great sign. Little old train was no bigger dan
de Dardanelle & Russellville train. (You remember de little old train
dey used to call de 'Dinkey' don't you?) Well, it wasn't no bigger dan
de Dinkey, and it didn't run into de depot at all, stopped down where de
dump is now. Sure was a sight. Lot of de folks was afraid and wouldn't
go near it, started to run when two men got off. I saw only two man
working in front of it, but I remember it very plain. Dey was working
with wheelbarrows and shovels to clear up de track ahead.
"Another thing I remember as a boy was de 'sassination of President
Gyarfield. I can't read or write but very little, but I remember about
dat. It was a dull, foggy mornin', and I was crossin' de bayou with Big
Bob Smith. (You remember 'Big Bob' dat used to have the merry-go-'round
and made all de county fairs.) Well, he told me all about de killing of
de President. It was about 1881 wasn't it?
"I think times was better in de old days because people was better. Had
a heap more honor in de old days dan dey have now. Not many young folks
today have much character.
"All right. Come back again. Whenever I kin help you out any way, I'll
be glad to."
NOTE: Henry Russell is quite proud of the fact that his ancestors were
the first families of Russellville. He is a polite mulatto, uneducated,
and just enough brogue to lend the Southern flavor to his speech, but is
a fluent conversationalist.
Interviewer: Miss Sallie C. Miller
Person interviewed: Katie Rye, Clarksville, Arkansas
Age: 82
"We lived in Greenbrier, Faulkner County, Arkansas. All stayed at home
and got along very well. We had enough to eat and wear. Mistress was
awful mean to us but we stayed with them until after the war. After the
war master moved us off to another place he had and my father farmed for
his self, master and his pa and ma, and mistress' pa and ma. They awful
good to us, but mistress was so high tempered she would get mad and whip
some of the slaves but she never whipped any of us. She worried so over
the loss of her slaves after the war she went crazy. We had two white
grand pas and grand mas. We colored children called them grandpa and ma
and uncle and aunt like the white children did and we didn't know
the difference. The slaves was only allowed biscuit on Christmas and
sometimes on Sundays but we had beef and plenty of honey and everything
after we moved from the big house. Mistress used to come down to see
us an' my mother would cook dinner for her and master. He was such a
_good_ man and the best doctor in the State. He would come in and
take the babies up (mother had nine children) and get them to sleep for
my mother. His mother would come to the kitchen and ask for a good cup
of coffee and mother would make it for her. The master and his family
were Northern people and my mother was given to the mistress by her
father and mother when she married.
"After my father bought his own farm about ten miles from the big house,
father would put us all in an ox wagon and take us back to see our white
folks.
"The mistress claimed to be a Christian and church member but I don't
see how she could have been she was so mean.
"I think the present day generation mighty wicked. Seems like they get
worse instead of better, even the members of the church are not as good
as they used to be. They don't raise the children like they used to.
They used to go to Sunday School and church and take the children, now
the children do as they please, roam the streets. It is sad to see how
the parents are raising the children, just feed them and let them go.
The children rule the parents now.
"We sang the old hymns and 'Dixie', 'Carry Me Back to Old Virginia',
'When You and I Were Young, Maggie'."
Circumstances of Interview
STATE--Arkansas
NAME OF WORKER--Miss Hazel Horn
ADDRESS--Little Rock, Arkansas
DATE--Last of April, 1936
SUBJECT--Ex-slave
[TR: Repetitive information deleted from subsequent pages.]
1. Name and address of informant--Uncle Bob Samuels, Washington,
Arkansas
2. Date and time of interview--Last of April, 1936
3. Place of interview--Washington, Arkansas
4. Name and address of person, if any, who put you in touch with
informant--J.C.W. Smith.
5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you--J.C.W. Smith
6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.
Personal History of Informant
1. Ancestry--Grandmother, Spanish; Grandfather, Negro; father, Negro.
2. Place and date of birth--Born about 1846
3. Family--
4. Places lived in, with dates--
5. Education, with dates--
6. Occupations and accomplishments, with dates--
7. Special skills and interests--
8. Community and religious activities--
9. Description of informant--Tall and straight. He is blind. Clean in
appearance, dressed in slightly faded overalls. He has short, clean,
grey beard. Speaks with a clear accent.
10. Other points gained in interview--Ancestors were in De Soto
expeditions.
Text of Interview (Unedited)
"From my mother's mother I learned that on my mother's side my ancestor
came with De Soto from Spain where she was educated at Madrid. From
Spain she came to Havana, Cuba, and from there to Tampa, Florida. From
Florida she came to some point in Alabama. From this place she came to
the Mississippi river and the East Bank and crossed where it is called
Gaines Landing. After they crossed the river they went ten kilometers
from there, traveled north from there to where Arkansas County is close
to the mouth of the Arkansas River. Here they camped awhile. When they
broke camp there they traveled northeast to Boiling Springs. Making
their way from here they crossed the Ouachita River on the other side
of Arkadelphia. They traveled on, crossing Little Missouri River below
Wallaceburg. Here they found some Indian mounds. Then they traveled on a
trail from there to Washington, turned into Washington and took a trail
toward Columbus and turned off to the right (Uncle Bob not sure of the
name of this trail) and crossed what is known as Beard's Lake. They
crossed Little River at Ward's Ferry and crossed the Saline river.
Traveling northwest they reached White Oak shoals where Index is now and
crossed over into what was Mexico and traveled to a place called Kawaki
located where [TR: ?] now is.
"After camping here for a while they came back into Arkansas to some
point near Rando, crossed Red River at Dooley's Ferry, went to Coola
Fabra(?) and back to Boiling Springs. [Here a gold mine was found and
a quarrel ensued, and in a fight De Soto was killed.] They carried
his body overland and buried him in the Mississippi River between
Grensville[HW:sp.] and Vicksburg. [TR: Moved from end of interview: De
Soto was buried at the junction of the Mississippi and [??] Rivers,
about 100 miles south of Vicksburg.] The remaining forces of the
expedition returned to Spain.
"Sometime in 1816 my mother's mother was born. My mother's mother was
Spanish. My mother says she was well educated. Mother and her mother
have Spanish mixed with Negro blood. I had a sister named Mary and a
brother named John.
"Armarilla, my grandmother came here from Cuba through to Gaines
Landing. Her son Edmin and her husband were with her. They crossed the
Mississippi River and she said they stopped at the old De Soto camp. A
short distance west of this place they met two men--Nick Trammel and
John Morrow who profitted (dealt) in Negro slaves. My grandfather and
mother employed these men to guide them to Coola Fabre(?) Camden?. From
Little River to Dooley's Ferry these men carried them to Waco, Texas.
They killed my grandfather and kept my grandmother forcing her to marry
either a half-breed Mexican, an Indian or a Negro. It was near Waco in
Hickman[HW:sp.] Prairie that mother was born. The boy Edmin was returned
to Dooley's Ferry and remained in the vicinity until he was about
seventeen years of age. He then lived in the vicinity of Little Rock
about six months before returning to Mexico. My grandmother said that
Mr. Trammel and Mr. Morrow probably thought he might cause trouble and
killed him as she never saw him after he returned from Little Rock.
Mother was held in Lafayette County at a point where the river crossed
and joined Bowie County (Texas) and where Louisiana bounded the south.
"De Soto traveled by land, not by boat. He had a force of about 550
persons. The women dressed as men. My grandmother was with her husband.
"My mother was a slave. She was held in Bowie County, Hickens[HW:sp.]
Prairie, by Bob Trammel. They kept her locked up and I have heard mother
say that she used whale bone, card bats and a spinning wheel. Finally
they got so hot behind the Trammels in 1847-48, they pulled up stakes
and went down on the Guadalupe River and carried my mother's mother down
there. Before they left Dave Block went on Trammel's bond and got my
mother. He made my mother head housekeeper slave. She had been taught
Spanish. She was tall and fair with straight black hair. She was married
to Dick Samuels, my father.
"After the war my father was elected [HW: Hempstead] County Clerk in
1872 on the Republican ticket. He could neither read nor write, so
was clerk in name only securing one of the white men to attend to the
office. By trade he was a blacksmith."
Interviewer's Comment
Uncle Bob Samuels is the son of Richard Samuels and Mary. He was a slave
of David Block. After freedom he came to Little Rock with a sister and a
brother, John. Uncle Bob said he often heard his mother speak of a gold
mine. She had a trunk of maps and charts which her mother had given to
her. In this was supposed to be the papers regarding De Soto's legendary
gold mine. The trunk had been lost as Uncle Bob has no idea where the
gold mine is. He tells the story the same way, never varying a point. He
does not claim to remember Indian trails or names.
Uncle Bob is tall and straight. He is blind. Was clean in appearance
dressed in slightly faded overalls. He has a short, clean grey beard. He
talks with a clear accent, no Negro accent. During Reconstruction days
he served as County Clerk of Hempstead County under Carpetbaggar rule.
During those days he was a political power to be reckoned with. He was
a national as well as a state figure in the "Lily White Republican"
organization. [His wife was a Negro, good looking, but showed little
trace of much white blood.]
Interviewer: Mary D. Hudgins
Person Interviewed: Emma Sanderson
Home: 617 Wade Street, Hot Springs.
Aged: 75
"Emma Sanderson"--"Wade Street". That was all the prospective
interviewer could learn. "Emma Sanderson--ex-slave!" "Wade Street"--"Why
it's way off that way. You go sort of thatta way, and then thatta way."
A city map disclosed no Wade Street. Maps belonging to a local
abstractor helped not a whit. "Insurance maps are in more detail."
someone advised, "Wade Street," mused the young woman at the desk, "I've
heard of it. We have written a policy for someone there." The head of
the department was new to the city, but he was eager to help. After
about five minutes search--from wall maps to bound volumes of blocks
and back again it appeared that "Wade Street" more frequently known as
"Washington Street" meanders wanderingly from Silver Street, in the
colored section out to the "Gorge addition" inhabited by low economic
level whites.
Down Malvern Avenue (Hot springs' Beale Street) went the interviewer. On
she went past the offices of a large Chicago packing house. For better
then a block she trudged by dilapidated shops which a few seasons back
had housed one of the key transient centers of the U.S.A. Down the
street she walked, pausing for a moment to note that coffee colored
faces decorated the placards in the beauty shop window--two well groomed
mulatto girls sitting inside, evidently operators. Her course took her
past sandwich joints and pool halls. Nails, she noted as she drifted
along, had been driven into the projection beneath the plate glass
window of the brick bank (closed during the depression--a building and
bank built, owned and operated by negro capital) to keep loungers away.
The colored theater (negroes are admitted only to the balconies of
theaters in Hot Springs--one section of the balcony at the legitimate
theater) she noticed was now serving as a religious gathering place. The
well built and excellently maintained Pythian Bath house (where the hot
waters are made available to colored folk) with the Alice Eve Hospital
(45 beds, 5 nurses, 2 resident physicians--negro doctors thruout the
town cooperating--surgical work a specialty) stood out in quiet dignity.
For the rest, buildings were an indiscriminate hodge-podge of homes,
apartment houses, shacks, and chain groceries. At the corner where "the
street turns white" the interviewer turned east.
The Langston High School (for colored--with a reputation for turning out
good cooks, football players and academicians) stands on Silver Street.
A few paces from the building the interviewer met a couple of plump
colored women laughing and talking loudly.
"I beg your pardon," was her greeting, "can you tell me where Wade
Street is?" They could and did. They were so frankly interested in
knowing why the white women wanted Emma Sanderson that she told them
her mission. They were not taken aback--there was no servility--no
resentment they were frankly charmed with the idea. Their directions for
finding Mrs. Sanderson became even more explicit.
When the proper turn off was found the question of Wade versus
Washington Street was settled. A topsy-turvy sign at the intersection
announced that Wade Street was ahead. Emma Sanderson's grandson lived a
couple of blocks down the road.
Only the fact that she could hear someone inside moving about kept the
interviewer hammering on the door. Finally she was rewarded by a voice.
"Is that somebody a' knockin'?" In a moment the door opened. The
question, "Were you a slave" no matter how delicately put is a difficult
one to ask, but Mrs. Sanderson was helpful, if doubtful that her story
would do much good. "I was just so little when it all happened." But the
interviewer was invited in and placed in a chair near the fire.
"No ma'am. He ain't my grandson--I's the third grandmother. No son, you
ain't three--you's five. Don't you remember what I told you? Yes, he
stays with me, ma'am. I take care of him while the rest of 'em works.
"It's hard for me to remember. I was just so little. Yes, ma'am, I was
born a slave--but I was so little. Seems to me like I remember a big,
big house. We was sort of out in the country---out from Memphis. I know
there was my father and my mother and my uncles and my aunts. I know
there was that many. How many more of us old man Doc Walker had--I just
don't know. They must have took good care of us tho. My mother was a
house nigrah.
"When the war was ready to quit they gave us our pick. We could stay on
and work for wages or we could go. The folks decided that the'd go on in
to Memphis. My Mother and Father didn't live together none after we went
to town. First I lived with Mother and then when she died my Father took
me. My mother died when I was 9. She worked at cooking and washing. When
I was big enough I went to school. I kept on going to school after my
Father took me. He died when I was about 15. By that time I was old
enough to look out after myself.
"What did I do? I stayed in folkses houses. I cooked and I washed. Then
when I was about 16, I married. After that I had a man to take care of
me. He was a carpenter.
"We been here in Hot Springs a long time--you maybe heared of
Sanderson--he took up platering and he was good too. How long I been in
Hot Springs--law I don't know--'cept I was a full grown women when we
come.
"I's had four children--all of 'em is dead. I lives with my grandson.
The little fellow, he'll be old enough to go to school in a year or two.
A dime for him ma'am--an' 2 cents besides? Now son you keep the dime and
you can spend the pennies. I always tries to teach him to save. Then
when he gets big he'll know what to do."
Dining room and living room joined one another by means of a high and
wide arch. The stove was sensibly set up in this passage. Both rooms
were comfortably furnished with products which had in all probability
been bought new. The child stood close by thruout the entire
conversation. There was no whit of timidity about him, nor was he the
least impertinent. He was frankly interested and wanted to know what was
being said. He received the dime and the pennies with a pleasant grin
and a (grandmother prompted) "Thank you". But the gift didn't startle
him. Dimes must have been a fairly usual part of his life. But a few
minutes before the interviewer left she dropped her pencil. It was new
and long and yellow. The child's eyes clung to it as he returned it.
"Would you like to have it." the young woman asked, "would you like a
pencil of your very own, to draw with?" Would he! The child's whole face
beamed. Dimes were as nothing compared to shiney new pencils. The third
grandchild was overjoyed with his new plaything. Ella Sanderson was
delighted with her great grandchild's pleasure. The interviewer received
a warm and friendly "Good-bye".
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person Interviewed: Mary Scott
DeValls Bluff or Biscoe
Age:
"I said if ever I seed you agin I'd show you dis here scar on my head.
See here [a puffed-out, black, rusty, not quite round place, where no
hair grew]. Dat dar what my young mistress put on me when I was a chile.
Dock Hardy hired me. He was rich and married a pore gal. It went to her
head. He was good to me. She was mean. She had him whoop me a time or
two for nothin'. They had two little babies, I stayed round wid. I loved
em. I churned, brought in all the wood mighty near, brought bout all the
water from the spring. Master Dock be coming horseback from Franklin,
Tennessee. I knowed bout time I take the babies to meet him. He'd wait
at a big stump we could climb on his horse, take the baby in front and
us up behind him, and put us off on the back piazza at the house. I
wrapped up the churn and quit. She ax me what I quit churnin' for. I say
the butter come. She say it ain't had time. I say it ready to take up
anyhow. She got so mad she throwed a stick of stove wood, hit me on
my head. I run out crying, the blood streamin' down. I started to the
spring, come back and got the water bucket. I got me some water and
brought back a fresh bucket full. I washed my head in cool water where
it was bleedin'. It bled all way back. She say, 'Where you been?' I say
I been to the spring, brought some cool water to the babies. I give em
some I told her. When I got water I always give them some. She took the
bucket, made me go wid her, poured the water out in the path under a
shade tree, and made me take 'nother bucketful home. I thought she was
so mean; I didn't know what she was doing that about. Got to the house
she put me on a clean chemisette. I slipped off down to the feed house,
lay down, my head on the cotton seeds, and went to sleep.
"When Master Dock come he woke me up, wanted to know why I didn't meet
him. He seen that blood. Went on to the house. He ask her what done my
head that way. She say, 'She went to the spring, fell down, spilled the
water, and hurt it on a rock.' I told him that wasn't so--not so! I told
him all bout it. He told her she ought to be 'shamed treat good little
nigger chap mean. He was so sorry for me. She didn't care. They had been
goin' to old missis house every week. It was three weeks 'fo she would
go. I got to see my mama, 'fo she died.
"Old Mistress Emily was a doctor woman. Dock told her, 'Mama, Scrubbs
jumps and screams bout a hour late every evening wid her head.' When it
got late it hurt and I screamed and jump up and down. Mistress Emily
come got me in her arms, put me to sleep. When I woke up Dock and Kitty
gone home with the babies. I cried bout being from the babies; I loved
em, never been away from em 'fo. She got three maggots and says,
'Scrubbs, see what I got out your little head.' Mama had died then. She
say, 'Your mama would want me to keep you here wid me.' She kept me till
it healed up. Them maggots big as a sage broom straw. We swept the floor
wid sage straw tied together then. Mistress Emily kept me a month with
her and doctored my head every day. I slept on a pallet and on a little
bed she had in the room. When I went back to Kitty's she wasn't as mean
to me as she been--but mean nough then.
"My mama named Amy Hardy. She had five boys, three girls. She died with
a young baby. I reckon they had different papas. I was my papa's only
chile. They all said that. Bout a month after I went to Dock and
Kitty's, it was surrender. He (the little Negro girl's father) come,
stayed all night, and took me wid him to live. Dock wanted me to stay; I
love Dock and the children. Every year till a few years ago my head get
sore and run. We tried all kinds medicine on it. Don't know what cured
it.
"The week 'fo I left there I had a task to make a cut of thread every
night, a reel. When I heard papa was coming to git me, I put cotton bats
under the reels and kivered em up. Good thing papa got me--Kitty would
killed me when she went to spin next week. She been so mean why I done
that way.
"They never sold any of our set but some on the place was sold. The
mothers grieve and grieve over their children bein' sold. Some white
folks let their slaves have preachin', some wouldn't. We had a bush
arbor and set on big logs. Children set round on the ground. 'Fo freedom
I never went to preachin'. I kept Kitty's babies so she went. Mothers
didn't see their children much after they was sold.
"Fo freedom they would turn a wash pot upside-down at the door and have
singin' and prayer meetin'. The pot would take up the noise. They done
that when they danced too. I don't know how they found out the iron pot
would take up the noise. They had plenty of em settin' round in them
days. Somebody found it out and passed it on."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Mollie Hardy Scott, R.F.D., DeValls Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 90
"I was born at Granville, Georgia in Franklin County. I don't know my
age cept I was big enough to plow when young master lef and went to war.
My mother died bout time the war started. We belonged to Miss Eliza and
Master Jim Hardy. He had two boys bout grown, Jim and John. My father
belong to the Linzys. I don't know nuthin much bout them nor him
neither. When the war was done he come and got me and we went to Barton
County, Georgia. When I lef they give me my feather bed, two good
coverlets and my clothes. White folks hated fo me to leave. We all cried
but I never seen em no more. They said he take me off and let me suffer
or die or something. I was all the child my father had but my mother had
ten children I knowed of. We all lived on the place. They lived in a
little log house and I stayed wid em some an up at white folks house
mostly. No I never seed my folks no more. We had plenty to eat. Had meat
and garden stuff. We had pot full of lye hominy. It last several days.
It was good. I seed em open up a pot full of boiled corn-on-the-cob.
Plenty milk and butter. We had wash pot full of collards or turnip
salad. Maybe a few turnips on top and a big piece of fresh meat. We
had plenty to eat and wear long as I lived wid the white folks. We had
goobers, molasses candy to pull and pop corn every now and then. They
fill all the pockets, set around the fire an eat at night. Sometimes we
bake eggs and sweet potatoes, cracklin hoe cake covered up in the ashes.
Bake apples in front of the fire on de hearth. Everybody did work an we
sho had plenty to eat an wear.
"I had plenty when I stayed at my father's an we worked together all the
time. When he died I married. I've had a hard time not able to work.
There ain't no hard time if yous able to get bout. I pieces quilts an
sells em now. Sells em if I can. For $150 piece (has no idea of money
value). Some women promissed to come git 'em but they ain't come yet. I
wanter buy me some shoes. I could do a heap if they send fo me. I can
nurse. I kept a woman's children when she teached last year (Negro
woman's children).
"I brought four or five when I come to Arkansas of my own. They all dead
but my one girl I lives wid.
"Seemed lack so many colored folks coming out West to do better. We
thought we come too. We come on immigrate ticket on the train. All the
people I worked for was Captain Williams, Dr. Givens. Mr. Richardson
right where Mesa is now but they called it 88 then (88 miles from
Memphis). Mr. Gates. I farmed, washed and ironed. I nursed some since
I'm not able to get about in the field. I never owned nothing. They run
us from one year till the next and at the end of the year they say we
owe it bout all. If we did have a good crop we never could get ahead. We
couldn't get ahead nuff not to have to be furnished the next year. We
did work but we never could get ahead. If a darky sass a white land
owner he would be whooped bout his account or bout anything else. Yes
siree right here in dis here county. Darky have to take what the white
folks leave fo em and be glad he's livin.
"I say I ain't never voted. Whut in de world I would want er vote for?
Let em vote if they think it do em good.
"I seen a whole gang of Ku Kluxes heap of times when I was little back
in Georgia. I seed paddyrollers and then they quit and at night the Ku
Kluxes rode by. They would whoop or shoot you either if you didn't tend
to yo own business and stay at home at night. They kept black and white
doing right I tell you. I sho was afraid of them but they didn't bother
us. If you be good whose ever place you lives on would keep 'em from
harmin you. They soon got all the bad Yankies ran back North from
Georgia. They whip the black men and women too but it was mostly the men
they watched and heap of it was for stealing. Folks was hungry. Couldn't
help stealin if they seed anything. I seed heap of folks having a mighty
hard time after the war in them restruction (Reconstruction) days. I was
lucky.
"My daughter would do mo than she do fo me but she is a large woman and
had both her legs broke. They hurt her so bad it is hard fo her to do
much. She good as she can be to everybody. The Welfare give three of us
$10.00 a month (daughter, husband, and Mollie). We mighty glad to get
that. We sho is. I am willin to work if I could get work I could do.
That's my worst trouble. Like I tell you, I can nurse and wash dishes if
I could get the jobs.
"I don't see much of the real young folks. I don't know what they are
doing much. If a fellow is able he ought to be able to do good now if he
can get out and go hunt up work fo himself. That the way it look like. I
don't know."
Interviewer: Thomas Elmore Lucy
Person interviewed: Sam Scott, Russellville, Arkansas
Age: 79
"Hello dar, Mistah L----! Don' you dare pass by widout speakin' to dis
old niggah friend of yo' chil'hood! No suh! Yuh can't git too big to
speak to me!
"Reckon you've seen about all dar is to see in de worl' since I seen
you, ain't you? Well, mos' all de old-time niggahs and whites is both
gone now. I was born on de twentieth of July, 1879. Count up--dat makes
me 79 (born 1859), don't it? My daddy's name was Sam, same as mine, and
mammy's was Mollie. Dey was slaves on de plantation of Capt. Scott--yes
suh, Capt. John R. Homer Scott--at Dover. My name is Sam, same as my
father's, of course. Everybody in de old days knowed Sam Scott. My
father died in slavery times, but mother lived several years after.
"No, I never did dance, but I sure could play baseball and make de home
runs! My main hobby, as you calls it, was de show business. You remember
de niggah minstrels we used to put on. I was always stage manager
and could sing baritone a little. Ed Williamson and Tom Nick was de
principal dancers, and Tom would make up all de plays. What? Stole a
unifawm coat of yours? Why, I never knowed Tom to do anything like that!
Anyway, he was a good-hearted niggah--but you dunno what he might do.
Yes, I still takes out a show occasionally to de towns around Pope
and Yell and Johnson counties, and folks treat us mighty fine. Big
crowds--played to $47.00 clear money at Clarksville. Usually take about
eight and ten in our comp'ny, boys and gals--and we give em a real hot
minstrel show.
"De old show days? Never kin forgit em! I was stage manager of de old
opery house here, you remember, for ten years, and worked around de
old printin' office downstairs for seven years. No, I don't mean stage
manager--I mean property man--yes, had to rustle de props. And did we
have road shows dem days! Richards & Pringle's Georgia minstrels, de
Nashville students, Lyman Twins, Barlow Brothers Minstrels, and--oh,
ever so many more--yes, Daisy, de Missouri Girl, wid Fred Raymond. Never
kin forgit old black Billy Kersands, wid his mouf a mile wide!
"De songs we used to sing in old days when I was a kid after de War
wasn't no purtier dan what we used to sing wid our own minstrel show
when we was at our best twenty-five and thirty years ago; songs like
'Jungletown,' 'Red Wing,' and 'Mammy's Li'l Alabama Coon.' Our circuit
used to be around Holla Bend, Dover, Danville, Ola, Charleston, Nigger
Ridge, out from Pottsville, and we usually starred off at the old opery
house in Russellville, of course.
"I been married, but ain't married now. We couldn't git along somehow.
Yes suh, I been right here workin' stiddy for a long time. Been janitor
at two or three places same time; was janitor of de senior high school
here for twenty-two years, and at de Bank of Russellville twenty-nine
years.
"Folks always been mighty nice to me--and no slave ever had a finer
master dan old Captain Scott.
"In de old show days de manager of de opery always said. 'Let de
niggers see de show,' and sometimes de house was half full of colored
folks--white folks on one side de house and niggahs on de other--and
dere never was any disturbance of any kind. Ain't no sich good times now
as we had in de old road show days. No suh!"
NOTE: Sam Scott, who has been personally known to the interviewer
for many years, is above the average of the race for integrity and
truthfulness. His statement that he was born a few years after slavery
and that his father died during slavery was not questioned the matter
being a delicate personal affair and of no special moment.
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Cora Scroggins, Clarendon, Arkansas
Age: 48 or 50
"My mother was born in Spring Hill, Tennessee and brought to Arkansas by
her master. Her name was Margaret. Dr. and Mrs. Porter brought my mother
to Batesville, Arkansas when she was eight years old and raised her. She
was very light. She had long straight hair but was mixed with white. She
never knew much about her parents or people.
"Mr. William Brook (white) came to De Valls Bluff from Tennessee and
brought her sister soon after the War. She was a very black woman.
"Dr. Porter had a family. One of their daughters was Mrs. Mattie Long,
another Mrs. Willie Bowens. There were others. They were all fine to my
mother. She married in Dr. Porter's home. Mrs. Porter had learnt her to
sew. My father was a mechanic. My mother sewed for both black and white.
She was a fine dressmaker. She had eight children and raised six of us
up grown.
"My father was a tall rawbony brown man. His mother was an Indian squaw.
She lived to be one hundred seven years old. She lived about with her
children. The white folks all called her 'Aunt Matildy' Tucker. She was
a small woman, long hair and high cheek bones. She wore a shawl big as a
sheet purty nigh all time and smoked a pipe. I was born in Batesville.
"My mother spoke of her one long journey on the steamboat and
stagecoach. That was when she was brought to Arkansas. It made a
memorable picture in her mind.
"Dr. and Mrs. Porter told her she was free and she could go or stay. And
she had nowheres to go and she had always lived with them white folks.
She never did like black folks' ways and she raised us near like she was
raised as she could.
"She used to tell us how funny they dressed and how they rode at night
all through the country. She seen them and she could name men acted as
Ku Kluxes but they never bothered her and she wasn't afraid of them.
"I cooked all my life till I got disabled. I never had a child. I wish I
had a girl. I've been considered a fine cook all of my life."
Circumstances of Interview
STATE--Arkansas
NAME OF WORKER--Bernice Bowden
ADDRESS--1006 Oak Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
DATE--November 4, 1938
SUBJECT--Ex-slaves
[TR: Repetitive information deleted from subsequent pages.]
1. Name and address of informant--Sarah Sexton, Route 4, Box 685, Pine
Bluff
2. Date and time of interview--November 3, 1958, 10:00 a.m.
3. Place of interview--Route 4, Box 685, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
4. Name and address of person, if any, who put you in touch with
informant--Georgia Caldwell, Route 6, Box 128, Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you--None.
6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.--Frame house, front
porch with two swings. Fence around yard. Chinaberry tree and Tree of
Paradise, Coxcomb in yard. Southeast of Norton-Wheeler Stave Mill just
off Highway 65.
Text of Interview
"Prewitt Tiller bought my mother and I belonged to young master. In
slavery I was a good-sized-young girl, mama said. Big enough to put the
table cloths on the best I could. After freedom I did all the cookin'
and milkin' and washin'.
"Now listen, this young master was Prewitt's son.
"Grandpa's name was Ned Peeples and grandma was Sally Peeples. My mother
was Dorcas. Well, my papa, I ain't never seed him but his name was Josh
Allen. You see, they just sold 'em around. That's what I'm talkin'
about--they went by the name of their owners.
"I'm seventy-eight or seventy-nine or eighty. That's what the insurance
man got me up.
"I been in a car wreck and I had high blood pressure and a stroke all at
once. And that wreck, the doctor said it cracked my skull. Till now, I
ain't got no remembrance.
"You know how long I went to school? Three days. No ma'm I had to work,
darlin'.
"I was born down here on Saline River at Selma. I done forgot what
month."
"What kinda work have I done? Oh, honey, I done farmed myself to death,
darlin'. You know Buck Couch down here at Noble Lake? Well, I hoped pick
out eight bales of cotton for him.
"I wish I had the dollars I had workin' for R.A. Pickens down here at
Walnut Lake. Yes, honey, I farmed for him bout fifteen or twenty years
steady.
"And he sure was nice and he was mischievous. He called all of us his
chillun. He use to say, 'Now you must mind your papa!' And we'd say 'Now
Mr. Pickens, you know you ain't got no nigger chillun'. He use to say to
me 'Sallie, you is a good woman but you ain't got no sense'. Them was
fine white folks.
"Honey, these white folks round here what knows me, knows they ain't a
lazy bone in my body.
"I'se cooked and washed and ironed and I'se housecleaned. Yes'm, I
certainly was a good cook.
"I belongs to the Palestine Baptist Church. Yes ma'm. I don't know what
I'd do if twasn't for the good Master. I talks to Him all the time.
"I goes to this here government school. A man teaches it. I don't know
what his name is, we just calls him Professor.
"Well, chile, I'll tell you the truf. These young folks is done gone.
And some o' these white headed women goes up here truckin'. It's a sin
and a shame. I don't know what's gwine come of 'em."
Interviewer's Comment
This woman lives with her daughter Angelina Moore who owns her home.
Mother and daughter both attend government school. Both were neatly
dressed. The day was warm so we sat on the front porch during the
interview.
Personal History of Informant
1. Ancestry--Grandfather, Ned Peeples; grandmother, Sally Peeples;
Mother, Dorcas Peeples; Father, Josh Allen.
2. Place and date of birth--On Saline River, Selma, Arkansas. No date.
3. Family--Two daughters and granddaughter.
4. Places lived in, with dates--Desha County, Walnut Lake, Noble Lake,
(Arkansas) Poplar Bluff, Missouri. No dates.
5. Education, with dates--Three days, "after freedom". Attends
government school now.
6. Occupations and accomplishments, with dates--Farmwork, cooking,
laundry work until 1936.
7. Special skills and interests--Cooking.
8. Community and religious activities--Member of Palestine Baptist
Church.
9. Description of informant--Medium height, plump, light complexion and
gray hair.
10. Other points gained in interview--Injured in auto wreck seven years
ago.
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Roberta Shaver, West Memphis, Arkansas
Age: 50
"I was born close to Natchez, Mississippi. Grandma was sold at Wickerson
County, Mississippi. They took her in a wagon to Jackson, Tennessee. She
was mother of two children. They took them. She was part Indian. She was
a farm woman. Her name was Dicy Jackson. They sold her away from the
Jacksons to Dobbins. She was a house woman in Jackson, Tennessee. She
said they was good to her in Tennessee. Grandma never was hit a lick in
slavery. Grandpa was whooped a time or two. He run off to the woods for
weeks and come back starved. He tended to the stock and drove Master
Clayton around. He was carriage driver when they wanted to go places.
"After freedom grandma set out to get back to grandpa. Walked and rode
too I reckon. She brought her children back. After a absence of
five years she and grandpa went back together. They met at Natchez,
Mississippi. Mama was born after freedom.
"The way grandma said she was sold was, a strange man come there one day
and the master had certain ones he would sell stand in a line and
this strange man picked out the ones he wanted and had them get their
belongings and put them in the wagon and took them on off. She never
seen grandpa for five years."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Mary Shaw
1118 Palm Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 77
Occupation: Laundry work
"I was born in Bolivar County, Mississippi. My mother didn't know how
old I was but after freedom I went by Miss Ann Blanchet's--that was my
mother's old missis--and she said I was born in 1861.
"But I don't know nothin' 'bout slavery or the War. I was born and bred
in the desert and my mother said it was a long time after freedom 'fore
she knowed anything about it. She said there was just lots of the folks
said, to their knowin', they had been free three years 'fore they knowed
anything about it.
"My husband brought me to Arkansas when I was 35 and I been workin' in
the same family, Captain Jeter's family, ever since-forty odd years.
"I always have worked hard. I've had the flu only reason I'm sittin'
here now. If I had to sit and hold my hands very long, they'd have to
take me to Little Rock.
"I been married twice. My last husband was Sam Shaw. He was a great
whiskey man and when whiskey went out, he went to bootleggin' and they
got behind him and he left.
"He wrote me once and said if I'd borrow some money on my home and send
it to him, he'd come back. I wrote and told him just like I'm tellin'
you that after I had worked night and day to pay for this house while
he was off tellin' some other woman lies just like he told me, I wasn't
goin' to send him money. So I ain't seen him since.
"I ain't never been to school much. When schools got numerous in
Mississippi they had me behind a plow handle.
"Mrs. Jeter made me mad once and I quit. My first husband was a porter
on the railroad and I got on the train and went to Memphis with him.
"One time he come back from a trip to Pine Bluff and handed me a little
package. I opened it and it was a note from Mrs. Jeter and a piece of
corn bread. She said, 'Now, Mary, you see what I've had to eat. I want
you to come back.' So I went back and stayed 'til she died. And now I'm
workin' for her daughter, Mrs. McEwen. Mrs. Jeter used to say, 'Mary,
I know you're not a Arkansas woman 'cause you ain't got a lazy bone in
your body.'"
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Violet Shaw, West Memphis, Arkansas
Age: 50
"I heard Grandma Katie Williams say she was put up on a high stump and
auctioned off. She told how great-grandma cried and cried and never
seen her no more. Grandma come from Oakland, Tennessee to Mississippi.
Grandma took the two young children and left the other two with
great-grandma. They took her from her husband. She never seen none of
them again.
"After freedom she didn't know how to find them. She never could get
trace of them. She tried. She never married no more. I was born at
Clarksdale, Mississippi. I have seen Tom Pernell (white), the young
master, come and spend the night with Henry Pernell. Henry had once been
Tom's father's slave and carriage driver. I was too small to know the
cause but I remember that several times mighty well. They fixed him up a
clean bed by hisself. Henry lived in town. But he might have been drunk.
I never seen no misbehavior out of him. It was strange to me to see
that.
"Freedom--Aunt Mariah Jackson was freed at Dublin, Mississippi. She said
she was out in the field working. A great big white man come, jumped
up on a log and shouted, 'Freedom! Freedom!' They let the log they was
toting down; six, three on a side, had holt of a hand stick toting a
long heavy log. They was clearing up new ground. He told them they was
free. They went to the house. They cooked and et and thanked God. Some
got down and prayed, some sung. They had a time that day. They got the
banjo and fiddle and set out playing. Some got in the big road just
walking. She said they had a time that day."
Texarkana District
FOLKLORE SUBJECTS
Name of Interviewer: Cecil Copeland
Subject: Ex-Slave
This information given by: Frederick Shelton
Place of Residence: Dump Section, Texarkana, Arkansas
Occupation: None
Age: 81
[TR: Information moved from bottom of first page.]
In an humble cabin on the outskirts of the city lives a venerable old
negro ex-slave. Although bent with rheumatism and age, he still retains
his mental faculties to a remarkable degree.
An inquiry as to his health elicited the following reply: "I'se a
willful mind but a weak body. Just like an old tree--de limbs are
withered and almost dead. I'se been here a long tins, ovah 81 years, and
am ready to go any time de good Lawd says de word. Dat's de trouble wid
de people nowadays--dey ain't prepared. Back when I wuz a young man,
dey wuzn 't so much meaness, and such goings on as dey are nowadays. De
young-peple know as much as de old folks. Yas, suh, de worl' am goin' to
de dogs."
Asked about life in pioneer days, the old negro replied; "We had lots
ob good times in dem days. Log rollings wuz lots ob fun to me as I wuz
strong den, an' I could "show off" befo' de odder niggers. Dey wuzn't
much rollin' to it, mostly carrying. I mind de time when I lifted de end
ob a log, an' four men tried at different times to lift de odder, but
dey couldn't do it. Three of dese men went to an early grave from trying
to lift dis log--all tore up inside. Maybe dat's whut ails me.
"You had to be careful den, when traveling through de woods, or de
varmints would git you, especially at night. I mind de time when a negro
wuz comin' through de woods one nite, when he seed a panther about to
spring on him.
"Dis nigger dropped in his tracks lack he wuz dead. De panther came up to
him and smelled ob him, but de nigger held his breath, and de panther
thought he wuz dead. De panther covered him wid leaves an' went about
one hundred yards into de woods to call his friends to de feast. No
sooner had he left when de nigger jumped up and climbed a tree, first
rutting an old chunk of wood in de place where he wuz buried. De nigger
could hear de panther out in de woods as he called for his friends, and
pretty soon, here dey come, about five of 'em. Slowly circling aroun' de
place where de nigger had been, all of a sudden dey all jumped. Findin'
nothin' but de old chunk of wood, dem panthers got real mad. Wid angry
growls, dey jumped on de one whut had called dem, and ate him up."
This old negro reserves all of the heroic roles for others. Asked if he
had had any experience with the "varmints", as he termed them he said:
"Yas, suh. De worst scared I ever got wuz frum a wolf. Walkin' down a
trail one day, I spied a wolf not more than ten feet away. Man, I wuz so
scared dat I seemed to freeze in my tracks, and couldn't move. I tried
to holler but all I could do wuz croak. Den I tried to whistle but de
only sound I could make wuz a hiss. After standing for whut seemed
hours, wid his ears sticking straight up, de wolf finally turned around
and trotted away."
The conversation drifted to other topics, and finally to ghosts and
spirits. The old negro said he had never seen a ghost, and didn't
believe in those things. No sooner had he said this when his wife, who
had been listening in on the conversation from the inside of the door
exclaimed: "I does! Seein' is believin' aint it? Well suh, about two
years ago de negro dat lived next door died. A few weeks after he died I
wuz settin' out on de porch when I see dis negro come out of de house,
and walk slowly to de corner of mah yard where he vanished into de air.
A few nights later de same thing happened again. No suh, dat nigger
didn't go to Heaven and he didn't go to Hell. He's still around heah. He
wuz a wicked negro and wuz scared to go."
Circumstances of interview
STATE--Arkansas
NAME OF WORKER--Samuel S. Taylor
ADDRESS--Little Rock, Arkansas
DATE--December, 1938
SUBJECT--Ex-slave
[TR: Repetitive information deleted from subsequent pages.]
1. Name and address of informant--Laura Shelton, 1518 Pulaski Street,
Little Rock, Arkansas.
2. Date and time of interview interview--
3. Place of interview--1518 Pulaski Street, Little Rock, Arkansas.
4. Name and address of person, if any who put you in touch with
informant--
5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you--
Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.--
Personal History of Informant
1. Ancestry--mother, Susan Barnett; father, Ben Bearden; grandfather,
Harvey Barnett.
2. Place and date of birth--Arkansas, 1878
3. Family--Three children.
4. Education, with dates--
5. Places lived in with dates--Jerome, Arkansas and Little Rock. No
dates.
6. Occupations and accomplishments, with dates--Farmed, wash and iron.
7. Special skills and interests--
8. Community and religious activities--Belongs to Baptist Church.
9. Description of informant--
10. Other points gained in interview--
Text of Interview (Unedited)
"My mother used to sit down and talk to us and tell us about slavery.
If she had died when I was young I wouldn't have known much. But by her
living till I was old, I learned a lot.
"My mother's old master was Tom Barnett, so she said. No, not 'so she
said' because I have seed him. He give her her age and all at that
time. I have it in my Bible. He said that she was twelve years old the
Christmas before the surrender. The surrender was in May, wasn't it?
"My mother's name was Susan Bearden. She married Ben Bearden. She worked
in Tom Barnett's house. She milked and churned and 'tended to the
children and all such as that. He never allowed her to go to the field.
Neither her mother, my grandmother. She was the cook. My
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