Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4
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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 4
Author: United States. Work Projects Administration
Release date: April 24, 2008 [eBook #25154]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25154
Credits: Produced by Diane Monico and The Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
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*** 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 4 ***
Produced by Diane Monico and The Online Distributed
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produced from images generously made available by the
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division)
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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
_Illustrated with Photographs_
WASHINGTON 1941
VOLUME II
ARKANSAS NARRATIVES
PART 4
Prepared by
the Federal Writers' Project of
the Works Progress Administration
for the State of Arkansas
INFORMANTS
Jackson, Clarice 1, 3
Jackson, Israel 5
Jackson, Lula 9, 18
Jackson, Mary 20
Jackson, Taylor 22
Jackson, Virginia 26
Jackson, William 28
Jamar, Lawson 30
James, Nellie 32
James, Robert 34
Jefferson, Ellis 36
Jeffries, Moses 38
Jefson, Rev. Ellis 43
Jenkins, Absolom 47
Jerman, Dora 50
Johnson, Adaline 52
Johnson, Alice 59
Johnson, Allen 63
Johnson, Annie 67
Johnson, Ben 70, 72
Johnson, Betty 73
Johnson, Cinda 76
Johnson, Ella 77
Johnson, Fanny 84
Johnson, George 91
Johnson, John 94
Johnson, Letha 98
Johnson, Lewis 100
Johnson, Lizzie 102
Johnson, Louis 104
Johnson, Mag 107
Johnson, Mandy 110
Johnson, Marion 112, 115, 120
Johnson, Martha 122
Johnson, Millie (Old Bill) 124
Johnson, Rosie 126
Johnson, Saint 128
Johnson, Willie 130
Jones, Angeline 134
Jones, Charlie 136
Jones, Cynthia 138
Jones, Edmund 141
Jones, Eliza 143
Jones, Evelyn 145
Jones, John 148
Jones, John 149
Jones, Lidia (Lydia) 151, 153
Jones, Liza (Cookie) 155
Jones, Lucy 158
Jones, Mary 159
Jones, Mary 163
Jones, Nannie 164
Jones, Reuben 166
Jones, Vergil 169
Jones, Walter 171
Junell, Oscar Felix 173
Keaton, Sam 175
Kendricks, Tines 177, 186
Kennedy, Frank 189
Kerns, Adreanna [TR: Adrianna?] W. 191
Key, George 196
Key, Lucy 198
King, Anna 201, 205
King, Mose 207
King, Susie 210
Kirk, William 214
Krump, Betty 216
Kyles, Rev. Preston 220, 222
Lagrone, Susa 223
Laird, Barney A. 225
Lamar, Arey 228
Lambert, Solomon 229
Larkin, Frank 235, 236, 239
Lattimore, William 242
Lawsom, Bessie 244
Lee, Henry 247
Lee, Mandy 250
Lee, Mary 251
Lewis, Talitha 252
Lindsay, Abbie 255
Lindsey, Rosa 260
Little, William 262
Lofton, Minerva 264
Lofton, Robert 267
Logan, John H. 274
Lomack, Elvie 281
Long, Henry 284
Love, Annie 290
Love, Needham 292
Lucas, Louis 297
Luckado, Lizzie 304
Luckett, John 306
Lynch, John 307
Lynch, Josephine Scott 310
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Clarice Jackson
Eighteenth and Virginia, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 82
"I was six or seven when they begin goin' to the Civil War. We had a
big old pasture opposite and I know they would bring the soldiers
there and drill 'em.
"Oh my God, don't talk about slavery. They kept us in so you know we
couldn't go around.
"But if they kept 'em a little closer now, the world would be a better
place. I'm so glad I raised my children when they was raisin'
children. If I told 'em to do a thing, they did it 'cause I would
always know what was best. I got here first you know.
"People now'days is just shortening their lives. The Lord is pressin'
us now tryin' to press us back. But thank God I'm saved.
"Did you ever see things like they is now?
"I looks at the young folks and it seems like they is all in a
hurry--looks like they is on the last round.
"These here seabirds, (a music machine called seaburg--ed.) is ruinin'
the young folks.
"I feels my age now, but I thank the Lord I got a home and got a
little income.
"My children can't help me--ain't got nothin' to help with but a
little washin'. My daughter been bustin' the suds for a livin' 'bout
thirty-two years now.
"I never went to school. My dad put me to work after freedom and then
when schools got so numerous, I got too big. Ain't but one thing I
want to learn this side of the River, is to read the Bible. I wants to
confirm Jesus' words.
"The fus' place we went after we left the home place durin' of the
war, we went to Wolf Creek. And then they pressed 'em so close we went
to Red River. And they pressed 'em so close again we went to Texas and
that's where we was when freedom come.
"That was in July and they closed the crap (crop) and then six weeks
'fore Christmas they loaded the wagons and started back to Arkansas.
We come back to the Johnson place and stayed there three years, then
my father rented the Alexander place on the Tamo.
"I stayed right there till I married. I married quite young, but I had
a good husband. I ain't sayin' this just 'cause he's sleepin' but
ever'body will tell you he was good to me. Made a good livin' and I
wore what I wanted to.
"He come from South Carolina way before the war. Come from Abbeville.
They was emigratin' the folks.
"I tell you all I can, but I won't tell you nothin' but the truth."
Interviewer's Comment
Owns her home and lives on the income from rental property.
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Clarice Jackson
1738 Virginia Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 84
"Was I here in slavery days? Well, I remember when the soldiers went
to war. Oh, I'm old--I ain't no baby. But I been well taken care of--I
been treated well.
"I was bred and born right here in Arkansas and been livin' here all
the time 'cept when they said the Yankees was comin'. I know we was
just closin' up a crop. They put us in wagons and carried us to Wolf
Creek in Texas and then they carried us to Red River. That was because
it would be longer 'fore we found out we was free and they would get
more work out a us.
"Old master's name was Robert Johnson and they called him Bob.
"After freedom they brought us back to Arkansas and put the colored
folks to workin' on the shares. Yes'm they said they got their share.
They looked like they was well contented. They stayed three or four
years. We was treated more kinder and them that was not big enough to
work was let go to school. I went to school awhile and then I had a
hard spell of sickness--it was this slow fever. I was sick five or six
weeks and it was a long time 'fore I could get my health so I didn't
try to go to school no more. Seemed like I forgot everything I knowed.
"When I was fifteen I got tired of workin' so hard so I got married,
but I found out things was wusser. But my husband was good to me. Yes
ma'm, he was a good man and nice to me. He was a good worker. He was
deputy assessor under Mr. Triplett and he was a deputy sheriff and
then he was a magistrate. Oh, he was a up-to-date man. He went to
school after we was married and wanted me to go but I thought too much
of my childun. When he died, 'bout two years ago, he left me this
house and two rent houses. Yes ma'm, he was a good man.
"They ain't nothin' to this here younger generation. Did you ever see
'em goin' so fast? They won't take time to let you tell 'em anything.
They is in a hurry. The world is too fast for me, but thank the Lord
my childun is all settled. I got some nieces and nephews though that
is goin' too fast.
"Yes'm, I'm gettin' along all right. I ain't got nothin' to complain
of."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Israel Jackson
3505 Short Second, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 78
"My name's Israel Jackson. No ma'am, I wasn't born in Arkansas--born
in Yaller Bush County, Mississippi August de third, 1860.
"My old master? Called him General--General Bradford. I don't know
where he was but he was gone somewhere. Don't know her name--just
called her missis.
"Yas'm, I was big enough to work. Dey had me to lead out my young
master's horse on de grass. I had a halter on it and one time I laid
down and went to sleep. I had de rope tied to my leg and when it come
twelve o'clock de horse drag me clear to de house. No ma'am, I didn't
wake up till I got to de house. It was my young master's saddle horse.
"Yas'm, I knowed dey was a war 'cause de men come past just as thick.
No'm, I wasn't afraid. I kept out of de way. Old missis wouldn't let
us get in de way. I 'member dey stopped dere and told us we was free.
Lots of de folks went off but my mother kept workin' in de field, and
my father didn't leave.
"Old master had us go by his name. Dat's what dey called 'em--all de
hands on de place.
"I thought from boyhood he was awful cruel. Didn't 'low us chillun in
de white folks' house at all. Had one woman dat cooked. Dey was fifty
or a hundred chillun on de place and dey had a big long trough dug out
of a log and each chile had a spoon and he'd eat out of dat trough.
Yas'm, I 'member dat. Eat greens and milk. As for meat, we didn't know
what dat was. My mother would go huntin' at night and get a 'possum
to feed us and sometimes old master would ketch her and take it away
from her and give her a piece of salt meat. But sometimes she'd bury a
'possum till she had a chance to cook it. And dey'd take sackin' like
you make cotton sacks and dye it and make us clothes.
"When de conch would blow at four o'clock every mornin' everybody got
up and got ready for de field. Dey'd take dere chillun up to dat big
long house. When mother went to de field I'd go along and lead de
horse till I got to where dey was workin', then I'd sit down and let
the horse eat. I was young and it's been so long.
"No ma'am, I never went to school. No ma'am, can't read or write.
Never had no schools as I remember.
"Dey stayed on de place after freedom. No ma'am, dey did not pay 'em.
I'se old but I ain't forgot dat. Dey fed theirselves by stealin' and
gettin' things in de woods.
"After dem Blue Jackets come in dere General Bradford never did come
back and our folks stayed dere and when dey did leave dey went to
Sunflower County. After dat we got along better.
"How many brothers and sisters? I b'lieve I had five.
"I stayed with my parents till I was grown. No ma'am, dey didn't 'low
us to marry. When we was twenty we was neither man nor boy; we was
considered a hobble-de-hoy. And when we got to be twenty-one we was
considered a man and your parents turned you loose, a man. So I left
home and went to Louisiana. I stayed dere a year, then I went back to
Mississippi and worked. I come here to Arkansas twenty-six years ago.
Is dis Jefferson? Well, I come here to de west end.
"Since I been here I been workin' at de foundry--Dilley's foundry.
"'Bout two years ago I got sick and broke up and not able to work and
Mr. Dilley give me a pension--ten dollars a month. But de wages and
hour got here now and I don't know what he's gwine do. When de next
pay-day comes he might give me somethin' and he might not.
"Miss, de white folks has done so bad here dat I don't know what dey's
gwine a do. Mr. Ed and his father been takin' care of me for twenty
years. Dey sure has been takin' care of me. Miss, I can't find no
fault of Mr. Ed Dilley at all.
"I can do a little light work but when I work half a day I get nervous
and can't do nothin'.
"No ma'am, I never did vote. Dey didn't 'low us to vote. Well, if dey
did I didn't know it and I didn't vote.
"Well, Miss, I think de young folks is near to de dogs and de dogs
ought to have 'em and bury 'em. Miss, I don't 'cept none of 'em. I
wouldn't want to go on and tell you how dey has treated me. Dey ain't
no use to ask 'cause I ain't gwine tell you. The people is more wicked
and more wuss and ever'thing. I don't think nothin' of 'em.
"Miss, let me tell you de only folks dat showed me any friendly is Mr.
Ed Dilley. I worked out dere night and day, Sunday and Monday--any
time he called.
"Miss, I ain't never seen any jail house; I ain't never been to police
headquarters; I ain't never been called a witness in my life. I try to
live right, all I know, and if I do wrong it's somethin' I don't know.
I ain't had dat much trouble in my life.
"I went up here to Judge Brewster to see about de pension and he said,
'Got a home?' I said, 'Yes.' 'Got it paid for?' 'Yes.' 'Got a deed?'
'Yes.' 'Got a abstract?' 'Yes.' 'Well, bring it up here and sign it
and go get de pension.'
"But I wouldn't do it. Miss, I would starve till I was as stiff as a
peckerwood peckin' at a hole 'fore I'd sign anything on my deed. Miss,
I wouldn't put a scratch on my deed. I wouldn't trust 'em, wouldn't
trust 'em if dey was behind a Winchester."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Lula Jackson
1808 Valentine Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 79?
"I was born in Alabama, Russell County, on a place called Sand Ridge,
about seven miles out from Columbus, Georgia. Bred and born in
Alabama. Come out here a young gal. Wasn't married when I come out
here. Married when a boy from Alabama met me though. Got his picture.
Lula Williams! That was my name before I married. How many sisters do
you have? That's another question they ask all the time; I suppose you
want to know, too. Two. Where are they? That's another one of them
questions they always askin' me. You want to know it, too? I got one
in Clarksdale, Mississippi. And the other one is in Philadelphia; no,
I mean in Philipp city, Tallahatchie (county). Her name is Bertha
Owens and she lives in Philipp city. What state is Philipp city in?
That'll be the next question. It is in Mississippi, sir. Now is thar
anything else you'd like to know?
"My mother's name was Bertha Williams and my father's name was Fred
Williams. I don't know nothing 'bout mama's mother. Yes, her name was
Crecie. My father's mother was named Sarah. She got killed by
lightning. Crecie's husband was named John Oliver. Sarah's husband was
named William Daniel. Early Hurt was mama's master. He had an awful
name and he was an awful man. He whipped you till he'd bloodied you
and blistered you. Then he would cut open the blisters and drop
sealing-wax in them and in the open wounds made by the whips.
"When the Yankees come in, his wife run in and got in the bed between
the mattresses. I don't see why it didn't kill her. I don't know how
she stood it. Early died when the Yankees come in. He was already
sick. The Yankees come in and said, 'Did you know you are on the
Yankee line?'
"He said, 'No, by God, when did that happen?'
"They said, 'It happened tonight, G----D---- you.'
"And he turned right on over and done everything on hisself and died.
He had a eatin' cancer on his shoulder.
Schooling, Etc.
"My mother had so many children that I didn't get to go to school
much. She had nineteen children, and I had to stay home and work to
help take care of them. I can't write at all.
"I went to school in Alabama, 'round on a colored man's place--Mr.
Winters. That was near a little town called Fort Mitchell and Silver
Rim where they put the men in jail. I was a child. Mrs. Smith, a white
woman from the North, was the second teacher that I had. The first was
Mr. Croler. My third teacher was a man named Mr. Nelson. All of these
was white. They wasn't colored teachers. After the War, that was. I
have the book I used when I went to school. Here is the little
Arithmetic I used. Here is the Blue Back Speller. I have a McGuffy's
Primer too. I didn't use that. I got that out of the trash basket at
the white people's house where I work. One day they throwed it out.
That is what they use now, ain't it?
"Here is a book my husband give me. He bought it for me because I told
him I wanted a second reader. He said, 'Well, I'll go up to the store
and git you one.' Plantation store, you know. He had that charged to
his account.
"I used to study my lesson. I turned the whole class down once. It was
a class in spelling. I turned the class down on
'Publication'--p-u-b-l-i-c-a-t-i-o-n. They couldn't spell that. But
I'll tell the world they could spell it the next day.
"My teacher had a great big crocus sack, and when she got tired of
whipping them, she would put them in the sack. She never did put me in
that sack one time. I got a whipping mos' every day. I used to fight,
and when I wasn't fightin' for myself, I'd be fighting for other
children that would be scared to fight for theirselves, and I'd do
their fighting for them.
"That whippin' in your hand is the worst thing you ever got. Brother,
it hurts. I put a teacher in jail that'd whip one of my children in
the hand.
Occupational History and Family
"My mama said I was six years old when the War ended and that I was
born on the first day of October. During the War, I run up and down
the yard and played, and run up and down the street and played; and
when I would make too much noise, they'd whip me and send me back to
my mother and tell her not to whip me no more, because they had
already done it. I would help look after my mother's children. There
were five children younger than I was. Everywhere she went, the white
people would want me to nurse their children, because they said, 'That
little rawboneded one is goin' to be the smartest one you got. I want
her.' And my ma would say:
"'You ain't goin' to git 'er.' She had two other girls--Martha and
Sarah. They was older than me, and she would hire them out to do
nursing. They worked for their master during slave time, and they
worked for money after slavery.
"My mama's first husband was killed in a rasslin' (wrestling) match.
It used to be that one man would walk up to another and say, 'You
ain't no good.' And the other one would say, 'All right, le's see.'
And they would rassle.
"My mother's first husband was pretty old. His name was Myers. A young
man come up to him one Sunday morning when they were gettin'
commodities. They got sorghum, meat, meal, and flour; if what they got
wasn't enough, then they would go out and steal a hog. Sometime they'd
steal it anyhow; they got tired of eatin' the same thing all the time.
Hurt would whip them for it. Wouldn't let the overseer whip them. Whip
them hisself. 'Fraid the overseer wouldn't give them enough. They
never could find my grandfather's meat. That was Grandfather William
Down. They couldn't find his meat because he kept it hidden in a hole
in the ground. It was under the floor of the cabin.
"Old Myers made this young man rassle with him. The young fellow
didn't want to rassle with him; he said Myers was too old. Myers
wasn't my father; he was my mother's first husband. The young man
threw him. Myers wasn't satisfied with that. He wanted to rassle
again. The young man didn't want to rassle again. But Myers made him.
And the second time, the young man threw him so hard that he broke his
collar-bone. My mother was in a family way at the time. He lived about
a week after that, and died before the baby was born.
"My mother's second husband was named Fred Williams, and he was my
father. All this was in slavery times. I am his oldest child. He
raised all his children and all his stepchildren too. He and my mother
lived together for over forty years, until she was more than seventy.
He was much younger than she was--just eighteen years old when he
married her. And she was a woman with five children. But she was a
real wife to him. Him and her would fight, too. She was jealous of
him. Wouldn't be none of that with me. Honey, when you hit me once,
I'm gone. Ain't no beatin' on me and then sleepin' in the same bed
with you. But they fit and then they lived together right on. No
matter what happened, his clean clothes were ready whenever he got
ready to go out of the house--even if it was just to go to work. His
meals were ready whenever he got ready to eat. They were happy
together till she died.
"But when she died, he killed hisself courtin'. He was a young
preacher. He died of pneumonia. He was visiting his daughter and got
exposed to the weather and didn't take care of hisself.
"Right after the War, I was hired as a half-a-hand. After that I got
larger and was hired as a whole hand, me and the oldest girl. I worked
on one farm and then another for years. I married the first time when
I was fifteen years old. That was almost right after slave time. Four
couples of us were married at the same time. They lived close to me. I
didn't want my husband to git in the bed with me when I married the
first time. I didn't have no sense. I was a Christian girl.
"Frank Sampson was his name. It rained the day we married. I got my
feet wet. My husband brought me home and then he turned 'round and
went back to where the wedding was. They had a reception, and they
danced and had a good time. Sampson could dance, too, but I didn't. A
little before day, he come back and said to me--I was layin' in the
middle of the bed--'Git over.' I called to mother and told her he
wanted to git in the bed with me. She said, 'Well, let him git in.
He's yo'r husband now.'
"Frank Sampson and me lived together about twenty years before he got
killed, and then I married Andrew Jackson. He had children and
grandchildren. I don't know what was the matter with old man Jackson.
He was head deacon of the church. We only stayed together a year or
more.
"I have been single ever since 1923, jus' bumming 'round white folks
and tryin' to work for them and makin' them give me somethin' to eat.
I ain't been tryin' to fin' no man. When I can't fin' no cookin' and
washin' and ironin' to do, I used to farm. I can't farm now, and
'course I can't git no work to do to amount to nothin'. They say I'm
too old to work.
"The Welfare helps me. Don't know what I'd do if it wasn't for them. I
git some commodities too, but I don't git any wood. Some people says
they pay house rent, but they never paid none of mine. I had to go to
Marianna and git my application straight before I could git any help.
They charged me half a dollar to fix out the application. The Welfare
wanted to know how I got the money to pay for the application if I
didn't have money to live on. I had to git it, and I had to git the
money to go to Marianna, too. If I hadn't, I never would have got no
help.
Husband's Death
"I told you my first husband got killed. The mule run away with his
plow and throwed him a summerset. His head was where his heels should
have been, he said, and the mule dragged him. His chest was crushed,
and mashed. His face was cut and dirtied. He lived nine days and a
half after he was hurt and couldn't eat one grain of rice. I never
left his bedside 'cept to cook a little broth for him. That's all he
would eat--just a little broth.
"He said to his friend, 'See this little woman of mine? I hate to
leave her. She's just such a good little woman. She ain't got no
business in this world without a husband.'
"And his friend said to him, 'Well, you might as well make up your
mind you got to leave her, 'cause you goin' to do it.'
"He got hurt on Thursday and I couldn't git a doctor till Friday. Dr.
Harper, the plantation doctor, had got his house burned and his hands
hurt. So he couldn't come out to help us. Finally Dr. Hodges come. He
come from Sunnyside, Mississippi, and he charge me fourteen dollars.
He just made two trips and he didn't do nothin'.
"Bowls and pitchers were in style then. And I always kept a pitcher of
clean water in the house. I looked up and there was a bunch of men
comin' in the house. It was near dark then. They brought Sampson in
and carried him to the bed and put him down. I said, 'What's the
matter with Frank?' And they said, 'The mule drug him.' And they put
him on the bed and went on out. I dipped a handkerchief in the water
and wet it and put it in his mouth and took out great gobs of dust
where the mule had drug him in the dirt. They didn't nobody help me
with him then; I was there alone with him.
"I started to go for the doctor but he called me back and said it
wasn't no use for me to go. Couldn't git the doctor then, and if I
could, he'd charge too much and wouldn't be able to help him none
nohow. So we wasn't able to git the doctor till the next day, and then
it wasn't the plantation doctor. We had planted fifteen acres in
cotton, and we had ordered five hundred pounds of meat for our winter
supply and laid it up. But Frank never got to eat none of it. They
sent three or four hands over to git their meals with me, and they et
up all the meat and all the other supplies we had. I didn't want it.
It wasn't no use to me when Frank was gone. After they paid the
doctor's bill and took out for the supplies we was supposed to git,
they handed me thirty-three dollars and thirty-five cents. That was
all I got out of fifteen acres of cotton.
Ravelings
"I sew with rav'lin's. Here is some rav'lin's I use. I pull that out
of tobacco sacks, flour sacks, anything, when I don't have the money
to buy a spool of thread. I sew right on just as good with the
rav'lin's as if it was thread. Tobacco sacks make the best rav'lin's.
I got two bags full of tobacco sacks that I ain't unraveled yet. There
is a man down town who saves them for me. When a man pulls out a sack
he says, 'Save that sack for me, I got an old colored lady that makes
thread out of tobacco sacks.' These is what he has give me. (She
showed the interviewer a sack which had fully a gallon of little
tobacco sacks in it--ed.)
"They didn't use rav'lin's in slave time. They spun the thread. Then
they balled it. Then they twisted it, and then they sew with it. They
didn't use rav'lin's then, but they used them right after the War.
"My mama used to say, 'Come here, Lugenia.' She and me would work
together. She wanted me to reel for her. Ain't you never seen these
reels? They turn like a spinning-wheel, but it is made indifferent.
You turn till the thing pops, then you tie it; then it's ready to go
to the loom. It is in hanks after it leaves the reel and it is pretty,
too.
Present Condition
"I used to live in a four-room house. They charged me seven dollars
and a half a month for it. They fixed it all up and then they wanted
to charge ten dollars, and it wouldn't have been long before they went
up to fifteen. So I moved. This place ain't so much. I pays five
dollars and a half for it. When it rains, I have to go outside to keep
from gittin' too wet. But I cut down the weeds all around the place. I
planted some flowers in the front yard, and some vegetables in the
back. That all helps me out. When I go to git commodities, I walk to
the place. I can't stand the way these people act on the cars. Of
course, when I have a bundle, I have to use the car to come back. I
just put it on my head and walk down to the car line and git on. Lord,
my mother used to carry some bundles on her head."
Interviewer's Comment
According to the marriage license issued at the time of her last
marriage in 1922, Andrew Jackson was sixty years old, and sister
Jackson was fifty-two. But Andrew Jackson was eighty when sister
Jackson married him, she says. Who can blame him for saying sixty to
the clerk? Sister Jackson admits that she was six years old during the
War and states freely and accurately details of those times, but what
wife whose husband puts only sixty in writing would be willing to
write down more than fifty-two for herself?
Right now at more than seventy-nine, she is spry and jaunty and witty
and good humored. Her house is as clean as a pin, and her yard is the
same.
The McGuffy's Primer which she thinks is used now is a modernized
McGuffy printed in 1908. The book bought for her by her first husband
is an original McGuffy's Second Reader.
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Lula Jackson (supplement) [HW: cf. 30600]
1808 Valentine Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 79
Occupation: Field hand
Whippings
"Early Hurt had an overseer named Sanders. He tied my sister Crecie to
a stump to whip her. Crecie was stout and heavy. She was a grown young
woman and big and strong. Sanders had two dogs with him in case he
would have trouble with anyone. When he started layin' that lash on
Crecie's back, she pulled up that stump and whipped him and the dogs
both.
"Old Early Hurt came up and whipped her hisself. Said, 'Oh, you're too
bad for the overseer to whip, huh?'
"Wasn't no such things as lamps in them days. Jus' used pine knots.
When we quilted, we jus' got a good knot and lighted it. And when that
one was nearly burnt out, we would light another one from it.
"We had a old lady named 'Aunt' Charlotte; she wasn't my aunt, we jus'
called her that. She used to keep the children when the hands were
working. If she liked you she would treat your children well. If she
didn't like you, she wouldn't treat them so good. Her name was
Charlotte Marley. She was too old to do any good in the field; and she
had to take care of the babies. If she didn't like the people, she
would leave the babies' napkins on all day long, wet and filthy.
"My papa's mama, Sarah, was killed by lightning. She was ironing and
was in a hurry to get through and get the supper on for her master,
Early Hurt. I was the oldest child, and I always was scared of
lightning. A dreadful storm was goin' on. I was under the bed and I
heard the thunder bolt and the crash and the fall. I heard mama
scream. I crawled out from under the bed and they had grandma laid out
in the middle of the floor. Mama said, 'Child, all the friend you got
in the world is dead.' Early Hurt was standin' over her and pouring
buckets of water on her. When the doctor come, he said, 'You done
killed her now. If you had jus' laid her out on the ground and let the
rain fall on her, she would have come to, but you done drownded her
now.' She wouldn't have died if it hadn't been for them buckets of
water that Early Hurt throwed in her face.
"Honey, they ain't nothin' as sweet to drink out of as a gourd. Take
the seeds out. Boil the gourd. Scrape it and sun it. There ain't no
taste left. They don't use gourds now."
Interviewer's Comment
Violent death followed Lula Jackson's family like an implacable
avenger. Her father's mother was struck and killed by lightning. Her
mother's first husband was thrown to his death in a wrestling match.
Her own husband was dragged and kicked to death by a mule. Her
brother-in-law, Jerry Jackson, was killed by a horse. But Sister
Jackson is bright and cheery and full of faith in God and man, and
utterly without bitterness.
Interviewer: Thomas Elmore Lucy
Person interviewed: Mary Jackson,
Russellville, Arkansas
Age: 75?
"My name is Mary Jackson, and I was born in Miller Grove, Hunt County,
Texas during the War. No sir, I do not know the year. Our master's
name was Dixon, and he was a wealthy plantation owner, had lots of
property in Hunt County.
"The days after the War--called the Reconstruction days, I
believe--were sure exciting, and I can 'mind' a lot of things the
people did, one of them a big barbecue celebration commemoratin' the
return of peace. They had speeches, and music by the band--and there
were a lot of soldiers carrying guns and wearing some kind of big
breastplates. The white children tried to scare us by telling us the
soldiers were coming to kill us little colored children. The band
played 'Dixie' and other familiar tunes that the people played and
sang in those days.
"Yes sir, I remember the Klu Klux Klan. They sure kept us frightened
and we would always run and hide when we heard they were comin'. I
don't know of any special harm they done but we were afraid of em.
"I have been a member of the A. M. E. Church for forty years, and my
children belong to the same church.
"No sir, I don't know if the government ever promised our folks
anything--money, or land, or anything else.
"Don't ask me anything about this 'new generation' business. They're
simply too much for me; I cannot understand em at all. Don't know
whether they are coming or going. In our day the parents were not near
so lenient as they are today. I think much of the waywardness of the
youth today should be blamed on the parents for being too slack in
their training."
NOTE: Mrs. Jackson and her son live in a lovely cottage, and her taste
in dress and general deportment are a credit to the race.
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Taylor Jackson,
Edmondson, Arkansas
Age: 88?
[Date Stamp: MAY 11 1938]
"I was born two miles from Baltimore, Maryland. I was a good size boy.
My father carried me to see the war flag go up. There was an awful
crowd, one thousand people, there. I had two masters in this country
besides in Virginia. When war was declared there was ten boats of
niggers loaded at Washington and shipped to New Orleans. We stayed in
the 'Nigger Traders Yard' there about three months. But we was not to
be sold. Master Cupps [Culps?] owned father, mother and all of us. If
they gained the victory he was to take us back to Virginia. I never
knowed my grandparents. The yard had a tall brick wall around it. We
had a bunk room, good cotton pads to sleep on and blankets. On one
side they had a wall fixed to go up on from the inside and twelve
platforms. You could see them being sold on the inside and the crowd
on the outside. When they auctioned them off they would come, pick out
what they wanted to sell next and fill them blocks again. They sold
niggers all day long. They come in another drove they had, had men out
buying over the country. They come in thick wood doors with iron nails
bradded through, fastened on big hinges, fastened it with chains and
iron bars. The house was a big red brick house. We didn't get none too
much to eat at that place. I reckon one side was three hundred yard
long of the wall and the house was that long. Some of them in there
cut their hands off with a knife or ax. Well, they couldn't sell
them. Nobody would buy them. I don't know what they ever done with
them. Plenty of them would cut their hand off if they could get
something to cut with to keep from being sold.
"We stayed in that place till Wyley Lions [Lyons?] come and got us in
wagons. He kept us for Master Cupps. Mother was a house girl in
Virginia. She was one more good cook. I started hoeing and picking
cotton in Virginia for master. When I was fourteen years old I done
the same in Mississippi with Wiley Lyons in Mississippi close to
Canton. In Canton, Mississippi Wiley Lyons had the biggest finest
brick house in that country. He had two farms. In Bolivar County was
the biggest. I could hear big shooting from Canton fifteen miles away.
He wasn't mean and he didn't allow the overseers to be mean.
"Hilliard Christmas [a neighbor] was mean to his folks. My father
hired his own time. He raised several ten acre gardens and
watermelons. He paid Mr. Cupp in Virginia. He come to see our folks
how they was getting along.
"A Negro on a joining farm run off. They hunted him with the dogs and
they found him at a log. Heap his legs froze, so the white doctor had
to cut them off. He was on Solomon's farms. After that he got to be a
cooper. He made barrels and baskets--things he could do sittin' in his
chair. They picked him up and made stumps for him. Some folks was
mean.
"My mother was Rachel and my father was Andrew Jackson. I had three
brothers fought in the War. I was too young. They talked of taking me
in a drummer boy the year it ceased. My nephew give me this uniform.
It is warm and it is good. My breeches needs some repairs reason I
ain't got them on. [He has worn a blue uniform for years and
years--ed.]
"There was nine of us children. I got one girl very low now. She's in
Memphis. I been in Arkansas 45 years. I come here jes' drifting
looking out a good location. I never had no dealings with the Ku Klux.
I been farming all my life. Yes, I did like it. I never owned a home
nor no land. I never voted in my life. I had nine children of my own
but only my girl living now.
"Nine or ten years ago I could work every minute. Times was good!
good! Could get plenty work--wood to cut and ditching. It is not that
way now. I can't do a day's work now. I'm failing fast. I feel it.
"Young folks can make a living if they work and try. Some works too
hard and some don't hardly work. Work is scarcer than it ever was to
my knowledge. Times changed and changed the young folks. Mother died
two or three years after the War. My father died first year we come to
Mississippi.
[We went by and took the old Negro to West Memphis. From there he
could take a jitney to Memphis to see his daughter--ed.]
"I ain't never been 'rested. I ain't been to jail. Nearly well be as
so confined with the mud. [We assured him it was nicer to ride in the
car than be in jail--ed.]
"I couldn't tell how many I ever seen sold. I seen some sold in
Virginia, I reckon, or Maryland--one off the boats. They kept them
tied. They was so scared they might do anything, jump in the big
waters. They couldn't talk but to some and he would tell white folks
what he said. [They used an interpreter.] Some couldn't understand one
another if they come from far apart in the foreign country. Slavery
wasn't never bad on me. I never was sold off from my folks and I had
warmer, better clothes 'an I have now. I had plenty to eat, more'an I
has now generally. I had better in slavery than I have now. That is
the truth. I'm telling the truth, I did. Some didn't. One neighbor got
mad and give each hand one ear of corn nine or ten o'clock. They take
it to the cook house and get it made up in hominy. Some would be so
hungry they would parch the corn rather 'an wait. He'd give 'em meal
to make a big kettle of mush. When he was good he done better. Give
'em more for supper.
"Freedom--soldiers come by two miles long look like. We followed them.
There was a crowd following. Wiley Lyons had no children; he adopted a
boy and a girl. Me and the boy was growing up together. Me and the
white boy (fifteen or sixteen years old, I reckon we was) followed
them. They said that was Grant's army. I don't know. 'That made us
free' they told us. The white boy was free, he just went to see what
was happening. We sure did see! We went by Canton to Vicksburg when
fighting quit. Folks rejoiced, and then went back wild. Smart ones
soon got work. Some got furnished a little provisions to help keep
them from starving. Mr. Wiley Lyons come got us after five months. We
hung around my brother that had been in the War. I don't know if he
was a soldier or a waiter. We worked around Master Lyons' house at
Canton till he died. I started farming again with him.
"I get $8 a month pension and high as things is that is a powerful
blessing but it ain't enough to feed me good. It cost more to go after
the commodities up at Marion than they come to [amount to in value]."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Virginia Jackson,
Helena, Arkansas
Age: 74
[Date Stamp: MAY 31 1938]
"Mother said I was born the same year peace was declared. I was born
before the Civil War close, I reckon. I was born in Tunica,
Mississippi. Mother belong to Mistress Cornelia and Master John Hood.
He come from Alabama in wagons and brought mother and whole lot of
'em, she said, to Tunica, Mississippi. My mother and father never
sold. They told me that. She said she was with the master and he give
her to father. He ask her did she want him and ask him if he want her.
They lived on joint places. They slept together on Wednesday and
Saturday nights. He stayed at Hood's place on Sunday. They was owned
by different masters. They didn't never say 'bout stepping over no
broom. He was a Prince. When he died she married a man named Russell.
I never heard her say what his name was. My father was Mathew Prince.
They was both field hands. I never knowed my father. I called my
stepfather popper. I always did say mother.
"Mother said her master didn't tell them it was freedom. Other folks
got told in August. They passed it 'round secretly. Some Yankees come
asked if they was getting paid for picking cotton in September. They
told their master. They told the Yankees 'yes' 'cause they was afraid
they would be run off and no place to go. They said Master Hood paid
them well for their work at cotton selling time. He never promised
them nothing. She said he never told one of them to leave or to stay.
He let 'em be. I reckon they got fed. I wore cotton sack dresses. It
wasn't bagging. It was heavy stiff cloth.
"Mother and her second husband come to Forrest City. They hoped they
could do better. I come too. I worked in the field all my whole life
'cepting six years I worked in a laundry. I washed and ironed. I am a
fine ironer. If I was younger I could get all the mens' shirts I could
do now. I do a few but I got neuralgia in my arms and shoulders.
"I don't believe in talking 'bout my race. They always been lazy folks
and smart folks, and they still is. The present times is good for me.
I'm so thankful. I get ten dollars and some help, not much. I don't go
after it. I let some that don't get much as I get have it. I told 'em
to do that way."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: William Jackson
Route 6, Box 81, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 84
"Me? Well, I was born July 12, 1853. Now you can figure that up.
"I was sold four times in slavery times. I was sold through the nigger
traders and you know they didn't keep you long.
"I was born in Tennessee, raised in Mississippi, and been here in
Arkansas up and down the Arkansas River ever since I was fifteen.
"A fellow bought me in Tennessee and sold me to a fellow named Abe
Collins in Mississippi. He sold me to Dr. Maloney and then Winn and
Trimble in Hempstead County bought me. They run a tanyard.
"I went to school one day in my life. My third master's children
learned me my ABC's in slavery times. I'm not educated but I can read.
Read the Bible and something like that.
"The Ku Klux run me one night. They come to the door and I went out
the window. They went to my master's tanyard in broad open day and
took leather. Oh, I been all through the roughness. But the Lord has
blessed me ever since I been in this world. I can see good and hear
good and get about.
"I come here to Arkansas with some refugees, and I been up and down
the river ever since.
"In slavery times I had plenty to eat, such as 'twas. Had biscuits on
Sunday made out of shorts.
"I lived with one man, Dr. Maloney, who was pretty cruel. I run away
from him once, but he caught me fore night. Put me in a little house
on bread and water for three or four days and then he sold me. Said he
wouldn't have a nigger that would run away. Otherwise I been treated
pretty well.
"I come to Pine Bluff in '82. Last place I farmed was at what they
call the Nichol place.
"I used to vote Republican--wouldn't let us vote nothin' else. In this
country they won't let niggers vote in the primary 'cause they can
vote in the presidential election. I held one office--justice of the
peace.
"If the younger generation don't change, the Lord goin' to put curses
on em. That's just what's goin' to come of em. More you do for em the
worse they is. Don't think about the future--just today."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Lawson Jamar,
Edmondson, Arkansas
Age: 66
[Date Stamp: MAY 11 1938]
"Papa had twelve children and when he died he lef' two and now I am
all the big family left.
"Mama was born in Huntsville, Alabama. I was born there too. She was
Liza, b'long to Tom and Unis Martin. Papa b'long to Mistress Sarah and
Jack Jamar. They had to work hard. They had to do good work. They had
to not slight their work. Papa's main job was to carry water to the
hands. He said it kept him on the go. They had more than one water
boy. They had to go to the wash hole before they went to bed and wash
clean. The men had a place and the women had their place. They didn't
have to get in if it was cold but they had to wash off.
"They hauled a wagon load of axes or hoes and lef' 'em in the field so
they could get 'em. Then they would haul plows, hoes or axes to the
shop to be fixed up. They had two or three sets. They worked from
early till late. They had a cook house. They cooked at their own
houses when the work wasn't pushing. When they got behind they would
work in the moonlight. If they got through they all went and help some
neighbor two or three nights and have a big supper sometimes. They
done that on Saturday nights, go home and sleep all day Sunday.
"If they didn't have time to wash and clean the houses and the beds
some older women would do that and tend to the babies. They had a hard
time during the War. It was hard after the War. Papa brought me to
this country to farm. He farmed till he started sawmilling for
Chappman Dewy at Marked Tree. Then he swept out and was in the office
to help about. He never owned nothing. He come and I farmed. He helped
a little. He was so old. He talked more about the War and slavery. I
always have farmed. Farmed all my life.
"I don't farm now. I got asthma and cripple with rheumatism. What my
wife and children can't do ain't done now. [Three children.] I don't
get no help but I applied for it.
"Present times is all right where a man can work. The present
generation rather do on heap less and do less work. They ain't got
manners and raisin' like I had. They don't know how to be polite. We
tries to learn 'em [their children] how to do."
NOTE: The woman was black and so was the cripple Negro man; their
house was clean, floors, bed, tables, chairs. Very good warm house.
They couldn't remember the old tales the father told to tell them to
me.
Interviewer: Thomas Elmore Lucy
Person interviewed: Nellie James,
Russellville, Arkansas
Age: 72
"Nellie James is my name. Yes, Mr. D. B. James was my husband, and he
remembered you very kindly. They call me 'Aunt Nellie.' I was born in
Starkville, Ouachita County, Mississippi the twenty-ninth of March, in
1866, just a year after the War closed. My parents were both owned by
a plantation farmer in Ouachita County, Mississippi, but we came to
Arkansas a good many years ago.
"My husband was principal of the colored school here at Russellville
for thirty-five years, and people, both white and black, thought a
great deal of him. We raised a family of six children, five boys and a
girl, and they now live in different states, some of them in
California. One of my sons is a doctor in Chicago and is doing well.
They were all well educated. Mr. James saw to that of course.
"So far as I remember from what my parents said, the master was
reasonably kind to all his slaves, and my husband said the same thing
about his own master although he was quite young at the time they were
freed. (Yes sir, you see he was born in slavery.)
"I was too young to remember much about the Ku Klux Klan, but I
remember we used to be afraid of them and we children would run and
hide when we heard they were coming.
"No sir, I have never voted, because we always had to pay a dollar for
the privilege--and I never seemed to have the dollar (laughingly) to
spare at election time. Mr. James voted the Republican ticket
regularly though.
"All our family were Missionary Baptists. I united with the Baptist
church when I [HW: was] thirteen years old.
"I think the young people of both races are growing wilder and wilder.
The parents today are too slack in raising them--too lenient. I don't
know where they are headed, what they mean, what they want to do, or
what to expect of them. And I'm too busy and have too hard a time
trying to make ends meet to keep up with their carryings-on."
NOTE: Mrs. Nellie James, widow of Prof. D. B. James, one of the most
successful Negro teachers who ever served in Russellville, is a quiet,
refined woman, a good housekeeper, and has reared a large and
successful family. She speaks with good, clear diction, and has none
of the brogue that is characteristic of the colored race of the
South.
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Robert James
4325 W. Eighth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 66, or older
Occupation: Cook
"I was born in Lexington, Mississippi, in the year 1872. My mother's
name was Florida Hawkins. Florida James was her slavery name. David
Jones was her old master. That was in Mississippi--the good old
country! People hate it because they don't like the name but it was a
mighty good country when I was there. The white people there were
better to the colored people when I was there than they are here. But
there is a whole lots of places that is worse than Arkansas.
"I have been here forty-eight years and I haven't had any trouble with
nobody, and I have owned three homes in my time. My nephew and my
brother happened to meet up with each other in France. They thought
about me and wrote and told me about it. And I writ to my sister in
Chicago following up their information and got in touch with my
people. Didn't find them out till the great war started. Had to go to
Europe to find my relatives. My sister's people and mine too were born
in Illinois, but my mother and two sisters and another brother were
born in Mississippi. Their kin born in Illinois were half-brothers and
so on.
Refugeeing--Ghosts
"I heard my mother say that her master and them had to refugee them to
keep them from the Yankees. She told a ghost tale on that. I guess it
must have been true.
"She said they all hitched up and put them in the wagon and went to
driving down the road. Night fell and they came to a big two-story
house. They went to bed. The house was empty, and they couldn't raise
nobody; so they just camped there for the night. After they went to
bed, big balls of fire came rolling down the stairs. They all got
scared and run out of the house and camped outside for the night.
There wasn't no more sleeping in that house.
"Some people believe in ghosts and some don't. What do you believe?
This is what I have seen myself. Mules and horses were running 'round
screaming and hollering every night. One day, I was walking along when
I saw a mule big as an elephant with ears at least three feet long and
eyes as big as auto lamps. He was standing right in the middle of the
road looking at me and making no motion to move. I was scared to
death, but I stooped down to pick up a stone. It wasn't but a second.
But when I raised up, he had vanished. He didn't make a sound. He just
disappeared in a second. That was in the broad open daylight. That was
what had been causing all the confusion with the mules and horses.
"When I first married I used to room with an old lady named Johnson.
Time we went to bed and put the light out, something would open the
doors. Finally I got scared and used to tell my wife to get up and
close the doors. Finally she got skittish about it. There used to be
the biggest storms around there and yet you couldn't see nothin'.
There wasn't no rain nor nothin'. Just sounds and noises like storms.
My wife comes to visit me sometimes now.
"My mother says there wasn't any such thing as marriage in slave
times. Old master jus' said, 'There's your husband, Florida.'"
Little Rock District
FOLKLORE SUBJECTS
Name of Interviewer: Irene Robertson
Subject: HISTORY OF ELLIS JEFFERSON--(NEGRO)
Story--Information (If not enough space on this page add page.)
This Information given by: Ellis Jefferson (Uncle Jeff) (C)
Place of Residence: Hazen, Arkansas
Occupation: Superanuated Minister of the M. E. Church
Age: 77
[TR: Personal information moved from bottom of form.]
He has his second eyesight and his hair is short and white. He is a
black skinned, bright-eyed old man. "Uncle Jeff" said he remembered
when the Civil War had ended they passed by where he lived with teams,
wagons filled, and especially the artillery wagon. They were carrying
them back to Washington. His mother was freed from Mrs. Nancy Marshall
of Roanoke, Va. She moved and brought his mother, he and his sister,
Ann, to Holly Springs, Miss. The county was named for his mistress:
Marshall County, Mississippi.
In 1868 they moved to [HW: within] 4 miles of DeWitt and 10 miles of
Arkansas Post. Later they moved to Kansas and near Wichita then back
to Marshall, Texas. His sister has four sons down there. He thinks she
is still living. His Mistress went back to Roanoke, Va., and his
mother died at Marshall. Tom Marshall was his Master's name, but he
seems to have died in the Civil War. This old Uncle Jeff lived in
Alabama and has preached there and in northern Mississippi and near
Helena, Arkansas. He helped cook at Helena in a hotel. He preaches
some but the WPA supports him now. Uncle Jeff can't remember his
dreams he said "The Bible says, young men dream dreams and old men see
visions."
He had a real vision once, he was going late one afternoon to get his
mules up and he heard a voice "I have a voice I want you to complete.
Carry my word." He was a member of the church but he made a profession
and a year later was ordained into the ministry. He believes in
dreams. Says they are warnings.
Uncle Jeff says he has written some poetry but it has all been lost.
When anyone dies the sexton goes to the church and tolls the bell as
many times as the dead person is old. They take the body to the church
for the night and they gather there and watch. He believes the soul
rises from the ground on the Resurrection Day. He believes some people
can put a "spell" on other people. He said that was witchery.
[HW: Marshall County, Miss., named for John Marshall of Virginia,
Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, 1801-35. _History of
Marshall (County), Mississippi_, by Clayton M. Alexander.]
FOLKLORE SUBJECTS
Name of Interviewer: S. S. Taylor
Subject: [HW: Moses Jeffries]
Story--Information (If not enough space on this page add page.)
This information given by: Moses E. Jeffries
Place of Residence: 1110 Izard Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Occupation: Plasterer
Age: 81 [TR: Age: 75 on 4th page of form.]
[TR: Personal information moved from bottom of form.]
"I was born in 1856. My age was kept with the cattle. As a rule, you
know, slaves were chattels. There was a fire and the Bible in which
the ages were kept was lost. The man who owned me couldn't remember
what month I was born in. Out of thirteen children, my mother could
only remember the age of one. I had twelve brothers and sisters--Bob
Lacy, William Henry, Cain Cecil, Jessie, Charles, Harvey, Johnnie,
Anna, Rose, Hannah, Lucy, and Thomas. I am the only one living now. My
parents were both slaves. My father has been dead about fifty-nine
years and my mother about sixty or sixty-one years. She died before I
married and I have been married fifty years. I have them in my Bible.
I remember when Lincoln was elected president and they said there was
going to be war. I remember when they had [HW: a] slave market in New
Orleans. I was living betweeen [TR: between] Pine Bluff and New
Orleans (living in Arkansas) and saw the slaves chained together as
they were brought through my place and located somewhere on some of
the big farms or plantations.
I never saw any of the fighting but I did see some of the Confederate
armies when they were retreating near the end of the war. I was just
about ten years old at the time and was in Marshall, Texas.
The man that owned me said to the old people that they were free,
that they didn't belong to him any more, that Abraham Lincoln had set
them free. Of course, I didn't know what freedom was. They brought the
news to them one evening, and them niggers danced nearly all night.
I remember also seeing a runaway slave. We saw the slaves first, and
the dogs came behind chasing them. They passed through our field about
half an hour ahead of the hounds, but the dogs would be trailing them.
The hunters didn't bother to stop and question us because they knew
the hounds were on the trail. I have known slaves to run away and stay
three years at a time. Master would whip them and they would run away.
They wouldn't have no place to go or stay so they would come back
after a while. Then they would be punished again. They wouldn't punish
them much, however, because they might run off again.
MARRIAGE
If I went on a plantation and saw a girl I wanted to marry, I would
ask my master to buy her for me. It wouldn't matter if she were
somebody else's wife; she would become mine. The master would pay for
her and bring her home and say, "John, there's your wife. That is all
the marriage there would be. Yellow women used to be a novelty then.
You wouldn't see one-tenth as many then as now. In some cases,
however, a man would retain his wife even after she had been sold
away from him and would have permission to visit her from time to
time.
INHERITANCE OF SLAVES
If a man died, he often stated in his will which slaves should go to
each child he had. Some men had more than a hundred slaves and they
divided them up just as you would cattle. Some times there were
certain slaves that certain children liked, and they were granted
those slaves.
WHAT THE FREEDMEN RECEIVED
Nothing was given to my parents at freedom. None of the niggers got
anything. They didn't give them anything. The slaves were hired and
allowed to work the farms on shares. That is where the system of share
cropping came from. I was hired for fifty dollars a year, but was paid
only five. The boss said he owed me fourteen dollars but five was all
I got. I went down town and bought some candy. It was the first time I
had had that much money.
I couldn't do anything about the pay. They didn't give me any land.
They hired me to work around the house and I ate what the boss ate.
But the general run of slaves got pickled pork, molasses, cornmeal and
sometimes flour (about once a week for Sunday). The food came out of
the share of the share cropper.
You can tell what they did by what they do now. It (share cropping)
hasn't changed a particle since. About Christmas was the time they
usually settled up. Nobody was forced to remain as a servant. I know
one thing,--Negroes did not go to jail and penitentiary like they do
now.
KU KLUX KLAN
The Ku Klux Klan to the best of my knowledge went into action about
the time shortly after the war when the amendments to the Constitution
gave the Negroes the right to vote. I have seen them at night dressed
up in their uniform. They would visit every Negro's house in the
comunity [TR: community]. Some they would take out and whip, some they
would scare to death. They would ask for a drink of water and they had
some way of drinking a whole bucketful to impress the Negroes that
they were supernatural. Negroes were very superstitious then. Colonel
Patterson who was a Republican and a colonel or general of the
militia, white and colored, under the governorship of Powell Clayton,
stopped the operation of the Klan in this state. After his work, they
ceased terrorizing the people.
POLITICAL OFFICIALS
Many an ex-slave was elected sheriff, county clerk, probate clerk,
Pinchback[A] was elected governor in Louisiana. The first Negro
congressman was from Mississippi and a Methodist preacher Hiram
Revells[B]. We had a Nigger superintendent of schools of the state of
Arkansas, J. C. Corbin[C]--I don't remember just when, but it was in
the early seventies. He was also president of the state school in Pine
Bluff--organized it.
SUFFRAGE
The ex-slave voted like fire directly after the war. That was about
all that did vote then. If the Niggers hadn't voted they never would
have been able to elect Negroes to office.
I was elected Alderman once in Little Rock under the administration of
Mayer Kemer. We had Nigger coroner, Chief of Police, Police Judge,
Policemen. Ike Gillam's father was coroner. Sam Garrett was Chief of
Police; Judge M. W. Gibbs was Police Judge. He was also a receiver of
public lands. So was J. E. Bush, who founded the Mosaics [HW: (Modern
Mosaic Templars of America)]. James W. Thompson, Bryant Luster, Marion
H. Henderson, Acy L. Richardson, Childress' father-in-law, were all
aldermen. James P. Noyer Jones was County Clerk of Chicot County, S.
H. Holland, a teacher of mine, a little black nigger about five feet
high, as black as ink, but well educated was sheriff of Desha County.
Augusta had a Negro who was sheriff. A Negro used to hold good offices
in this state.
I charge the change to Grant. The Baxter-Brooks matter caused it.
Baxter was a Southern Republican from the Northeastern part of the
state, Batesville, a Southern man who took sides with the North in the
war. Brooks was a Methodist preacher from the North somewheres. When
Grant recognized the Baxter faction whom the old ex-slaveholders
supported because he was a Southerner and sided with Baxter against
Brooks, it put the present Democratic party in power, and they passed
the Grandfather law barring Negroes from voting.
Negroes were intimidated by the Ku Klux. They were counted out. Ballot
boxes were burned and ballots were destroyed. Finally, Negroes got
discouraged and quit trying to vote."
[Footnote A: [HW: P. B. S. Pinchback, elected Lieutenant-Governor of
La. Held office 43 days.]]
[Footnote B: [HW: Hiram Revells, elected to fill the unexpired term of
Jefferson Davis.]]
[Footnote C: [HW: J. C. Corbin appointed state superintendent of
public instruction in 1873--served until the end of 1875.]]
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Ellis Jefson (M. E. Preacher),
Hazen, Ark.
Age: 77
"My father was a full blood African. His parents come from there and
he couldn't talk plain.
"My great grandma was an Indian squaw. Mother was crossed with a white
man. He was a Scotchman.
"My mother belong to old man John Marshall. He died before I left
Virginia.
"Old Miss Nancy Marshall and the boys and their wives, three of em was
married, and slaves set out in three covered wagons and come to Holly
Springs, Mississippi in 1867.
"Blunt Marshall was a Baptist preacher. In 1869 my grandma died at
Holly Springs.
"I had two sisters Ann and Mariah. Old Miss Nancy Marshall had kin
folks at Marshall, Texas. She took Ann with her and I have never seen
her since.
"In 1878 we immigrated to Kansas. We soon got back to Helena. Mariah
died there and in 1881 mother died.
"Old Miss Nancy's boys named Blunt, John, Bill, Harp. I don't know
where they scattered out to finally.
"All my folks ever expected was freedom. We was nicely taken care of
till the family split up. My father was suppressed. He belong to
Master Ernman. He run off and went on with the Yankees when they come
down from Virginia. We think he got killed. We never heard from him
after 1863.
"In 1882 my white folks went to Padukah, Kentucky. They was on the run
from Yellow Fever. They had kin up there. I stayed in Memphis and
nursed. They put up flags. Negroes didn't have it. They put coffins on
the porches before the people died. Carried wagons loads of dead
bodies wrapped in sheets. White folks would meet and pray the disease
be lifted. When they started vomiting black, there was no more hopes.
Had to hold them on bed when they was dying. When they have Yellow
Fever white folks turn yellow. I never heard of a case of Yellow Fever
in Memphis mong my race. Dr. Stone of New Orleans had better luck with
the disease than any other doctor. I was busy from June till October
in Memphis. They buried the dead in long trenches. Nearly all the
business houses was closed. The boats couldn't stop in towns where
Yellow Fever had broke out.
"I never seen the Ku Klux.
"I never seen no one sold. My father still held a wild animal instinct
up in Virginia; they couldn't keep him out of the woods. He would
spend two or three days back in there. Then the Patty Rollers would
run him out and back home. He was a quill blower and a banjo picker.
They had two corn piles and for prizes they give them whiskey. They
had dances and regular figure callers. This has been told to me at
night time around the hearth understand. I can recollect when round
dancing come in. It was in 1880. Here's a song they sung back in
Virginia: 'Moster and mistress both gone away. Gone down to
Charleston/ to spend the summer day. I'm off to Charleston/early in
the mornin'/ to spend nother day.'
"I used to help old Miss Nancy make candles for her little brass lamp.
We boiled down maple sap and made sugar. We made turpentine.
"I don't know about the Nat Turner Rebellion in Virginia. We had
rebellions at Helena in 1875. The white folks put the Negroes out of
office. They put J. T. White in the river at Helena but I think he got
out. Several was killed. J. T. White was a colored sheriff in Phillips
County. In Lee County it was the same way. The Republican party would
lect them and the Democratic party roust them out of office.
"In 1872 I went to school 2-1/2 miles to Arkansas Post to a white
teacher. I went four months. Her name was Mrs. Rolling. My white folks
started me and I could spell to 'Baker' in the Blue Book Speller
before I started to school. That is the only book I ever had at
school. I learned to read in the Bible next.
"In 1872 locust was numerous. We had four diseases to break out:
whooping cough, measles, smallpox; and cholera broke out again. They
vaccinated for smallpox, first I ever heard of it. They took matter
out of one persons arm and put it in two dozen peoples arms. It killed
out the smallpox.
"In 1873 I saw a big forest fire. It seemed like prairie and forest
fires broke out often.
"When I growed up and run with boys my color I got wicked. We gambled
and drunk whiskey, then I seen how I was departing from good raising.
I changed. I stopped sociating with bad company. The Lord hailed me in
wide open day time and told me my better life was pleasing in his
sight. I heard him. I didn't see nuthin'. I was called upon to teach a
Sunday School class. Three months I was Sunday School leader. Three
months more I was a licensed preacher. Ordained under Bishop Lee,
Johnson, Copeland--all colored bishops at Topeka, Kansas. Then I
attended conference at Bereah, Kentucky. Bishop Dizney presided. I
preached in Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Alabama, Tennessee,
Mississippi, and Arkansas. I am now what they call a superannuated
minister.
"One criticism on my color. They will never progress till they become
more harmonious in spirit with the desires of the white people in the
home land of the white man. I mean when a white person come want some
work or a favor and he not go help him without too much pay."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Absolom Jenkins,
R.F.D., Helena, Arkansas
Age: 80
[Date Stamp: MAY 31 1938]
"I was born a few years before the break out of the old war (Civil
War). I had a boy fit in this last war (World War). He gets a pension
and he sends me part of it every month. He don't send me no amount
whatever he can spare me. He never do send me less than ten dollars. I
pick cotton some last year. I pick twenty or thirty pounds and it got
to raining and so cold my granddaughter said it would make me sick.
"I was born durin' slavery. I was born 'bout twenty-five miles from
Nolan, Tennessee. They call me Ab Jenkins for my old master. He was A.
B. Jenkins. I don't know if his name was Absolom or not. Mother was
name Liddy Strum. They was both sold on the block. They both come to
Tennessee from Virginia in a drove and was sold to men lived less than
ten miles apart. Then they got consent and got married. I don't know
how they struck up together.
"They had three families of us. We lived up close to A. B. Jenkins'
house. He had been married. He was old man when I knowed him. His
daughter lived with him. She was married. Her husband was brought home
from the war dead. I don't know if he got sick and died or shot. The
only little children on the place was me and Jake Jenkins. We was no
kin but jus' like twins. Master would call us up and stick his finger
in biscuits and pour molasses in the hole. That was sure good eating.
The 'lasses wouldn't spill till we done et it up. He'd fix us up
another one. He give us biscuits oftener than the grown folks got
them. We had plenty wheat bread till the old war come on. My mother
beat biscuits with a paddle. She cooked over at Strum's. I lived over
at Jenkins. Grandma Kizzy done my cooking. Master's girl cooked us
biscuits. Master Jenkins loose his hat, his stick, his specks, and
call us to find 'em. He could see. He called us to keep us outer
badness. We had a big business of throwing at things. He threatened to
whoop us. We slacked up on it. I never heard them say but I believe
from what I seen it was agreed to divide the children. Pa would take
me over to see mama every Sunday morning. We leave soon as I could get
my clean long shirt and a little to eat. We walked four miles. He'd
tote me. She had a girl with her. I never stayed over there much and
the girl never come to my place 'cepting when mama come. They let her
stand on the surrey and Eloweise stand inside when they went to
preaching. She'd ride Master Jenkins' mare home and turn her loose to
come home. Me and papa always walked.
"When freedom come on, the country was tore to pieces. Folks don't
know what hard times is now. Some folks said do one thing for the
best, somebody said do another way. Folks roved around for five or six
years trying to do as well as they had done in slavery. It was years
'fore they got back to it. I was grown 'fore they ever got to doing
well again. My folks got off to Nashville. We lived there by the
hardest--eight in family. We moved to Mississippi bottoms not far from
Meridian. We started picking up. We all got fat as hogs. We farmed and
done well. We got to own forty acres of ground and lost two of the
girls with malaria fever. Then we sold out and come to Helena. We
boys, four of us, farmed, hauled wood, sawmilled, worked on the boats
about till our parents died. They died close to Marion on a farm we
rented. I had two boys. One got drowned. The other helps me out a
heap. He got some little children now and got one grown and married.
"The Ku Klux was hot in Tennessee. They whooped a heap of people. The
main thing was to make the colored folks go to work and not steal, but
it was carpet-baggers stealing and go pack it on colored folks. They'd
tell colored folks not to do this and that and it would get them in
trouble. The Ku Klux would whoop the colored folks. Some colored folks
thought 'cause they was free they ought not work. They got to rambling
and scattered out.
"I voted a long time. The voting has caused trouble all along. I voted
different ways--sometimes Republican and sometimes Independent. I
don't believe women ought to vote somehow. I don't vote. I voted for
Cleveland years ago and I voted for Wilson. I ain't voted since the
last war. I don't believe in war.
"Times have changed so much it is lack living in another world now.
Folks living in too much hurry. They getting too fast. They are
restless. I see a heaps of overbearing folks now. Folks after I got
grown looked so fresh and happy. Young folks look tired, mad, worried
now. They fixes up their face but it still show it. Folks quicker than
they used to be. They acts before they have time to think now. Times
is good for me but I see old folks need things. I see young folks
wasteful--both black and white. White folks setting the pace for us
colored folks. It's mighty fast and mighty hard."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Dora Jerman,
Forrest City, Arkansas
Age: 60?
"I was born at Bow-and-arrow, Arkansas. Sid McDaniel owned my father.
Mother was Mary Miller and she married Pete Williams from Tennessee.
Grandma lived with us till she died. She used to have us sit around
handy to thread her needles. She was a great hand to piece quilts. Her
and Aunt Polly both. Aunt Polly was a friend that was sold with her
every time. They was like sisters and the most pleasure to each other
in old age.
"My great-great-grandma said to grandma, 'Hurry back wid that pitcher
of water, honey, so you will have time to run by and see your mama and
the children and tell them good-bye. Old master says you going to be
sold early in the morning.' The water was for supper. That was the
last time she ever seen or heard of any of her own kin folks. Grandma
said a gang of them was sold next morning. Aunt Polly was no kin but
they was sold together. Whitfield bought one and Strum bought the
other.
"They come on a boat from Virginia to Aberdeen, Mississippi. They
wouldn't sell her mother because she brought fine children. I think
she said they had a regular stock man. She and Aunt Polly was sold
several times and together till freedom. When they got off the boat
they had to walk a right smart ways and grandma's feet cracked open
and bled. 'Black Mammy' wrapped her feet up in rags and greased them
with hot tallow or mutton suet and told her not to cry no more, be a
good girl and mind master and mistress.
"Grandma said she had a hard time all her life. She was my mother's
mother and she lived to be way over a hundred years old. Aunt Polly
lived with her daughter when she got old. Grandma died first. Then
Aunt Polly grieved so. She was old, old when she died. They still
lived close together, mostly together. Aunt Polly was real black; mama
was lighter. I called grandma 'mama' a right smart too. They called
each other 'sis'. Grandma said, 'I love sis so good.' Aunt Polly
lessened her days grieving for sis. They was both field hands. They
would tell us girls about how they lived when they was girls. We'd
cry.
"We lived in the country and we listened to what they said to us. If
it had been times then like now I wouldn't know to tell you. Folks is
in such a hurry somehow. Gone or going somewhere all the time.
"All my folks is most all full-blood African. I don't believe in races
mixing up. It is a sin. Grandma was the brightest one of any of us.
She was ginger-cake color.
"No, I don't vote. I don't believe in that neither.
"Times is too fast. Fast folks makes fast times. They all fast. Coming
to destruction."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Adaline Johnson
Joining the Plunkett farms
Eight miles from Biscoe, Arkansas
Age: 96
"I was born twelve miles from the capital, Jackson, Mississippi, on
Strickland's place. My mother was born in Edgecombe County, North
Carolina. Master Jim Battle was old man. He owned three big
plantations, full of niggers. They took me to Edgecombe County where
my mother was born. Battles was rich set of white folks. They lived at
Tarbry, North Carolina and some at Rocky Mount. Joe Battle was my old
master. There was Hue Battle too. Master Joe Battle and Master
Marmaduke was bosses of the whole country. They told Mars Joe not to
whoop that crazy nigger man. He undertook it. He hit him seven licks
with the hoe and killed him. Killed him in Mississippi.
"Master Marmaduke fell at the hotel at Greensboro, North Carolina. He
was a hard drinker and they didn't tell them about it at the hotel. He
got up in the night, fell down the steps and killed hisself. Tom
Williams didn't drink. He went to war and got shot. He professed
religion when he was twelve years old and kept the faith. Had his
Testament in his pocket and blood run on it. That was when he was shot
in the Civil War.
"They took that crazy nigger man to several places, found there was no
law to kill a crazy man. They took him to North Carolina where was all
white folks at that place in Edgecombe County. They hung the poor
crazy nigger. They was 'fraid of uprisings the reason they took him to
place all white folks lived.
"My papa and Brutten (Brittain) Williams same age. Old Mistress
Frankie (Tom Williams', Sr. wife) say, 'Let 'em be, he ain't goiner
whoop Fenna, he's kin to him. He ain't goiner lay his hand on Fenna.'
They whoop niggers black as me. Fenna waited on Master Brutten
Williams. Fenna was half white. He was John Williams' boy. John was
Brutten's brother. John Williams went to Mississippi and overseed for
Mr. Bass. Mars Brutten got crazy. He'd shoot at anything and call it a
hawk.
"Mother was a field woman. When she got in ill health, they put her to
sew. Miss Evaline Perry in Mississippi learned her how to sew. She
sewed up bolts of cloth into clothes for the niggers.
"Brutten Williams bought her from Joe Battle and he willed her to Joe
Williams. She cooked and wove some in her young life. Rich white folks
didn't sell niggers unless they got mad about them. Like mother, they
changed her about. We never was cried off and put up in front of the
public.
"Mars Joe Battle wasn't good. He ruled 'em all. He was Mars Marmaduke
Battle's uncle. They went 'round to big towns and had a good time.
Miss Polly Henry married Mars Brutten. He moved back (from
Mississippi) to North Carolina. They had a big orchard. They give it
all away soon as it ripen. He had a barrel of apple and peach brandy.
He give some of it out in cups. They said there was some double
rectifying in that barrel of brandy. He died.
"Master Tom was killed in war. When he had a ferlough he give all the
men on his place five dollars and every woman a sow pig to raise from.
Tole us all good-bye, said he'd never get back alive. He give me one
and my mother one too. We prized them hogs 'bove everything we ever
had. He got killed. Master Tom was so good to his niggers. He never
whooped them. His wife ruled him, made him do like she wanted
everything but mean to his niggers. Her folks slashed their niggers
and she tried to make him do that too. He wouldn't. They said she wore
the breeches 'cause she ruled him.
"She was Mistress Helland Harris Williams. She took our big hogs away
from every one of us. We raised 'em up fine big hogs. She took them
away from us. Took all the hogs Master Tom give us back. She had
plenty land he left her and cows, some hogs. She married Allen
Hopkins. They had a boy. He sent him to Texas, then he left her. She
was so mean. Followed the boy to Texas. They all said she couldn't
rule Allen Hopkins like she did Tom Williams. She didn't.
"When freedom come on, mother and me both left her 'cause I seen she
wouldn't do. My papa left too and he had raised a little half white
boy. 'Cause he was same age of Brutten Williams, Tom took Brutten's
little nigger child and give him to papa to raise. His name Wilks. His
own black mama beat him. When freedom come on, we went to Cal Pierce's
place. They kept Wilks. He used to run off and come to us. They give
him to somebody else 'way off. Tom had a brother in Georgia. It was
Tom's wife wouldn't let Wilks go on living with us.
"Old mistress just did rave about her boys mixing up with them niggers
but she was better than any other white women to Wilks and Fenna and
George.
"'Big Will' could do much as any two other niggers. When they bought
him a axe, it was a great big axe. They bought him a great big hoe.
They got a new overseer. Overseer said he use a hoe and axe like
everybody else. 'Big Will' killed the overseer with his big axe. Jim
Battle was gone off. His son Marmaduke Battle put him in jail. When
Jim Battle come back he said Marmaduke ought to sent for him, not put
him in jail. Jim Battle sold 'Big Will'. We never heard or seen him no
more. His family stayed on the plantation and worked. 'Big Will' could
split as many more rails as anybody else on the place.
"I seen people sell babies out of the cradle. Poor white people buy
babies and raise them.
"The Battles had gins and stores in North Carolina and Williams had
farms, nothing but farms.
"When I was a girl I nursed the nigger women's babies and seen after
the children. I nursed Tom Williams' boy, Johnny Williams. He run to
me, said, 'Them killed my papa.' I took him up in my arms. Then was
when the Yankee soldiers come on the place. Sid Williams went to war.
I cooked when the regular cook was weaving. Mother carded and spun
then. I had a ounce of cotton to card every night from September till
March. When I'd be dancing around, Miss Helland Harris Williams say,
'You better be studying your pewter days.' Meant for me to stop
dancing.
"Mistress Polly married a Perry, then Right Hendrick. Perrys was rich
folks. When Marmaduke Battle died all the niggers cried and cried and
bellowed because they thought they would be sold and get a mean
master.
"They had a mean master right then--Right Hendrick. Mean a man as ever
God ever wattled a gut in I reckon. That was in Mississippi. They took
us back and forth when it suited them. We went in hacks, surreys and
stage-coaches, wagons, horseback, and all sorts er ways. We went on
big river boats sometimes. They sold off a lot of niggers to settle up
the estate. What I want to know is how they settle up estates now.
"They parched persimmon seed and wheat during the war to make coffee.
I ploughed during the Civil War. Strange people come through, took our
snuff and tobacco. Master Tom said for us not have no light at night
so the robbers couldn't find us so easy. He was a good man. The
Yankees said they had to subdue our country. They took everything they
could find. Times was hard. That was in North Carolina.
"When Brutten Williams bought me and mama--mama was Liza
Williams--Master Brutten bought her sister three or four years after
that and they took us to (Zeblin or) Sutton in Franklin County. Now
they call it Wakefield Post Office. Brutten willed us to Tom. Sid,
Henry, John was Tom Williams' boys, and his girls were Pink and Tish.
"Master John and Marmaduke Battle was rich as they could be. They was
Joe Battle's uncles. Jesse Ford was Marmaduke's half-brother in Texas.
He come to Mississippi to get his part of the niggers and the rest was
put on a block and sold. Master Marmaduke broke his neck when he fell
downstairs. I never heard such crying before nor since as I heard that
day. Said they lost their best master. They knowed how bad they got
whooped on Ozoo River.
"Master Marmaduke walked and bossed his overseers. He went to the big
towns. He never did marry. My last master was Tom Williams. He was so
nice to us all. He confessed religion. He worked us hard, then hard
times come when he went to war. He knowed our tracks--foot tracks and
finger tracks both.
"Somebody busted a choice watermelon, plugged it out with his fingers
and eat it. Master Tom said, 'Fenna, them your finger marks.' Then he
scolded him good fashioned. Old Mistress Frankie say, 'Don't get
scared, he ain't go to whoop him, they kin. Fenna kin to him, he not
goiner hurt him.'
"At the crossroads there was a hat shop. White man brought a lot of
white free niggers to work in the hat shop. Way they come free
niggers. Some poor woman had no living. Nigger men steal flour or a
hog, take it and give it to her. She be hungry. Pretty soon a mulatto
baby turned up. Then folks want to run her out the country. Sometimes
they did.
"Old man Stinson (Stenson?) left and went to Ohio. They wrote back to
George to come after them to Ohio. Bill Harris had a baltimore
trotter. The letter lay about in the post office. They broke it open,
read it, give it to his owner. He got mad and sold George. He was Sam
Harrises carriage driver. Dick and him was half-brothers. Dick learned
him about reading and writing. When the war was over George come
through on the train. Sam Harris run up there, cracked his heels
together, hugged him, and give him ten dollars. He sold him when he
was so mad. I don't know if he went to Ohio to Stinson's or not.
"We stayed in the old country twenty-five or thirty years after
freedom.
"When we left Miss Helland Harris Williams', Tim Terrel come by there
with his leg shot off and was there till he could get on to his folks.
"When I come here I was expecting to go to California. There was cars
going different places. We got on Mr. Boyd's car. He paid our way out
here. Mr. Jones brought his car to Memphis and stopped. Mr. Boyd
brought us right here. That was in 1892. We got on the train at
Raleigh, North Carolina.
"Papa bought forty acres land from the Boyd estate. Our children
scattered and we sold some of it. We got twenty acres. Some of it in
woods. I had to sell my cow to bury my granddaughter what lived with
me--taking care of me. Papa tole my son to take care of me and since
he died my son gone stone blind. I ain't got no chickens hardly. I go
hungry nigh all the time. I gets eight dollars for me and my blind son
both. If I could get a cow. We tries to have a garden. They ain't
making nothing on my land this year. I'm having the hardest time I
ever seen in my life. I got a toothpick in my ear and it's rising.
The doctor put some medicine in my ears--both of them.
"When I was in slavery I wore peg shoes. I'd be working and not time
to take off my shoes and fix the tacks--beat 'em down. They made holes
in bottoms of my feet; now they got to be corns and I can't walk and
stand."
Interviewer's Comment
This is another one of those _terrible_ cases. This old woman is on
starvation. She had a cow and can't get another one. The son is blind
but feels about and did milk. The bedbugs are nearly eating her up.
They scald but can't get rid of them. They have a fairly good house to
live in. But the old woman is on starvation and away back eight miles
from Biscoe. I hate to see good old Negroes want for something to eat.
She acts like a small child. Pitiful, so feeble. The second time I
went out there I took her daughter who walks out there every week. We
fixed her up an iron bedstead so she can sleep better. I took her a
small cake. That was her dinner. She had eaten one egg that morning.
She was a clean, kind old woman. Very much like a child. Has a rising
in her head and said she was afraid her head would kill her. She gave
me a gallon of nice figs her daughter picked, so I paid her
twenty-five cents for them. She had plenty figs and no sugar.
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Alice Johnson
601 W. Eighth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 77
"You want to know what they did in slavery times! They were doin' jus'
what they do now. The white folks was beatin' the niggers, burning 'em
and boilin' 'em, workin' 'em and doin' any other thing they wanted to
do with them. 'Course you wasn't here then to know about nigger dogs
and bull whips, were you? The same thing is goin' on right now. They
got the same bull whips and the same old nigger dogs. If you don't
believe it, go right out here to the county farm and you find 'em
still whippin' the niggers and tearing them up and sometimes lettin'
the dogs bite them to save the bull whips.
"I was here in slavery time but I was small and I don't know much
about it 'cept what they told me. But you don't need to go no further
to hear all you want to know. They sont you to the right place. They
all know me and they call me Mother Johnson. So many folks been here
long as me, but don't want to admit it. They black their hair and
whiten their faces, and powder and paint. 'Course it's good to look
good all right. But when you start that stuff, you got to keep it up.
Tain't no use to start and stop. After a while you got that same color
hair and them same splotches again. Folks say, 'What's the matter, you
gittin so dark?' Then you say, 'Uh, my liver is bad.' You got to keep
that thing up, baby.
"I thank God for my age. I thank God He's brought me safe all the way.
That is the matter with this world now. It ain't got enough religion.
"I was born in Mississippi way below Jackson in Crystal Springs. That
is on the I. C. Road near New Orleans. The train that goes there goes
to New Orleans. I was bred and born and married there in Crystal
Springs. I don't know just when I was born but I know it was in the
month of December.
"I remember when the slaves were freed. I remember the War 'cause I
used to hear them talking about the Yankees and I didn't know whether
they were mules or horses or what not. I didn't know if they was
varmints or folks or what not. I can't remember whether I seen any
soldiers or not. I heard them talking about soldiers, but I didn't see
none right 'round where we was.
"Now what good's that all goin' to do me? It ain't goin' to do me no
good to have my name in Washington. Didn't do me no good if he stuck
my name up on a stick in Washington. Some of them wouldn't know me.
Those that did would jus' say, 'That's old Alice Johnson.'
"Us old folks, they don't count us. They jus' kick us out of the way.
They give me 'modities and a mite to spend. Time you go and get lard,
sugar, meat, and flour, and pay rent and buy wood, you don't have
'nough to go 'round. Now that might do you some good if you didn't
have to pay rent and buy wood and oil and water. I'll tell you
something so you can earn a living. Your mama give you a education so
you can earn a living and you earnin' it jus' like she meant you to.
But most of us don't earn it that way, and most of these educated
folks not earnin' a livin' with their education. They're in jail
somewheres. They're walkin' up and down Ninth Street and runnin' in
and out of these here low dives. You go down there to the penitentiary
and count those prisoners and I'll bet you don't find nary one that
don't know how to read and write. They're all educated. Most of these
educated niggers don't have no feeling for common niggers. 'They just
walk on them like they wasn't living. And don't come to 'em tellin'
them that you wanting to use them!
"The people et the same thing in slavery time that they eat now. Et
better then 'n they do now. Chickens, cows, mules died then, they
throw 'em to the buzzards. Die now, they sell 'em to you to eat.
Didn't eat that in slavery time. Things they would give to the dogs
then, they sell to the people to eat now. People et pure stuff in
slavery. Don't eat pure stuff now. Got pure food law, but that's all
that is pure.
"My mother's name was Diana Benson and my father's name was Joe Brown.
That's what folks say, I don't know. I have seen them but I wasn't
brought up with no mother and father. Come up with the white folks and
colored folks fust one and then the other. I think my mother and
father died before freedom. I don't know what the name of their master
was. All my folks died early.
"The fus' white folks I knowed anything about was Rays. They said that
they were my old slave-time masters. They were nice to me. Treated me
like they would their own children. Et and slept with them. They
treated me jus' like they own. Heap of people say they didn't have no
owners, but they got owners yet now out there on that government farm.
"The fus' work I done in my life was nussing. I was a child then and I
stayed with the white folks' children. Was raised up in the house with
'em. I was well taken care of too. I was jus' like their children.
That was at Crystal Springs.
"I left them before I got grown and went off with other folks. I never
had no reason. Jus' went on off. I didn't go for better because I was
doing better. They jus' told me to come and I went.
"I been living now in Arkansas ever since 1911. My husband and I
stayed on to work and make a living. I take care of myself. I'm not
looking for nothin' now but a better home over yonder--better home
than this. Thank the Lawd, I gits along all right. The government
gives me a check to buy me a little meat and bread with. Maybe the
government will give me back that what they took off after a while. I
don't know. It takes a heap of money to feed thousands and millions of
people. When the check comes, I am glad to git it no matter how little
it is. Twarn't for it, I would be in a sufferin' condition.
"I belong to the Arch Street Baptist Church. I been for about twenty
years. I was married sixteen years to my first husband and
twenty-eight to my second. The last one has been dead five years and
the other one thirty-six years. I ain't got none walkin' 'round. All
my husbands is dead. There ain't nothin' in this quitin' and goin' and
breakin' up and bustin' up. I don't tell no woman to quit and don't
tell no man to quit. Go over there and git 'nother woman and she will
be wuss than the one you got. When you fall out, reason and git
together. Do right. I stayed with both of my husbands till they died.
I ain't bothered 'bout another one. Times is so hard no man can take
care of a woman now. Come time to pay rent, 'What you waiting for me
to pay rent for? You been payin' it, ain't you?' Come time to buy
clothes, 'What you waitin' for me to buy clothes for? Where you
gittin' 'um from before you mai'd me?' Come time to pay the grocery
bill, 'How come you got to wait for me to pay the grocery bill? Who
been payin' it?' No Lawd, I don't want no man unless he works. What
could I do with him? I don't want no man with a home and bank account.
You can't git along with 'im. You can't git along with him and you
can't git along with her."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Allen Johnson
718 Arch Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: About 82
"I was born in Georgia about twelve miles from Cartersville, in Cass
County, and about the same distance from Cassville. I was a boy about
eight or nine years old when I come from there. But I have a very good
memory. Then I have seed the distance and everything in the Geography.
My folks were dead long ago now. My oldest brother is dead too. He was
just large enough to go to the mills. In them times, they had mills.
They would fix him on the horse and he would go ahead.
"My father's name was Clem Johnson, and my mother's name was Mandy.
Her madam's name I don't know. I was small. I remember my grandma.
She's dead long long ago. Long time ago! I think her name was Rachel.
Yes, I'm positive it was Rachel. That is what I believe. I was a
little bitty fellow then. I think she was my mother's mother. I know
one of my mother's sisters. Her name was Lucinda. I don't know how
many she had nor nothin'.
"Johnsons was the name of the masters my mother and father had. They
go by the name of Johnson yet. Before that I don't know who they had
for masters. The pastor's name was Lindsay Johnson and the old missis
was Mary Johnson. People long time ago used to send boys big enough to
ride to the mill. My brother used to go. It ran by water-power. They
had a big mill pond. They dammed that up. When they'd get ready to run
the mill, they'd open that dam and it would turn the wheel. My oldest
brother went to the mill and played with old master's son and me.
"They used to throw balls over the house and see which could catch
them first. There would be three or four on a side of the house and
they would throw the ball over the house to see which side would be
quickest and aptest.
"My mother and father both belonged to the same man, Lindsay Johnson.
I was a small boy. I can't tell you how he was to his folks. Seems
like though he was pretty good to us. Seemed like he was a pretty good
master. He didn't overwork his niggers. He didn't beat and 'buse them.
He gave them plenty to eat and drink. You see the better a Negro
looked and the finer he was the more money he would bring if they
wanted to sell them. I have heard my mother and father talk about it
plenty of times.
"My father worked in the field during slavery. My mother didn't do
much of no kind of work much. She was a woman that had lots of
children to take care of. She had four children during slavery and
twelve altogether. Her children were all small when freedom was
declared. My oldest brother, I don't remember much about slavery
except playing 'round with him and with the other little boys, the
white boys and the nigger boys. They were very nice to me.
"I was a great big boy when I heard them talking about the pateroles
catching them or whipping them. At that time when they would go off
they would have to have a pass. When they went off if they didn't have
a pass they would whip and report them to their owners. And they would
be likely to get another brushing from the owners. The pateroles never
bothered the children any. The children couldn't go anywhere without
the consent of the mother and father. And there wasn't any danger of
them running off. If they caught a little child between plantations,
they would probably just run them home. It was all right for a child
to go in the different quarters and play with one another during
daytime just so they got back before night. I was a small boy but I
have very good recollections about these things. I couldn't tell you
whether the pateroles ever bothered my father or not. Never heard him
say. But he was a careful man and he always knew the best time and way
to go and come. Them old fellows had a way to git by as well as we do
now.
"They fed the slaves about what they wanted to. They would give them
meat and flour and meal. I used to hear my father say the old boss fed
him well. Then again they would have hog killln' time 'long about
Christmas. The heads, lights, chittlings and fats would be given to
the slaves. 'Course I didn't know much about that only what I heard
from the old folks talking about it. They lived in the way of eating,
I suppose, better than they do now. Had no expense whatever.
"As to amusements, I'll tell you I don't know. They'd have little
dances about like they do now. And they give quiltings and they'd have
a ring play. My mother never knew anything about dances and fiddling
and such things; she was a Christian. They had churches you know. My
white folks didn't object to the niggers goin' to meetin'. 'Course
they had to have a pass to go anywhere. If they didn't they'd git a
brushin' from the pateroles if they got caught and the masters were
likely to give them another light brushin' when they got home.
"I think that was a pretty good system. They gave a pass to those that
were allowed to be out and the ones that were supposed to be out were
protected. Of course, now you are your own free agent and you can go
and come as you please. Now the police take the place of the
pateroles. If they find you out at the wrong time and place they are
likely to ask you about it.
"A slave was supposed to pick a certain amount of cotton I have heard.
They had tasks. But we didn't pick cotton. Way back in Georgia that
ain't no cotton country. Wheat, corn, potatoes, and things like that.
But in Louisiana and Mississippi, there was plenty of cotton. Arkansas
wasn't much of a cotton state itself. It was called a 'Hoojer' state
when I was a boy. That is a reference to the poor white man. He was a
'Hoojer'. He wasn't rich enough to own no slaves and they called him a
'Hoojer'.
"The owners would hire them to take care of the niggers and as
overseers and pateroles. They was hired and paid a little salary jus'
like the police is now. If we didn't have killing and murderin', there
wouldn't be no need for the police. The scoundrel who robs and kills
folks ought to be highly prosecuted.
"I reckon I was along eight or nine years old when freedom came. My
oldest brother was twelve, and I was next to him. I must have been
eight or nine--or maybe ten.
"My occupation since freedom has been farming and doing a little job
work--anything I could git. Work by the day for mechanic and one thing
and another. I know nothin' about no trade 'ceptin' what I have picked
up. Never took no contracts 'ceptin' for building a fence or somethin'
small like that. Mechanic's work I suppose calls for license."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Annie Johnson
804 Izard Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 78
"I was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, and I was four years old
when the Civil War closed. My parents died when I was a baby and a
white lady named Mrs. Mary Peters took me and raised me. They moved
from there to Champaign, Illinois when I was about six years old. My
mother died when I was born. Them white people only had two slaves, my
mother and my father, and my father had run off with the Yankees. Mrs.
Peters was their mistress. She died when I was eight years old and
then I stayed with her sister. That was when I was up in Champaign.
"The sister's name was Mrs. Mary Smith. She just taught school here
and there and around in different places, and I went around with her
to take care of her children. That kept up until I was twenty years
old. All of her traveling was in Illinois.
"I didn't get much schooling. I went to school a while and taken sore
eyes. The doctor said if I continued to go to school, I would strain
my eyes. After he told me that I quit. I learned enough to read the
Bible and the newspaper and a little something like that, but I can't
do much. My eyes is very weak yet.
"When I was twenty years old I married Henry Johnson, who was from
Virginia. I met him in Champaign. We stayed in Champaign about two
years. Then we came on down to St. Louis. He was just traveling 'round
looking for work and staying wherever there was a job. Didn't have no
home nor nothing. He was a candy maker by trade, but he did anything
he could get to do. He's been dead for forty years now. He came down
here, then went back to Champaign and died in Springfield, Illinois
while I was here.
"I don't get no pension, don't get nothing. I get along by taking in a
little washing now and then.
"My mother's name was Eliza Johnson and my father's name was Joe
Johnson. I don't know a thing about none of my grandparents. And I
don't know what my mother's name was before she married.
"A gentleman what worked on the place where I lived said that if you
didn't have a pass during slave times, that if the pateroles caught
you, they would whip you and make you run back home. He said he had to
run through the woods every which way once to keep them from catching
him.
"I have heard the old folks talk about being put on the block. The
colored woman I lived with in Champaign told me that they put her on
the block and sold her down into Ripley, Mississippi.
"She said that the way freedom came was this. The boss man told her
she was free. Some of the slaves lived with him and some of them
picked up and went on off somewhere.
"The Ku Klux never bothered me. I have heard some of the colored
people say how they used to come 'round and bother the church services
looking for this one and that one.
"I don't know what to say about these young folks. I declare, they
have just gone wild. They are almost getting like brutes. A woman come
by here the other day without more 'n a spoonful of things on and
stopped and struck a match and lit her cigarette. You can't talk to
them neither. I don't know what we ought to do about it. They let
these white men run around with them. I see 'em doing anything. I
think times are bad and getting worse. Just as that shooting they had
over in North Little Rock." (Shooting and robbing of Rev. Sherman, an
A. M. E. minister, by Negro robbers.)
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Ben Johnson
Near Holly Grove and Clarendon, Arkansas
Age: 73
"My master was Wort Garland. My papa's master was Steve Johnson. Papa
went off to Louisiana and I never seen him since. I guess he got
killed. I was born in Madison County, Tennessee. I come to Arkansas
1889. Mother was here. She come on a transient ticket. My papa come
wid her to Holly Grove. They both field hands. I worked on the
section--railroad section. I cut and hauled timber and farms. I never
own no land, no home. I have two boys went off and a grown girl in
Phillips County. I don't get no help. I works bout all I able and can
get to do.
"I have voted. I votes a Republican ticket. I like this President. If
the men don't know how to vote recken the women will show em how.
"The present conditions is very good. The present generation is beyond
me.
"I heard my folks set around the fireplace at night and talk about
olden times but I couldn't tell it straight and I was too little to
know bout it.
"We looked all year for Christmas to get some good things in our
stockings. They was knit at night. Now we has oranges and bananas all
the time, peppermint candy--in sticks--best candy I ever et. Folks
have more now that sort than we had when I was growing up. We was
raised on meat and corn bread, milk, and garden stuff. Had plenty
apples, few peaches, sorghum molasses, and peanuts. Times is better
now than when I come on far as money goes. Wood is scarce and folks
can't have hogs no more. No place to run and feed cost so much. Can't
buy it. Feed cost more 'en the hog. Times change what makes the folks
change so much I recken."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Ben Johnson (deaf),
Clarendon, Arkansas
Age: 84
Black
"Steve Johnson was my owner. Way he come by me was dat he married in
the Ward family and heired him and my mother too. Louis Johnson was my
father's name. At one time Wort Garland owned my mother, and she was
sold. Her name was Mariah.
"My father went to war twice. Once he was gone three weeks and next
time three or four months. He come home sound. I stayed on Johnson's
farm till I was a big boy."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Betty Johnson
1920 Dennison Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 83
[Date Stamp: MAY 11 1938]
"I was born in Montgomery, Alabama, within a block of the statehouse.
We were the only colored people in the neighborhood. I am eighty-three
years old. I was born free. I have never been a slave. I never met any
slaves when I was small, and never talked to any. I didn't live near
them and didn't have any contacts with them.
"My father carried my mother to Pennsylvania before I was born and set
her free. Then he carried her back to Montgomery, Alabama, and all her
children were born free there.
"We had everything that life needed. He was one of the biggest
planters around in that part of the country and did the shipping for
everybody.
"My mother's name was Josephine Hassell. She had nine children. All of
them are dead except three. One is in Washington, D. C.; another is in
Chicago, Illinois, and then I am here. One of my brothers was a mail
clerk for the government for fifty years, and then he went to
Washington and worked in the dead letter office.
"My father taken my oldest brother just before the Civil War and
entered him in Yale and he stayed there till he finished. Later he
became a freight conductor and lost his life when his train was caught
in a cyclone. That's been years ago.
"My sisters in Washington and Chicago are the only two living besides
myself. All the others are dead. All of them were government workers.
My sister in Washington has four boys and five girls. My sister in
Chicago has two children--one in Detroit and one in Washington. I am
the oldest living.
"We never had any kind of trouble with white people in slave time, and
we never had any since. Everybody in town knowed us, and they never
bothered us. The editor of the paper in Montgomery got up all our
history and sent the paper to my brother in Washington. If I had saved
the paper, I would have had it now. I don't know the name of the
paper. It was a white paper. I can't even remember the name of the
editor.
"We were always supported by my father. My mother _did_ [HW: ?] do
nothing at all except stay home and take care of her children. I had a
father that cared for us. He didn't leave that part undone. He did his
part in every respect. He sent every child away to school. He sent two
to Talladega, one to Yale, three to Fiske, and one to Howard
University.
"I don't remember much about how freedom came to the slaves. You see,
we didn't live near any of them and would not notice, and I was young
anyway. All I remember is that when the army came in, everybody had a
stick with a white handkerchief on it. The white handkerchief
represented peace. I don't know just how they announced that the
slaves were free.
"We lived in as good a house as this one here. It had eight rooms in
it. I was married sixty years ago. My husband died two years ago. We
were married fifty-eight years. Were the only colored people here to
celebrate the fiftieth anniversary. (She is mistaken in this; Waters
McIntosh has been married for fifty-six years and he and his wife are
still making it together in an ideal manner--ed.) I am the mother of
eight children; three girls are living and two boys. The rest are
dead.
"I married a good man. Guess there was never a better. We lived
happily together for a long time and he gave me everything I needed.
He gave me and my children whatever we asked for.
"I was sick for three years. Then my husband took down and was sick
for seven years before he died.
"I belong to the Holiness Church down on Izard Street, and Brother
Jeeter is my pastor."
INTERVIEWER'S COMMENT
Betty Johnson's memory is accurate, and she tells whatever she wishes
to tell without hesitation and clearly. She leaves out details which
she does not wish to mention evidently, and there is a reserve in her
manner which makes questioning beyond a certain point impertinent.
However, just what she tells presents a picture into which the details
may easily be fitted.
Her husband is dead, but he was evidently of the same type she is. She
lives in a beautiful and well kept cottage. Her husband left a similar
house for each of her three children. The husband, of course, was
colored. It is equally evident that the father was white.
Although my questions traveled into corners where they evidently did
not wish to follow, the mother and son, who was from time to time with
her, answered courteously and showed no irritation.
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Cinda Johnson
506 E. Twenty, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 83
"Yes ma'm, this is Cinda. Yes'm, I remember seein' the soldiers but I
didn't know what they was doin'. You know old folks didn't talk in
front of chilluns like they does now--but I been here. I got great
grand chillun--boy big enuf to chop cotton. That's my daughter's
daughter's chile. Now you _know_ I been here.
"I heered em talkin' bout freedom. My mother emigrated here drectly
after freedom. I was born in Alabama. When we come here, I know I was
big enuf to clean house and milk cows. My mother died when I was bout
fifteen. She called me to the bed and tole me who to stay with. I been
treated bad, but I'm still here and I thank the Lord He let me stay.
"I been married twice. My first husband died, but I didn't have no
graveyard love. I'm the mother of ten whole chillun. All dead but two
and only one of them of any service to me. That's my son. He's good to
me and does what he can but he's got a family. My daughter-in-law--all
she does is straighten her hair and look cute.
"One of my sons what died belonged to the Odd Fellows and I bought
this place with insurance. I lives here alone in peace. Yes, honey, I
been here a long time."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Ella Johnson
913-1/2 Victory Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: About 85
"I was born in Helena, Arkansas. Not exactly in the town but in hardly
not more than three blocks from the town. Have you heard about the
Grissoms down there? Well, them is my white folks. My maiden name was
Burke. But we never called ourselves any name 'cept Grissom.
"My mother's name was Sylvia Grissom. Her husband was named Jack
Burkes. He went to the Civil War. That was a long time ago. When they
got up the war, they sold out a lot of the colored folks. But they
didn't get a chance to sell my mother. She left. They tell me one of
them Grissom boys has been down here looking for me. He didn't find me
and he went on back.
My mother's mistress was named Sylvia Grissom too. All of us was named
after the white folks. All the old folks is dead, but the young ones
is living. I think my mother's master was named John. They had so many
of them that I forgit which is which. But they had all mama's children
named after them. My mother had three girls and three boys.
"When the war began and my father went to war, my mother left Helena
and came here. She run off from the Grissoms. They whipped her too
much, those white folks did. She got tired of all that beating. She
took all of us with her. All six of us children were born before the
war. I was the fourth.
"There is a place down here where the white folks used to whip and
hang the niggers. Baskin Lake they call it. Mother got that far. I
don't know how. I think that she came in a wagon. She stayed there a
little while and then she went to Churchill's place. Churchill's place
and John Addison's place is close together down there. That is old
time. Them folks is dead, dead, dead. Churchill's and Addison's places
joined near Horse Shoe Lake. They had hung and burnt people--killed
'em and destroyed 'em at Baskin Lake. We stayed there about four days
before we went on to Churchill's place. We couldn't stay there long.
"The ha'nts--the spirits--bothered us so we couldn't sleep. All them
people that had been killed there used to come back. We could hear
them tipping 'round in the house all the night long. They would blow
out the light. You would kiver up and they would git on top of the
kiver. Mama couldn't stand it; so she come down to General Churchill's
place and made arrangements to stay there. Then she came back and got
us children. She had an old man to stay there with us until she come
back and got us. We couldn't stay there with them ha'nts dancing
'round and carryin' us a merry gait.
"At Churchill's place my mother made cotton and corn. I don't know
what they give her for the work, but I know they paid her. She was a
hustling old lady. The war was still goin' on. Churchill was a Yankee.
He went off and left the plantation in the hands of his oldest son.
His son was named Jim Churchill. That is the old war; that is the
first war ever got up--the Civil War. Ma stayed at Churchill's long
enough to make two or three crops. I don't know just how long.
Churchill and them wanted to own her--them and John Addison.
"There was three of us big enough to work and help her in the field.
Three--I made four. There was my oldest sister, my brother, and my
next to my oldest sister, and myself--Annie, John, Martha, and me. I
chopped cotton and corn. I used to tote the leadin' row. Me and my
company walked out ahead. I was young then, but my company helped me
pick that cotton. That nigger could pick cotton too. None of the res'
of them could pick anything for looking at him.
"Mother stayed at Churchill's till plumb after the war. My father died
before the war was over. They paid my mother some money and said she
would get the balance. That means there was more to come, doesn't it?
But they didn't no more come. They all died and none of them got the
balance. I ain't never got nothin' either. I gave my papers to Adams
and Singfield. I give them to Adams; Adams is a Negro that one-legged
Wash Jordan sent to me. They all say he's a big crook, but I didn't
know it. Adams kept coming to my house until he got my papers and then
when he got the papers he didn't come no more.
"After Adams got the papers, he carried me down to Lawyer Singfield's.
He said I had to be sworn in and it would cost me one dollar.
Singfield wrote down every child's name and everybody's age. When he
got through writing, he said that was all and me and Pearl made up one
dollar between us and give it to him. And then we come on away. We
left Mr. Adams and Mr. Singfield in Singfield's office and we left the
papers there in the office with them. They didn't give me no receipt
for the papers and they didn't give me no receipt for the dollar.
Singfield's wife has been to see me several times to sell me
something. She wanted to git me to buy a grave, but she ain't never
said nothin' about those papers. You think she doesn't know 'bout 'em?
I have seen Adams once down to Jim Perry's funeral on Arch Street. I
asked him about my papers and he said the Government hadn't answered
him. He said, 'Who is you?' I said, 'This is Mrs. Johnson.' Then he
went on out. He told me when he got a answer, it will come right to my
door.
"I never did no work before goin' on Churchill's plantation. Some of
the oldest ones did, but I didn't. I learned how to plow at John
Addison's place. The war was goin' on then. I milked cows for him and
churned and cleaned up. I cooked some for him. Are you acquainted with
Blass? I nursed Julian Blass. I didn't nurse him on Addison's place; I
nursed him at his father's house up on Main Street, after I come here.
I nursed him and Essie both. I nursed her too. I used to have a time
with them chillen. They weren't nothin' but babies. The gal was about
three months old and Julian was walkin' 'round. That was after I come
to Little Rock.
"My mother come to Little Rock right after the war. She brought all of
us with her but the oldest. He come later.
"She want to work and cooked and washed and ironed here. I don't
remember the names of the people she worked for. They all dead--the
old man and the old ladies.
"She sent me to school. I went to school at Philander [HW: (Philander
Smith College?)] and down to the end of town and in the country. We
had a white man first and then we had a colored woman teacher. The
white man was rough. He would fight all the time. I would read and
spell without opening my book. They would have them blue-back spellers
and McGuffy's reader. They got more education then than they do now.
Now they is busy fighting one another and killin' one another. When
you see anything in the paper, you don't know whether it is true or
not. Florence Lacy's sister was one of my teachers. I went to Union
school once. [HW: ---- insert from P. 5]
"You remember Reuben White? They tried to bury him and he came to
before they got him in the grave. He used to own the First Baptist
Church. He used to pastor it too. He sent for J. P. Robinson by me. He
told Robinson he wanted him to take the Church and keep it as long as
he lived. Robinson said he would keep it. Reuben White went to his
brother's and died. They brought him back here and kept his body in
the First Baptist Church a whole week. J. P. carried on the meetin',
and them sisters was fightin' him. They went on terrible. He started
out of the church and me and 'nother woman stopped him. At last they
voted twice, and finally they elected J. P. He was a good pastor, but
he hurrahed the people and they didn't like that.
"Reuben White didn't come back when they buried him the second time.
They were letting the coffin down in the grave when they buried him
the first time, and he knocked at it on the inside, knock, knock.
(Here the old lady rapped on the doorsill with her knuckles--ed.) They
drew that coffin up and opened it. How do I know? I was there. I heard
it and seen it. They took him out of the coffin and carried him back
to his home in the ambulance. He lived about three or four years after
that.
"I had a member to die in my order and they sent for the undertaker
and he found that she wasn't dead. They took her down to the
undertaker's shop, and found that she wasn't dead. They said she died
after they embalmed her. That lodge work ran my nerves down. I was in
the Tabernacle then. Goodrich and Dubisson was the undertakers that
had the body. Lucy Tucker was the woman. I guess she died when they
got her to the shop. They say the undertaker cut on her before he
found that she was dead.
"I don't know how many grades I finished in school. I guess it was
about three altogether. I had to git up and go to work then. [TR: This
paragraph was marked with a line on the right; possibly it is the
paragraph to be inserted on the previous page.]
"After I quit school, I nursed mighty nigh all the time. I cooked for
Governor Rector part of the time. I cooked for Dr. Lincoln Woodruff. I
cooked for a whole lot of white folks. I washed and ironed for them
Anthonys down here. She like to had a fit over me the last time she
saw me. She wanted me to come back, but my hand couldn't stand it. I
cooked for Governor Rose's wife. That's been a long time back. I
wouldn't 'low nobody to come in the kitchen when I was working. I
would say, 'You goin' to come in this kitchen, I'll have to git out.'
The Governor was awful good to me. They say he kicked the res' of them
out. I scalded his little grandson once. I picked up the teakettle.
Didn't know it had water in it and it slipped and splashed water over
the little boy's hand. If'n it had been hot as it ought to have been,
it would have burnt him bad. He went out of that kitchen hollerin'.
The Governor didn't say nothin' 'cept, 'Ella, please don't do it
again.' I said, 'I guess that'll teach him to stay out of that kitchen
now.' I was boss of that kitchen when I worked there.
"We took the lock off the door once so the Governor couldn't git in
it.
"I dressed up and come out once and somebody called the Governor and
said, 'Look at your cook.' And he said, 'That ain't my cook.' That was
Governor Rector. I went in and put on my rags and come in the kitchen
to cook and he said, 'That is my cook.' He sure wanted me to keep on
cookin' for him, but I just got sick and couldn't stay.
"I hurt my hand over three years ago. My arm swelled and folks rubbed
it and got all the swelling down in one place in my hand. They told me
to put fat meat on it. I put it on and the meat hurt so I had to take
it off. Then they said put the white of an egg on it. I did that too
and it was a little better. Then they rubbed the place until it
busted. But it never did cure up. I poisoned it by goin' out pulling
up greens in the garden. They tell me I got dew poisoning.
"I don't git no help from the Welfare or from the Government. My
husband works on the relief sometimes. He's on the relief now.
"I married--oh, Lordy, lemme see when I did marry. It's been a long
time ago, more 'n thirty years it's been. It's been longer than that.
We married up here on Twelfth and State Street, right here in Little
Rock. I had a big wedding. I had to go to Thompson's hall. That was on
Tenth and State Street. They had to go to git all them people in. They
had a big time that night.
"I lived in J. P. Robinson's house twenty-two years. And then I lived
in front of Dunbar School. It wasn't Dunbar then. I know all the
people that worked at the school. I been living here about six
months."
Interviewer's Comment
Ella Johnson is about eighty-five years old. Her father went to war
when the War first broke out. Her mother ran away then and went to
Churchill's farm not later than 1862. Ella Johnson learned to plow
then and she was at least nine years old she says and perhaps older
when she learned to plow. So she must be at least eighty-five.
Interviewer: Mary D. Hudgins
Person interviewed: Fanny Johnson
Aged: 76
Home: Palmetto (lives with daughter who owns
a comfortable, well furnished home)
As told by: Mrs. Fanny Johnson
"Yes ma'am. I remembers the days of slavery. I was turned five years
old when the war started rushing. No ma'am, I didn't see much of the
Yankees. They didn't come thru but twice. Was I afraid? No ma'am. I
was too busy to be scared. I was too busy looking at the buttons they
wore. Until they went in Master's smoke house. Then I quit looking and
started hollering. But, I'll tell you all about that later.
My folks all come from Maryland. They was sold to a man named Woodfork
and brought to Nashville. The Woodfork colored folks was always
treated good. Master used to buy up lots of plantations. Once he
bought one in Virginia with all the slaves on the place. He didn't
believe in separating families. He didn't believe in dividing mother
from her baby.
But they did take them away from their babies. I remember my
grandmother telling about it. The wagon would drive down into the
field and pick up a woman. Then somebody would meet her at the gate
and she would nurse her baby for the last time. Then she'd have to go
on. Leastwise, if they hadn't sold her baby too.
It was pretty awful. But I don't hold no grudge against anybody. White
or black, there's good folks in all kinds. I don't hold nothing
against nobody. The good Lord knows what he is about. Most of the time
it was just fine on any Woodfork place. Master had so many places he
couldn't be at 'em all. We lived down on the border, on the
Arkansas-Louisiana line sort of joining to Grand Lake. Master was up
at Nashville, Tennessee. Most of the time the overseers was good to
us.
But it wasn't that way on all the plantations. On the next one they
was mean. Why you could hear the sound of the strap for two blocks. No
there wasn't any blocks. But you could hear it that far. The "niggah
drivah" would stand and hit them with a wide strap. The overseer would
stand off and split the blisters with a bull whip. Some they whipped
so hard they had to carry them in. Just once did anybody on the
Woodfork place get whipped that way.
We never knew quite what happened. But my grandmother thought that the
colored man what took down the ages of the children so they'd know
when to send them to the field must have wrote Master. Anybody else
couldn't have done it. Anyhow, Master wrote back a letter and said, 'I
bought my black folks to work, not to be killed.' And the overseer
didn't dare do so any more.
No ma'am, I never worked in the field. I wasn't old enough. You see I
helped my grandmother, she is the one who took care of the babies. All
the women from the lower end would bring their babies to the upper end
for her to look after while they was in the field. When I got old
enough, I used to help rock the cradles. We used to have lots of
babies to tend. The women used to slip in and nurse their babies. If
the overseer thought they stayed too long he used to come in and whip
them out--out to the fields. But they was good to us, just the same.
We had plenty to wear and lots to eat and good cabins to live in. All
of them wasn't that way though.
I remember the women on the next plantation used to slip over and get
somthing to eat from us. The Woodfork colored folks was always well
took care of. Our white folks was good to us. During the week there
was somebody to cook for us. On Sunday all of them cooked in their
cabins and they had plenty. The women on the next plantation, even
when they was getting ready to have babies didn't seem to get enough
to eat. They used to slip off at night and come over to our place. The
Woodfork people never had to go nowhere for food. Our white folks
treated us real good.
Didn't make much difference when the war started rushing. We didn't
see any fighting. I told you the Yankees come thru twice----let me go
back a spell.
We had lots of barrels of Louisiana molasses. We could eat all we
wanted. When the barrels was empty, we children was let scrape them.
Lawsey, I used to get inside the barrel and scrape and scrape and
scrape until there wasn't any sweetness left.
We was allowed to do all sorts of other things too. Like there was
lots of pecans down in the swamps. The boys, and girls too for that
matter, was allowed to pick them and sell them to the river boats what
come along. The men was let cut cord wood and sell it to the boats.
Flat boats they was. There was regular stores on them. You could buy
gloves and hats and lots of things. They would burn the wood on the
boat and carry the nuts up North to sell. But me, I liked the sugar
barrel best.
When the Yankees come thru, I wasn't scared. I was too busy looking at
the bright buttons on their coats. I edged closer and closer. All they
did was laugh. But I kept looking at them. Until they went into the
smoke house. Then I turned loose and hollered. I hollored because I
thought they was going to take all Master's sirup. I didn't want that
to happen. No ma'am they didn't take nothing. Neither time they came.
After the war was over they took us down the river to The Bend. It was
near Vicksburg----an all day's ride. There they put us on a plantation
and took care of us. It was the most beautifulest place I ever see.
All the cabins was whitewashed good. The trees was big and the whole
place was just lovely. It was old man Jeff Davis' place.
They fed us good, gave us lots to eat. They sent up north, the Yankees
did, and got a young white lady to come down and teach us. I didn't
learn nothing. They had our school near what was the grave yard. I
didn't learn cause I was too busy looking around at the tombstones.
They was beautiful. They looked just like folks to me. Looks like I
ought have learned. They was mighty good to send somebody down to
learn us that way. I ought have learned, it looks ungrateful, but I
didn't.
My mother died on that place. It was a mighty nice place. Later on we
come to Arkansas. We farmed. Looked like it was all we knowed how to
do. We worked at lots of places. One time we worked for a man named
Thomas E. Allen. He was at Rob Roy on the Arkansas near Pine Bluff.
Then we worked for a man named Kimbroo. He had a big plantation in
Jefferson county. For forty years we worked first one place, then
another.
After that I went out to Oklahoma. I went as a cook. Then I got the
idea of following the resort towns about. In the summer I'd to [TR:
go?] to Eureka.[D] In the winter I'd come down to Hot Springs.[E] That
was the way to make the best money. Folks what had money moved about
like that. I done cooking at other resorts too. I cooked at the hotel
at Winslow.[F] I done that several summers.
Somehow I always come back to Hot Springs. Good people in Eureka.
Finest man I ever worked for--for a rich man was Mr. Rigley, [TR:
Wrigley] you know. He was the man who made chewing gum. We didn't have
no gas in Eureka. Had to cook by wood. I remember lots of times Mr.
Wrigley would come out in the yard where I was splitting kindling.
He'd laugh and he'd take the ax away from me and split it hisself.
Finest man----for a rich man I ever see.
Cooking at the hotel at Winslow was nice. There was lots of fine
ladies what wanted to take me home with them when they went home. But
I told them, 'No thank you, Hot Springs is my home. I'm going there
this winter.'
I'm getting sort of old now. My feet ain't so sure as they used to be.
But I can get about. I can get around to cook and I can still see to
thread a needle. My daughter has a good home for me." (I was conducted
into a large living room, comfortably furnished and with a degree of
taste--caught glimpses of a well furnished dining room and a kitchen
equipment which appeared thoroughly modern--Interviewer)
"People in Hot Springs is good people. They seem sort of friendly.
Folks in Eureka did too, even more so. But maybe it was cause I was
younger then and got to see more of them. But the Lord has blessed me
with a good daughter. I got nothing to complain about, I don't hold
grudges against nobody. The good Lord knows what he is doing."
[Footnote D: Eureka Springs, Ark.]
[Footnote E: Hot Springs National Park]
[Footnote F: rustic hotel on mountain near village of Winslow, Ark.]
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: George Johnson
814 W. Ninth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 75
"I was born in Richmond, Virginia, September 28, 1862, and came to
this country in 1869. My father was named Benjamin Johnson and my
mother was named Phoebe Johnson. I don't know the names of my
grandmother and grandfather. My father's master was named Johnson; I
forget his first name. He was a doctor and lived on Charleston and
Morgan Streets. I don't know what my mother's name was before she
married my father. And I don't know what her master's name was. She
died when I was just three years old.
"The way my father happened to bring me out here was, Burton Tyrus
came out here in Richmond stump speaking and telling the people that
money grew like apples on a tree in Arkansas. They got five or six
boat loads of Negroes to come out here with them. Father went to share
cropping on the Red River Bottom on the Chickaninny Farm. He put in
his crop, but by the time he got ready to gather it, he taken sick and
died. He couldn't stand this climate.
"Then me and my sisters was supposed to be bound out to Henry Moore
and his wife. I stayed with them about six years and then I ran off.
And I been scouting 'round for myself ever since.
"My occupation has been chiefly public work. My first work was rail
roading and steam boating. I was on the Iron Mountain when she was
burning wood. That was about fifty some years ago. After that I worked
on the steamboats _Natchez_ and _Jim Lee_. I worked on them as
roustabout. After that I would just commence working everywhere I
could get it. I came here about forty-five years ago because I liked
the city. I was in and out of the city but made this place my
headquarters.
"I'm not able to do any work now. I put in for the Old Age Pension two
years ago. They told me I would have to prove my age but I couldn't do
it any way except to produce my marriage license. I produced them. I
got the license right out of this county courthouse here. I was
married the last time in 1907 and was forty-five years old then. That
will make me seventy-six years old this year--the twenty-eighth day of
this coming September. My wife died nine years ago.
"I have heard my father talking a little but old folks then didn't
allow the young ones to hear much. My daddy sent me to bed at night.
When night came you went to bed; you didn't hang around waiting to
hear what the old folks would say.
"My daddy got his leg shot in the Civil War. He said he was in that
battle there in Richmond. I don't know which side he was on, but I
know he got his leg shot off. He was one-legged. He never did get any
pension. I don't know even whether he was really enlisted or not. All
I know is that he got his leg shot off in the war.
"When the war ended in 1865, the slaves around Richmond were freed. I
never heard my father give the details of how he got his freedom. I
was too young to remember them myself.
"I don't know how many slaves Dr. Johnson had but I know it was a good
many, for he was a tobacco raiser. I don't remember what kind of
houses his slaves lived in. [And I never heard the kind of food we
et.] [HW: ?]
"I never heered tell of patrols till I came to Arkansas. I never
heered much of the Ku Klux either. I guess that was all the same,
wasn't it? Peace wasn't declared here till 1866. I never heered of
any of my acquaintances being bothered but I heered the colored people
was scared. All I know was that you had to come in early. Didn't, they
get you.
"What little schooling I got, I got it by going to night school here.
That is been a good many years back--forty years back. I forgot now
who was teaching night school. It was some kin of Ishes out here I
know.
Opinions
"I think times is tight now. Tighter than I ever knowed 'em to be
before. Quite a change in this world now. There is not enough work now
for the people and from what I can see, electricity has knocked the
laboring man out. It has cut the mules and the men out.
"My opinion of these young people is that they got all the education
in the world and no business qualifications. They are too fast for any
use."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: John Johnson
R.F.D., Clarendon, Arkansas
Age: 73
"I was born sixteen miles on the other side of Jackson, Tennessee. The
old mistress was Miss Sally, and old master was Mr. Steve Johnson,
same name as mine. My papa's name was Louis Johnson but my mama
belonged to the Conleys and befo' she married papa her name was Martha
Conley. My folks fur as I knowed was field hands. They stayed on at
Johnsons and worked a long time after freedom. I was born just befo'
freedom. From what I heard all of my folks talkin' the Ku Klux 'fected
the colored folks right smart, more than the war. Seemed 'bout like
two wars and both of 'em tried their best to draw in the black race.
The black race wanted peace all the time. It was Abraham Lincoln whut
wanted to free the black race. He was the President. The first war was
'bout freedom and the war right after it was equalization. The Ku Klux
muster won it cause they didn't want the colored folks have as much as
they have. I heard my folks say they knowed some of the Ku Klux. They
would get killed sometimes and then you hear 'bout it. They would be
nice as pie in day time and then dress up at night and be mean as they
could be. They wanted the colored folks think they was hants and
monsters from the bad place. All the Yankees whut wanted to stay after
they quit fighting, they run 'em out wid hounds at night. The Ku Klux
was awful mean I heard 'em say. Mr. Steve Johnson looked after all his
hands. All that stayed on to work for him. He told 'em long as they
stayed home at night and behave 'em selves they needn't be scared.
They wanter go out at night they had to have him write 'em a pass.
Jess like slavery an' they were free.
"The master didn't give 'em nuthin'. He let 'em live in his
houses--log houses, and he had 'em fed from the store stead of the
smoke house. He give 'em a little money in the fall to pay 'em. 'Bout
all the difference they didn't get beat up. If they didn't work he
would make 'em leave his place.
"That period--after the Civil War, it sure was hard. It was a
_de_'pression I'll tell you. I never seed a dollar till I was 'bout
grown. They called 'em 'wagon wheels.' They was mighty scarce. Great
big heavy pieces of silver. I ain't seed one fer years. But they used
to be some money.
"Lady, whut you wanter know was fo my days, fo I was born. My folks
could answered all dem questions. There was 4 girls and 6 boys in my
family.
"Course I did vote. I used to have a heap a fun on election day. They
give you a drink. It was plentiful I tell you. I never did drink much.
I voted Republican ticket. I know it would sho be too bad if the white
folks didn't hunt good canidates. The colored race got too fur behind
to be able to run our govmint. Course I mean education. When they git
educated they ain't studyin' nuthin' but spendin' all they make and
havin' a spreein' time. Lady, that is yo job. The young generation
ain't carin' 'bout no govinment.
"The present conditions--that's whut I been tellin' you 'bout. It is
hard to get work heap of the time. When the white man got money he
sure give the colored man and woman work to do. The white man whut
live 'mong us is our best friend. He stand by our color the best. It
is a heap my age, I reckon, I can't keep in work. Young folks can pick
up work nearly all time.
"I started to pay fer my home when I worked at the mill. I used to
work at a shoe and shettle mill. I got holt of a little cash. I still
tryin' to pay fer my home. I will make 'bout two bales cotton this
year. Yes maam they is my own. I got a hog. I got a garden. I ain't
got no cow.
"No maam I don't get no 'sistance from the govmint. No commodities--no
nuthin'. I signed up but they ain't give me nuthin'. I think I am due
it. I am gettin' so no account I needs it. Lady, I never do waste no
money. I went to the show ground and I seed 'em buyin' goobers and
popcorn. I seed a whole drove of colored folks pushin' and scrouging
in there so feared they wouldn't get the best seat an' miss somepin.
Heap of poor white people scrouging in there too all together. They
need their money to live on fo cold weather come. Ain't I tellin' you
right? I sho never moved outer my tracks. I never been to a show in my
life. Them folks come in here wid music and big tent every year. I
never been to a show in my life. That what they come here fur, to get
the cotton pickin' money. Lady, they get a pile of money fore they
leave. Course folks needs it now.
"When I had my mules and rented I made most and next to that when I
farmed for a fourth. When I was young I made plenty. I know how cotton
an' corn is made now but I ain't able to do much work, much hard work.
The Bible say twice a child and once a man. My manhood is gone fur as
work concerned.
"I like mighty well if you govmint folks could give me a little
'sistance. I need it pretty bad at times and can't get a bit."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Letha Johnson
2203 W. Twelfth Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 77
"I heered the people say I was born in time of slavery. I was born
durin' of the War.
"And when we went back home they said we had been freed four years.
"My father's last owner was named Crawford. He was a awful large man.
That was in Monroe County, Mississippi.
"I know they was good to us 'cause we stayed right there after freedom
till my father died in 1889. And mama stayed a year or two, then she
come to Arkansas.
"After my husband died in 1919, I went to Memphis. Then this girl I
raised--her mother willed her to me--I come here to Arkansas to live
with her after I got down with the rheumatism so I couldn't wash and
iron.
"In my husband's lifetime I didn't do nothin' but farm. And after I
went to Memphis I cooked. Then I worked for a Italian lady, but she
did her own cookin'. And oh, I thought she could make the best
spaghetti.
"I used to spin and make soap. My last husband and I was married
fifteen years and eight months and we never did buy a bar of soap. I
used to be a good soap maker. And knit all my own socks and stockin's.
"I used to go to a school-teacher named Thomas Jordan. I remember he
used to have us sing a song
'I am a happy bluebird
Sober as you see;
Pure cold water
Is the drink for me.
I'll take a drink here
And take a drink there,
Make the woods ring
With my temperance prayer.'
We'd all sing it; that was our school song. I believe that's the
onliest one I can remember.
"'Bout this younger generation--well, I tell you, it's hard for me to
say. It just puts me to a wonder. They gone a way back there. Seem
like they don't have any 'gard for anything.
"I heard 'em 'fore I left Mississippi singin'
'Everybody's doin' it, doin' it.'
"'Co'se when I was young they was a few that was wild, but seem like
now they is all wild. But I feels sorry for 'em."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Lewis Johnson
713 Missouri Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 87
"I'll be eighty-seven the eighteenth of this month if I live.
"They's a heap of things the human family calls luck. I count myself
lucky to be livin' as old as I is.
"Some says it is a good deed I've done but I says it's the power of
God.
"I never had but two spells of sickness when I was spectin' to die.
Once was in Mississippi. I had a congestis chill. I lay speechless
twenty-four hours and when I come to myself they had five doctors in
the house with me.
"But my time hadn't come and I'm yet livin' by the help of the good
Master.
"I stole off when I was eighteen and got my first marriage license.
They was a white fellow was a justice of the peace and he took
advantage of my father and he stood for me 'cause he wanted me to work
on his place. In them days they'd do most anything to gain labor.
"When they was emigratin' 'em from Georgia to these countries, they
told 'em they was hogs runnin' around already barbecued with a knife
and fork in their back. Told 'em the cotton growed so tall you had to
put little chaps up the stalk to get the top bolls.
"But they tole some things was true. Said in Mississippi the cotton
growed so tall and spread so it took two to pick a row, and I found
that true.
"Old master always fed his hands good so they could meet the demands
when he called on 'em. He worked 'em close but he fed 'em.
"He raised wheat, corn, peas, rye, and oats, and all such like that.
Oh, he was a round farmer all right. And he raised feed for his stock
too.
"My old boss used to raise sweet potatoes enough to last three years.
"The people of the South was carried through that sweat of freedom.
They was compelled to raise cotton and not raise much to eat. They
told 'em they could buy it cheaper than raise it, but it was a
mistake.
"I used to have a wood yard on the Mississippi and when the steamers
come down the river, I used to go aboard and quiz the people from the
North. Heap of 'em would get chips of different woods and put it away
to carry home to show. And they'd take cotton bolls and some limbs to
show the people at home how cotton grows.
"To my idea, the North is wiser than the South. My idea of the North
is they is more samissive to higher trades--buildin' wagons and
buggies, etc.
"Years ago they wasn't even a factory here to make cloth. Had to send
the cotton to the North and then order the cloth from the North, and
time they got it the North had all the money.
"In the old days they was only two countries they could depend on to
raise tobacco and that was Virginia and South Carolina.
"I can remember a right smart before the War started. Now I can set
down and think of every horse's name my old boss had. He had four he
kept for Sunday business. Had Prince, Bill, Snap, and Puss. And every
Saturday evening he had the boys take 'em in the mill pond and wash
'em off--fix 'em up for Sunday."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Lizzie Johnson,
Biscoe, Arkansas
Age: 65
"I was born at Holly Springs, Mississippi. My mother was fifteen years
old when the surrender come on. Her name was Alice Airs. Mama said she
and grandma was sold in the neighborhood and never seen none of her
folks after they was sold. The surrender come on. They quit and went
on with some other folks that come by. Mama got away from them and
married the second year of the surrender. She said she really got
married; she didn't jump the broom. Mama was a cook in war times.
Grandma churned and worked in the field. Grandma lived in to herself
but mama slept on the kitchen floor. They had a big pantry built
inside the kitchen and in both doors was a sawed-out place so the cats
could come and go.
"My father was sold during of the War too but he never said much about
it. He said some of the slaves would go in the woods and the masters
would be afraid to go hunt them out without dogs. They made bows and
arrows in the woods.
"I heard my parents tell about the Ku Klux come and made them cook
them something to eat. They drunk water while she was cooking. I heard
them say they would get whooped if they sot around with a book in
their hand. When company would come they would turn the pot down and
close the shutters and doors. They had preaching and prayed that way.
The pot was to drown out the sound.
"They said one man would sell off his scrawny niggers. He wanted fine
looking stock on his place. He couldn't sell real old folks. They kept
them taking care of the children and raising chickens, turkeys, ducks,
geese, and made some of them churn and milk.
"My stepfather said he knowed a man married a woman after freedom and
found out she was his mother. He had been sold from her when he was a
baby. They quit and he married ag'in. He had a scar on his thigh she
recollected. The scar was right there when he was grown. That brought
up more talk and they traced him up to be her own boy.
"Hester Swafford died here in Biscoe about seven years ago. Said she
run away from her owners and walked to Memphis. They took her up over
there. Her master sent one of the overseers for her. She rode
astraddle behind him back. They got back about daylight. They whooped
her awful and rubbed salt and pepper in the gashes, and another man
stood by handed her a hoe. She had to chop cotton all day long. The
women on the place would doctor her sores.
"Grandma said she remembered the stars falling. She said it turned
dark and seem like two hours sparkles fell. They said stars fell. She
said it was bad times. People was scared half to death. Mules and
horses just raced. She said it took place up in the day. They didn't
have time-pieces to know the time it come on.
"Young folks will be young the way I see it. They ain't much
different. Times is sure 'nough hard for old no 'count folks. Young
folks makes their money and spends it. We old folks sets back needing.
Times is lots different now. It didn't used to be that way."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Louis Johnson
721 Missouri Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 86
"My father said I was fifteen when peace was declared. In slavery days
they didn't low colored folks to keep their ages and didn't low em to
be educated. I was born in Georgia. I went to a little night school
but I never learned to read. I never learned to write my own name.
"I never did see no fightin' a tall but I saw em refugeein' goin'
through our country night and day. Said they was goin' to the Blue
Ridge Mountains to pitch battle. They was Rebels gettin' out of the
way of the Yankees.
"Old master was a pretty tough old fellow. He had work done aplenty.
He had a right smart of servants. I wasn't old enough to take a record
of things and they didn't low grown folks to ask too many questions.
"I can sit and study how the rich used to do. They had poor white
folks planted off in the field to raise hounds to run the colored
folks. Colored folks used to run off and stay in the woods. They'd
kill old master's hogs and eat em. I've known em to stay six months at
a time. I've seen the hounds goin' behind niggers in the woods.
"We had as good a time as we expected. My old master fed and clothed
very well but we had to keep on the go. Some masters was good to em.
Yes, madam, I'd ruther be in times like now than slavery. I like it
better now--I like my liberty.
"In slavery days they made you pray that old master and mistress would
hold their range forever.
"My old master was Bob Johnson. He lived in Muskoge County where I was
born. Then he moved to Harris County and that's where the war ketched
him. He become to be a widower there.
"I member when the Yankees come and took old master's horses and
mules.
"I had a young boss that went to the war and come home with the
rheumatism. He was walkin' on crutches and I know they sent him to a
refugee camp to see to things and when he come back he didn't have no
crutches. I guess the Yankees got em.
"Childern travels now from one seaport to another but in them days
they kept the young folks confined. I got along all right 'cept I
didn't have no liberty.
"I believe it was in June when they read the freedom papers. They told
us we was free but we could stay if we wanted to. My father left Bob
Johnson's and went to work for his son-in-law. I was subject to him
cause I was a minor, so I went with him. Before freedom, I chopped
cotton, hoed corn and drapped peas, but now I was big enough to follow
the plows. I was a cowboy too. I tended to the cows. Since I've been
grown I been a farmer--always was a farmer. I never would live in town
till I got disabled for farming.
"After we was free we was treated better. They didn't lash us then. We
was turned loose with the white folks to work on the shares. We always
got our share. They was more liberal along that line than they is now.
"After I come to this country of Arkansas I bought several places but
I failed to pay for them and lost them. Now my wife and me are livin'
on my daughter.
"I been married three times. I married 'fore I left Georgia but me and
her couldn't get along. Then I married in Mississippi and I brought
her to Arkansas. She died and now I been married to this woman
fifty-three years.
"I been belongin' to the church over forty years. I have to belong to
the church to give thanks for my chance here now. I think the people
is gettin' weaker and wiser."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Mag Johnson,
Clarendon, Arkansas
Age: 65 or 70?
"Pa was born in North Ca'lina. Ma was born in Virginia. Their names
George and Liza Fowler.
"Ma's fust owner what I heard her tell 'bout was Master Ed McGehee in
Virginia. He's the one what brung her in a crowd of nigger traders to
Somerville, Tennessee. The way it was, a cavalry of Yankees got in
back of them. The nigger trader gang drive up. They got separated. My
ma and her gang hid in a cave two weeks an' not much to eat. The
Yankees overtook 'em hid in the cave and passed on. Ma say one day the
nigger traders drive up in front McGehee's yard and they main heads
and Master Ed had a chat. They hung around till he got ready and took
off a gang of his own slaves wid him. They knowed he was after selling
them off when he left wid 'em.
"Ben Trotter in Tennessee bought ma and three more nigger girls. The
Yankees took and took from 'em. They freed a long time b'fore she
knowed of. She said they would git biscuits on Sunday around. Whoop
'em if one be gone.
"Ole miss went out to the cow pen an' ma jus' a gal like stole outen a
piece er pie and a biscuit and et it. The cook out the cow pen too but
the three gals was doing about in the house and yard. Ma shut polly up
in the shed room. Then she let it out when she et up the pie and
biscuit. Ole miss come in. Polly say, 'Liza shut me up, Liza shut me
up.' She missed the pie. Called all four the girls and ma said, 'I
done et it. I was so hungry.' Ole miss said that what polly talking
'bout, but she didn't understand the bird so very well. Ole miss say,
'I'm goiner tell Ben and have him whoop you.' That scared all four the
girls case he did whoop her which he seldom done. She say when Master
Ben come they stood by the door in a 'joining room. Ma say 'fore God
ole miss tole him. Master Ben sont 'em out to pick up apples. He had a
pie a piece cooked next day and a pan of hot biscuits and brown gravy,
tole 'em to fill up. He tole 'em he knowed they got tired of corn
batter cakes, milk and molasses but it was best he had to give them
till the War was done.
"Ma said her job got to be milking, raising and feeding the fowls,
chickens, ducks, geese, guineas, and turkeys all. The Yankees
discouraged her. They come so many times till they cleaned 'em out she
said.
"What they done to shut up polly's mouf was sure funny. He kept on
next morning saying, 'Liza shut me up, Liza shut me up.' Liza pulled
up her dress and underskirt and walked back'ards, bent down at him. He
got scared. He screamed and then he hollered 'Ball-head and no eyes'
all that day.
"Ma said they had corn shuckings and corn shellings and brush
burnings. Had music and square dancing plenty times.
"When they got free they didn't know what it was nor what in the world
to do with it. What they said 'minds me of folks now what got
education. Seems like they don't know what to do nor where to put it.
"Pa said the nigger men run off to get a rest. They'd take to the
woods and canebrakes. Once four of the best nigger fellars on their
master's place took to the woods for to git a little rest. The master
and paddyrolls took after 'em. They'd been down in there long 'nough
they'd spotted a hollow cypress with a long snag of a limb up on it.
It was in the water. They got them some vines and fixed up on the
snag. They heard the dogs and the horn. They started down in the
hollow cypress. One went down, the others coming on. He started
hollering. But he thought a big snake in there. He brought up a cub on
his nearly bare foot. They clem out and went from limb to limb till
they got so away the dogs would loose trail. They seen the mama bear
come and nap four her cubs to another place. His foot swole up so.
They had to tote my pa about. Next day the dogs bayed them up in the
trees. Master took them home, doctored his foot. Ast 'em why they
runed off and so much to be doing. They tole 'em they taking a little
rest. He whooped them every one.
"Pretty soon the Yankees come along and broke the white folks up. Pa
went wid the Yankees. He said he got grown in the War. He fed horses
for his general three years. He got arm and shoulder wounded, scalped
his head. They mustered him out and he got his bounty. He got sixty
dollars every three months.
"He died at Holly Grove, Arkansas about fifty years ago. Them was his
favorite stories."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Mandy Johnson
607 Cypress Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 92
"This is me. I'se old and ain't no 'count. I was done grown when the
war started. You _know_ I was grown when I was washin' and ironin'. I
stood right there and watched the soldiers goin' to war. I heered the
big bell go b-o-n-g, b-o-n-g and everybody sayin' 'There's goin' to be
a war, there's goin' to be a war!' They was gettin' up the force to go
bless your heart! Said they'd be back by nine tomorrow and some said
'I'm goin' to bring you a Yankee scalp.' And then they come again and
want _so many_. You could hear the old drums go boom--boom. They was
drums on this side and drums on that side and them drums was a
talkin'! Yes'm, I'se here when it started--milkin' cows, washin' and
cookin'. Oh, that was a time. Oh my Lord--them Yankees come in just
like blackbirds. They said the war was to free the folks. Lots of 'em
got killed on the first battle.
"I was born in Bastrop, Louisiana in February--I was a February colt.
"My old master was John Lovett and he was good to us. If anybody put
their hands on any of his folks they'd have him to whip tomorrow. They
called us old John's free niggers. Yes ma'm I had a good master. I
ain't got a scratch on me. I stayed right in the house and nussed till
I'se grown. We had a good time but some of 'em seed sights. I stayed
there a year after we was free.
"I married durin' the war and my husband went to war with my uncle. He
didn't come back and I waited three years and then I married again.
"You know they used to give the soldiers furloughs. One time one young
man come home and he wouldn't go back, just hid out in the cane brake.
Then the men come that was lookin' for them that 'exerted' durin' the
war and they waited till he come out for somethin' to eat and they
caught him and took him out in the bayou and shot him. That was the
onliest dead man I ever seen. I seen a heap of live ones.
"The war was gettin' hot then and old master was in debt. Old mistress
had a brother named Big Marse Lewis. He wanted to take all us folks
and sell us in New Orleans and said he'd get 'em out of debt. But old
master wouldn't do it. I know Marse Lewis got us in the jail house in
Bastrop and Mars John come to get us out and Marse Lewis shot him
down. I went to my master's burial--yes'm, I did! Old mistress didn't
let us go to New Orleans either. Oh Lordy, I was young them days and I
wasn't afraid of nothin'.
"Oh ho! What you talkin' 'bout? Ku Klux? They come out here just like
blackbirds. They tried to scare the people and some of 'em they
killed.
"Yes Lord, I seen a heap. I been through a lot and I seen a heap, but
I'm here yet. But I hope I never live to see another war.
"When peace was declared, old mistress say 'You goin' to miss me' and
I sho did. They's good to us. I ain't got nothin' to do now but sit
here and praise the Lord cause I gwine to go home some day."
Interviewer: Mrs. Carol Graham
Person interviewed: Marion Johnson
"Howdy, Missy, glad to see you again. As you sees I'm 'bout wound up
on my cotton baskets and now I got these chairs to put bottoms in but
I can talk while I does this work cause it's not zacting like making
baskets.
"'Pears like you got a cold. Now let me tell you what to do for it.
Make a tea out of pine straw and mullein leaves an' when you gets
ready for bed tonight take a big drink of it an' take some tallow and
mix snuff with it an' grease the bottom of your feets and under your
arms an' behind your ears and you'll be well in the mornin'.
"Yes'm hits right in the middle of cotton picking time now. Always
makes me think of when I was a boy. I picked cotton some but I got
lots of whippins 'cause I played too much. They was some chinquapin
trees in the fiel' and I jest natchally couldn' help stopping to pick
up some 'chanks' now an' then. I likes the fall time. It brings back
the old times on the plantation. After frost had done fell we would go
possum huntin' on bright moonlight nights and we would mostly find Mr.
Possum settin' in the 'simmon tree just helpin' hisself to them good
old ripe juicy 'simmons. We'd catch the possum an' then we'd help
ourselves to the 'simmons. Mentionin' 'simmons, my mammy sure could
make good pies with them. I can most taste them yet and 'simmon bread
too.
"He! he! he! jes' look at that boy goin' by with that stockin' on his
head. Niggers used to wear stockings on they legs but now they wear
them on they heads to make they hair lay down.
"Since this rain we had lately my rheumatism been botherin' me some. I
is gone to cutting my fingernails on Wednesday now so's I'll have
health; an' I got me a brand new remedy too an' it's a good one. Take
live earth worms an' drop them in hot grease an' let them cook till
there's no 'semblance of a worm then let the grease cool an' grease
the rheumatic parts. You know that rheumatism done come back cause I
got out of herbs. I just got to git some High John the Conqueror root
an' fix a red flannel sack an' put it in the sack along with five
finger grass, van van oil, controllin' powder, magnetic loadstone an'
drawin' powder. Now, missy, the way I fixes that sure will ward off
evil an' bring heaps of good luck. And I just got to fix myself that.
You better let me fix you one too. If you and me had one of them
wouldn't neither one of us be ailing. You needs some lucky hand root
too to carry round with you all the time. Better let Uncle Marion fix
you up.
"Did I ever tell you I used to tell fortunes with cards? But I stopped
that cause I got my jack now and it's so much truthfuler than cards.
You 'members when I answered that question for you and missy last year
and how what I told you come true. Yes'm I never misses now. Uncle
Marion can sure help you.
"There goes sister Melissy late with her washin' ergin. You know,
Missy, niggers is always slow and late. They'll be wantin' God to wait
on them when they start to heaven. White folks is always on time and
they sings 'When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder I'll Be There', and
niggers sing 'Don't Call The Roll Till I Get There.' You know I hates
for it to get so cool. I'll have to move in off the gallery to work.
When I sits on the gallery I sees everybody pass an' changes the time
of day with them. 'Howdy, Sister Melissy. Late ergin I see.' Yes, I
sees everything that goes on from my gallery. I hates for cool weather
to come so's I have to move in.
"Ain't that a cute little feller in long pants? Lawsy me! chillun
surely dresses diffunt now from when I was a chap. I didn' know
nothin' 'bout no britches; I went in my shirt tail--didn' wear nothin'
but a big old long shirt till I was 'bout twelve. You know that little
fellow's mama had me treat him for worms. I made him a medicine of
jimson weed an' lasses for his mama to give him every morning before
breakfast an' that sure will kill 'em. Yes'm, that little fellow is
all dressed up. 'Minds me of when I used to dress up to go courtin' my
gal. I felt 'bout as dressed up as that little fellow does. I'd take
soot out of the chimney and black my shoes then take a biscuit and rub
over them to shine 'em. You know biscuits have grease in them and my
shoes looked just like they done been shined by the bootblack.
"Law, missy, I don' know nothin' to tell you this time. Maybe if you
come back I can think of something 'bout when niggers was in politics
after the war but now I just can't 'member nothin'."
Interviewer: Carol Graham (Add.)
Person interviewed: Marion Johnson
El Dorado, Ark.
Age: ?
"Dar's golden streets and a pearly gate somewhars,
Dar's golden streets and a pearly gate somewhars,
I gwian ter keep on searchin' till I finds hit,
Dar's golden streets and a pearly gate somewhars.
"Dar's perfect peace somewhars,
Dar's perfect peace somewhars,
I gwian ter keep on searchin' till I finds hit,
Dar's perfect peace somewhars.
"Good mornin', Missie! Glad to see you again. I is workin' on chairs
again. Got these five to bottom for Mr. Brown and I sho can talk while
I does this work.
"Ain't the sunshine pretty this mornin'? I prayed last night that the
Lord would let today be sunny. I 'clare, Missie, hits rained so much
lately till I bout decided me and all my things was goin' to mildew.
Yes'm, me and all-l-l my things. And I done told you I likes to set on
my gallery to work. I likes to watch the folks go by. It seems so
natchel like to set here and howdy with em.
"I been in this old world a long time, but just can recollect bein' a
slave. Since Christmas ain't long past it sets me to thinkin' bout the
last time old Sandy Claus come to see us. He brought us each one a
stick of candy, a apple and a orange, and he never did come to see us
no more after that time cause we peeped. That was the last time he
ever filt our stockin'. But you knows how chaps is. We just had to
peep.
"You knows I was born and raised in Louisiana. I done told you that
many times. And I just wish you could see the vituals on old marster's
table at Christmas time. Lawdy, but his table jes groaned with good
things. Old Mistress had the cook cookin' for weeks before time it
seemed to me. There was hams and turkeys and chickens and cakes of all
kinds. They sho was plenty to eat. And they was a present for all the
niggers on the place besides the heaps of pretty things that Marster's
family got off the tree in the parlor.
"When I first began to work on the farm old master put me to cuttin'
sprouts, then when I got big enough to make a field hand, I went to
the field then. I done lots of kinds of work--worked in the field,
split rails, built fences, cleared new ground and just anything old
marster wanted me to do. I members one time I got a long old splinter
in my foot and couldn't get it out, so my mammy bound a piece of fat
meat round my foot and let it stay bout a couple days, then the
splinter come out real easy like. And I was always cutting myself too
when I was a chap. You know how careless chaps is. An soot was our
main standby for cuts. It would close the gash and heal it. And soot
and sugar is extra good to stop bleeding. Sometime, if I would be in
the field too far away from the house or anyplace where we could get
soot, we would get cobwebbs from the cotton house and different places
to stop the bleeding. One time we wasn't close to neither and one the
men scraped some felt off from a old black hat and put it on to stop
the bleedin'.
"My feets was tough. Didn't wear shoes much till I was grown. Went
barefooted. My feets was so tough I could step on stickers and not
feel em. Just to show how tough I was I used to take a blackberry limb
and take my toes and skin the briers off and it wouldn't hurt my
feets.
"Did I ever tell you bout my first pair of breeches? I was bout twelve
then and before that I went in my shirt tail. I thought I was goin' to
be so proud of my first breeches but I didn't like them. They was too
tight and didn't have no pockets. They come just below my knees and I
felt so uncomfortable-like that I tore em off me. And did I get a
lickin? I got such a lickin' that when my next ones was made I was
glad to put em on and wear em.
"I stayed round with marster's boys a lot, and them white boys was as
good to me as if I had been their brother. And I stayed up to the big
house lots of nights so as to be handy for runnin' for old master and
mistress. The big house was fine but the log cabin where my mammy
lived had so many cracks in it that when I would sleep down there I
could lie in bed and count the stars through the cracks. Mammy's beds
was ticks stuffed with dried grass and put on bunks built on the wall,
but they did sleep so good. I can most smell that clean dry grass now.
Mammy made her brooms from broom sage, and she cooked on a fireplace.
They used a oven and a fireplace up at the big house too. I never saw
no cookstove till I was grown.
"I members one time when I was a little shaver I et too many green
apples. And did I have the bellie ache, whoo-ee! And mammy poured cold
water over hot ashes and let it cool and made me drink it and it sure
cured me too. I members seein' her make holly bush tea, and parched
corn tea too for sickness. Nother time I had the toothache and mammy
put some axle grease in the hollow of the tooth and let it stay there.
The pain stopped and the tooth rotted out and we didn't have to pull
it.
"Whee! Did you see how that car whizzed round the corner? There warn't
no cars in my young days. They had mostly two-wheeled carts with
shafts for the horse to be hitched in, and lots of us drove oxen to
them carts. I plowed oxen many-a-day and rode em to and from the
field. Let me tell you, Missy, if you don't know nothin' bout
oxen--they surely does sull on you--you beat them and the more you
beat the more they sulls. Yes'm, they sure sulls in hot weather, but
it never gets too cold for em.
"Howdy, Parson. That sho was good preachin' Sunday. Yes suh, it was
fine.
"That's the pastor of our church, an he sho preached two good sermons
last Sunday. Sunday mornin' he preached 'Every kind of fish is caught
in a net' and that night he preached 'Marvel not you must be born
again.' But that mornin' sermon, it capped the climax. Parson sho told
em bout it. He say, 'First, they catch the crawfish, and that fish
ain't worth much; anybody that gets back from duty or one which says I
will and then won't is a crawfish Christian.' Then he say, 'The next
is a mudcat; this kind of a fish likes dark trashy places. When you
catch em you won't do it in front water; it likes back water and wants
to stay in mud. That's the way with some people in church. You can't
never get them to the front for nothin'. You has to fish deep for
them. The next one is the jellyfish. It ain't got no backbone to face
the right thing. That the trouble with our churches today. Too many
jellyfishes in em.' Next, he say is the gold fish--good for nothin'
but to look at. They is pretty. That the way folks is. Some of them go
to church just to sit up and look pretty to everybody. Too pretty to
sing; too pretty to say Amen! That what the parson preached Sunday.
Well, I'm a full-grown man and a full-grown Christian, praise the
Lord. Yes,'m, parson is a real preacher."
VOODOO MAN
UNCLE MARION JOHNSON, EX-SLAVE.
[Date Stamp: OCT 26 1936]
"Yes young missey ah'll sho tell yo-all whut yo wants ter know. Yes'm
ole Uncle Marion sho kin. Mah price is fo' bits fer one question.
No'm, not fo' bits fo th' two uv yo but fo' bits each. Yo say yo all
ain't got much money and yo all both wants ter know th' same thing.
Well ah reckon since yo all is been comin' roun' and tawkin' to ole
Uncle Marion ah cud make hit answer th' one question fuh both uv yo
fuh fo' bits 'tween yo. No'm ah caint bring hit out heah. Yo all will
haft tuh come inside th' house."
"[TR: " should be (]We went inside the house and Uncle Marion
unwrapped his voodoo instrument which proved to be a small glass
bottle about 2-1/2 inches tall wrapped to the neck in pink washable
adhesive tape and suspended from a dirty twine about six inches long.
At the top of the twine was a slip knot and in a sly way Uncle Marion
would twist the cord before asking the question. If the cord was
twisted in one direction the bottle would swing in a certain direction
and if the cord was twisted in the other direction the bottle would
swing in the opposite direction. Uncle Marion thought that we did not
observe this and of course we played dumb. By twisting the cord and
slyly working the muscles of his arm Uncle Marion made his instrument
answer his questions in the way that he wished them answered.)
"Now ifn the answer to huh question is yais swing towards huh and ifn
taint be still. (The bottle slowly swung toward me.) Now missy see hit
have done answered yo question and yo done seed hit say yes. Yes'm hit
sho am yes and yo' jes wait and see ifn ole Uncle Marion aint right.
Now yo jes answer the same question fuh tother young missy heah. Now
ifn the answer is yais yo turn toward huh which am the opposite to
which yo jes turnt and ifn the answer is no sta' still. (The bottle
then slowly turned around and went in Mrs. Thompson's direction.)
"Yo say whut do ah call dis heah? Ah calls hit a "jack". Yas'm hits a
jack an' hit sho will answer any question yo wants ter ask hit. No'm
yo cuden ask hit yo-self. Ah would haft ter ask hit fer yo. An' let me
tell yo' ole Uncle Marion sho kin help youall chillun. Ah kin help yo
all ward off evil and jinx; ah kin help yo all git a job; ah kin help
yo all ovah come the ruination uv yo home. Uncle Marion sho cain give
yo a helpin good luck hand. Ah cain help yo ovah come yo enemies.
"Now since ah knows yo young misses am in'erested an ah knows yo will
sen' othah fokes tuh me what am in trouble ah am gointer tell yo all
whut some uv mah magic remidies is so yo all kin tell fokes that ah
have them yarbs (herbs) fuh sale. Yes'm ah has them yarbs right hea
fuh sale and hit sho will work too.
"Now thar is High John the Conquerer Root. If'n yo totes one o' them
roots in yo pocket yo will nevah be widout money. No mam. And you'll
always conquer yo troubles an yo enemies. An fokes can sho git them
yarbs thru me. Efn Uncle Marion don' have non on han' he sho kin git
em for em.
"Den dar is five finger grass, ah kin git dat fuh yo too. Ifn dat is
hung up ovah th' bedstid hit brings restful sleep and keeps off evil.
Each one uv dem five fingahs stans for sumpin too. One stans fuh good
luck, two fuh money, thee fuh wisdom, fo' fuh power an five fuh love.
"Yas'm an ah kin buil' a unseen wall aroun' yo so as ter keep evil,
jinx and enemies way fum yo and hit'll bring heaps uv good luck too.
The way ah does hit is this way: Ah takes High John the Conqueror Root
and fixes apiece of red flannel so as ter make a sack and puts hit in
the sack along wid magnetic loadstone, five finger grass, van van oil,
controllin' powdah and drawin powdah and the seal uv powah. This heah
mus be worn aroun the neck and sprinkle hit ever mornin fuh seven
mornins wid three drops uv holy oil. Then theah is lucky han' root.
Hit looks jes like a human han'. If yo carries hit on yo person hit
will shake yo jinx and make yo a winnah in all kinds o games and
hit'll help yo choose winnin numbers."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Martha Johnson,
West Memphis
Age: 71
"I was born at Lake Providence, Louisiana second year after the War.
Mother's mother was left in Jackson, Tennessee. Mother was sold at
Vicksburg, Mississippi. Father's mother was left at Pittsburg,
Virginia. Father was brought to Lake Providence and sold to Master
Ross and Mr. Coleman was his overseer. He was stripped stark naked and
put up on the block. That was Nigger Traders Rule, he said. He was
black as men get to be. Mother was three-fourths white. Her master was
her father. He had two families. They was raised up in the same house
with his white family. Master's white wife raised her and kept her
till her death. He was dead I think.
"Then her young white master sold her. He sold his half-sister. She
met my father at Vicksburg, Mississippi where he mustered out. She was
chambermaid when the surrender came on, on the Gray Eagle boat from
Vicksburg to Memphis. Mother died when I was nine years old. Papa had
no boys, only three girls. I was his 'Tom Boy.' I did the milking and
out-of-door turns. Papa was a small man. He weighed 150 pounds. He
carpentered, made and mended shoes, and was a blacksmith. We farmed
and farmed. I was chambermaid in Haynes, Arkansas hotel three years. I
washed and ironed. I'm not much cook. I never was fond of cooking.
"I never voted. I'm not starting now. I'm too old.
"Times is hard. You can't get ahead no way. It keeps you hustling all
the time to live. Times is going pretty fast. In some ways times is
better for some people and harder for other people.
"These young folks don't want to be advised and I don't advise them
except my own children. I tell them all they listen to. They listen
now better than they did when they was younger. They are all grown.
"I don't get no help from nowhere but my children a little. I own my
home."
Interviewer: Pernella M. Anderson
Person interviewed: Millie Johnson (Old Bill)
El Dorado, Arkansas
Age: ?
"I was born in Caledonia, Arkansas but I don't know when. I just can't
tell you nothing hardly about when I was a child because my mind goes
and comes. I was a slave and my white folks were good to me. They let
me play and have a good time just like their children did.
"After I got grown I run around terrible. My husband quit me a long
time ago. The white folks let me have my way. They said I was mean and
if my husband fooled with me, told me to shoot him. I am going back
home to Caledonia when I get a chance. My sister's boy brought me up
here; Mack Ford is his name.
"A long time ago--I don't know how long it's been--I came out of the
back door something hung their teeth in my ankle. I hollered and
looked down and it was a big old rattlesnake. I cried to my sister to
get him off of me. She was scared, so all I knew to do was run, jump
and holler. I ran about--oh, I don't know how far--with the snake
hanging to my ankle. The snake would not let me go, and it wasn't but
one thing for me to do and that was stop and pull the snake off of me.
I stopped and began pulling. I pulled and pulled and pulled and
pulled. The snake would not let me go. I began pulling again. After
awhile I got it off. When I pulled the snake away the snake brought
his mouth full of my meat. You talk about hurting, that like to have
killed me. That place stayed sore for twenty years before it healed
up. After it had been healed a couple years I then scratched the
place on a bob wire that inflamed it. That has been about 25 or 30
years ago and it's been sore ever since. Lord, I sure have been
suffering too. As soon as it gets well I am going back to Caledonia. I
am praying for God to let me live to get back home. Mack Ford is the
cause of me being up here.
"I was born in slavery time way before the War. My name is Millie
Johnson but they call me Bill."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Rosie Johnson,
Holly Grove, Arkansas
Age: 76
"I was born and raised on Mr. Dial's place. Mama belong to them. My
papa belong to Frank Kerr. His old mistress' name Jane Roberts in
Alabama. His folks come from Alabama. He say Jane Roberts wouldn't
sell her slaves. They was aired (heired) down mong the children. David
Dial had sebral children and mama was his house girl and nurse. They
was married in Dial's yard. My papa name Jacob Kerr. They took me to
Texas when I warn't but two years old. We rode in the covered wagon
where they hauled the provisions. They muster stayed a pretty good
time. I heard em talkin' what all they raised out there and what a
difference they found in the country. They wanted to go. They didn't
wanter be in the war they said. It was too close to suit them.
"I recken I was too small to recollect the Ku Klux. I heard em talk
bout how mean the Jayhaws was.
"I never voted. What business I got votin' I would jes' lak you tell
me? I don't believe in it no more'n nuthin'.
"I been farmin' all my life. I had fourteen children. Eight livin'
now. They scattered bout up North. It took meat and bread to put in
their mouths and somebody workin' to get it there I tell you. There
ain't a lazy bone in me. I jes' give out purty nigh. I wash and iron
some when I ken get it.
"I got a hog and a garden. I ain't got nuthin' else. I don't own no
house, no place. I got a few chickens bout the place what eat up the
scraps what the pig don't get.
"I signed up three years ago. I don't get nuthin' now. What I scrape
round and make is all I has.
"I was born in June 1861. I don't recollect what day they said. Pear
lack it been so long. When it come to work I recken I is had a hard
time all my life. I never minded nuthin' till I got so slow and no
count."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Saint Johnson
Izard Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: --
Occupation: Drayman
"As far as slavery is concerned I know nothing about it except as the
white people told me. My mother would ask me what they told me and I
would tell her that Miss Annie said I didn't have to call her father
'Master' any more. And she would say, 'No, you don't.'
"My father's name was Wiley Johnson. He was ninety years old when he
died. He was born in Cave Spring, Georgia, in Floyd County. My mother
was born in the same place. Both of them were Johnsons. They were
married during slavery times. I don't know what her name was before
she married.
"Anyway, I've told you enough. I've told you too much. How come they
want all this stuff from the colored people anyway? Do you take any
stories from the white people? They know all about it. They know more
about it than I do. They don't need me to tell it to them.
"I don't tell my age. I just say I was born after slavery. Then I
can't be bothered about all this stuff about records. Colored people
didn't keep any records. How they goin' to know when they were born or
anything? I don't believe in all that stuff.
"You know these young people as well as I do. They ain't nothin'.
"I ain't got nothin' to say about politics. You know what the truth
is. Why don't you say it? You don't need to hide behind my words.
You're educated and I'm not; you don't need to get anything from me.
"Yes, I had some schoolin'. But you know more about these things than
I do."
Interviewer's Comment
At first, I thought I wouldn't write this interview up; but afterwards
I thought: Maybe this interview will be of interest to those who want
the work done. It represents the attitude of a very small, but
definite, minority. About five persons out of a hundred and fifty
contacted and more than eighty written up have taken this attitude.
Johnson is reputed to have been born in slavery, but he says not. He
had a high school education. He is a good man, wholesome in all his
contacts, despite the apparent intolerance of his private remarks to
the interviewer.
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Willie Johnson (female)
1007 Izard, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 71
"My father said he had a real good master. When he got up large enough
to work, his master learned him a trade. He learned the mechanic's
trade, such as blacksmithing and working in shops. He learned him all
of that. And then he learned him to be a shoemaker. You see, he
learned him iron work and woodworking too. And he never whipped him
during slavery time. Positively didn't allow that.
"My father's name was Jordan Kirkpatrick. His master was named
Kirkpatrick also. My father was born in Tennessee in Sumner County.
"My father married in slave time. You know, they married in slave
time. I have heard people talking about it. I have heard some people
say they married over 'gain when freedom came. My father had a
marriage certificate, and I didn't hear him say anything about being
married after freedom. I have seen the certificate lots of times. I
don't know the date of it. The certificate was issued in Sumner
County, Tennessee.
"My father and mother belonged to different masters. My mother's
master was a Murray. She had a good many people. Her name before she
married was Mary Murray. I don't know just how my mother and father
met. The two places weren't far apart. They lived a good distance from
each other though, and I remember hearing him tell how he had to go
across the fields to get to her house after he was through with the
day's work. The pateroles got after him once. They didn't catch him,
so they didn't do anything to him. He skipped them some way or
another.
"I have heard them say that before the slaves were set free the
soldiers were going 'round doing away with everything that they could
get their hands on. Just a while before they were set free, my father
took my mother and the children one night and slipped off. He went to
Nashville. That was during the War. It wasn't long after that till
everybody was set free. They never did capture him and get him back.
"During the War they went around pressing men into service. Finally
once, they caught him but they let him go. I don't know how he got
away.
"I can remember he said once they got after him and there was a white
man and his family living in the house. He rented a room from the
white man. That was in Nashville. These pateroles or whatever they was
got after him and claimed they were coming to get him, and the old man
and the old woman he stayed with took him upstairs and said they would
protect him if the pateroles came back. I don't know whether they came
back or not, but they never got him.
"My father supported himself and his family in Nashville by following
his trade. He seems to have gotten along all right. He never seemed to
have any trouble that I heard him speak of.
"I was born in 1867 in Nashville, Tennessee, about half a block from
the old Central Tennessee College[G]. I think it became Walden
University later on, and I think that it's out now. That's an old
school. My oldest sister was graduated from it. I could have been if I
hadn't taken up the married notion.
"I got part of my schooling in Nashville and part here. When I left
Nashville, I was only a child nine years old. I only went to school
four sessions after we came out here. I didn't like out here. I wanted
to stay back home. My father came out here because he had heard that
he could make more money with his trade here than he could in
Nashville, which he did. He was shoeing horses and building wagons and
so on. Just in this blacksmithing and carpenter work.
"I wanted to learn that. I would stay 'round the shop and help him
shoe horses. But they wouldn't let me take it up. I got so I could do
carpenter work pretty good. First I learned how to make a box
square--that is a hard job when a person doesn't know much.
"I never heard my father say anything about the food the slaves ate. I
have heard him talk about the good times they had around hog killing.
His master raised sweet potatoes and corn and wheat and things like
that. I guess they ate just about what they raised.
"My father never was a sharecropper. He knew nothing of rural work
except the mechanical side of it. He could make or do anything that
was needed in fixing up something to do farm work with. I have seen
him make and sharpen plows. The first cotton stalk cutter that was
made within ten miles of here was made by my father. The people 'round
here were knocking off cotton stalks with sticks until my father began
making the cutter. Then everybody began using his cutter. That is, the
different farmers and sharecroppers around here began using them. I
was scared of the first one he made. He made six saws or knives and
sharpened them and put them on a section of a log so that it could be
hitched to a mule and pulled through the fields and cut the cotton
stalks down.
"My mother's old master was her father. I think my father's father was
a Negro and his mother was an Indian. My mother's mother was an
American woman, that is, a slavery woman. My mother and father were
lucky in having good people. My mother was treated just like one of
her master's other children. My father's master had an overseer but
he never was allowed to touch my father. Of course my mother never was
under an overseer."
[Footnote G: [HW: Central Tennessee College estab. about 1866-7.]]
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Angeline Jones
Near Biscoe and Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 79
[Date Stamp: May 31 1938]
"I was born in Memphis, Tennessee. Mother was cooking. Her name was
Marilla Harris and she took my pa's name, Brown. He was Francis Brown.
I was three years old when the surrender come on. Then grandma, my
mama and pa and me and my brother come with a family to Biscoe. There
wasn't no Biscoe but that's where we come to anyhow. Mama and grandma
cooked for a woman. They bought a big farm and started clearing. Some
of it was cleared. Mama's been dead forty years. I farmed all my whole
life. I don't know nothing else.
"Grandma had a right smart to say during slavery times. She was
cooking for her mistress and had a family. She'd hide good things to
take to her children. The mistress kept a polly parrot about in the
kitchen. Polly would tell on grandma. Caused grandma to get whoopings.
She talked like a good many of 'em. She got sick. The woman what
married grandma's brother was to take her place. She wasn't going to
be getting no whoopings. She sewed the parrot up. He got to dwindling.
They doctored him. She clipped his tongue at the same time so he never
could do no good talking. He died. They never found out his trouble.
Grandma said they worried about the parrot but she never did; she
knowed what been done. Grandma come from Paris, Tennessee but I think
the same folks fetched 'er. I don't think she said she was sold. She
said slavery times was hard. Mama didn't see as hard times as grandma
had. Grandma shielded her in the work part a whole heap to get to
live where she did. They loved to be together. She's been dead and
left me forty odd years. I works and support myself, and my kin folks
help all they can."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Charlie Jones
1303 Ohio Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 76
"I was borned in '61 in the State of Mississippi August the 15th.
"I member just a little bout the War. Yes'm, I member seein' the
soldiers. They was walkin'--just a long row of em. Had guns across
their shoulders and had them canteens. I member we chilluns run out to
the road and got upon the bars and watched em go by. I think it was
after they had fought in Vicksburg and was comin' back towards
Memphis.
"My mother belonged to the Harrises and we stayed with her and my
father belonged to the Joneses.
"I member how they used to feed us chillun. They had a big cook
kitchen at the big house and we chillun would be out in the yard
playin'. Cook had a big wooden tray and she'd come out and say
'Whoopee!' and set the tray on the ground. Sometimes it was milk and
sometimes it would be potlicker. We'd fall down and start eatin'. Get
out [TR: our?] heads in and crowd just like a lot of pigs.
"After freedom we went to old Colonel Jones and worked on the shares.
I wasn't big enough to work but I member when we left the Harris
place. I know they wasn't so cruel to em. Didn't have no overseer.
Some of the people had cruel overseers.
"I went to school after the War a right smart. I got as far as the
third grade. Studied McGuffy's Reader and the old Blue Back Speller.
Yes'm, sure did.
"I come here to Arkansas wid my parents in '78. Come right here to
Jefferson County, down at Fairfield on the Lambert place.
"All my life I've farmed. I worked on the shares and rented too. Could
make the most money rentin'. I got everywhere from 4c to 50c a pound
for cotton. I had cows and hogs and chickens and raised some corn.
"I made a garden and made a little cotton and corn last year on
government land on the old river bank.
"I heered of the Klu Klux but they never did bother me.
"I voted the Publican ticket and never had no trouble.
"I been right around this town fifteen years and I own this home. I
worked about six months at the shops but the rest of the time I
farmed.
"Heap of things I'd do when I was young the young folks won't do
now."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Cyntha Jones
3006 W. Tenth Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 88
"Well, here's one of em. Born down in Drew County.
"Simpson Dabney was old master and his wife named Miss Adeline.
"I reckon I do remember bout the War. Yes ma'am, the Yankees come and
they had me scared. I wouldn't know when they got in the yard till
they was all around me. Had me holdin' the bridles.
"My young missis' husband was in the War and when they fought the last
battle at Princeton, she had me drive the carriage. When I heard them
guns I said we better go back, so I turned round and made them horses
step so fast my dress tail stood out straight. I thought they was
goin' to kill us all. And when we got home all the windows was broke.
Miss Nancy say, 'Cyntha, somebody come and broke all my windows,' but
it was them guns broke em.
"Old master was a doctor but my young missis' husband wasn't nothin'
but a hunter till they carried him to war. He was so skeered they had
to most drag him.
"I seen two wars and heered tell of another.
"I member when the Yankees come and took things I just fussed at em. I
thought what was my white folks' things was mine too. But when they
got my old master's horse my daddy went amongst em and got it back
cause he had charge of the stock. I don't know whether he got em at
night or not but I know he went in the daytime and come back in the
daytime.
"Old master's children and my father's children worked in the field
just alike. He wouldn't low a overseer on the place, or a patroller
either.
"Dr. Dabney and his sister raised my mother. They brought her from
some furrin' country to Arkansas. And when he married, my mother
suckled every one of his children.
"I just worked in the house and nussed. Never worked in the field till
I was grown and married. I was nineteen when I married the fust time.
I stayed right there in that settlement till the second year of
surrender.
"When I was twenty-one they had me fixed up for a midwife. Old Dr.
Clark was the one started me. I never went to school a minute in my
life but the doctors would read to me out of their doctor books till I
could get a license. I got so I could read print till my eyes got so
bad. Old Dr. Clark was the one learned me most and since he died I
ain't never had a doctor mess with me.
"In fifteen years I had 299 babies on record right there in Rison.
That's where I was fixed up at--under five doctors. And anybody don't
believe it, they can go down there and look up the record.
"We had plenty to eat in slave times. Didn't have to go to the store
and buy it by the dribble like they does now. Just go to the
smokehouse and get it.
"I got such a big mind and will I wants to get about and raise
something to eat now so we wouldn't have to buy everything, but I
ain't able now. I've had twenty-one children but if I had em now
they'd starve to death.
"I been married four times but they all dead--every one of em.
"When freedom come my old master give my mother $500 cause she saved
his money for him when the Yankees come. She put it in the bed and
slept on it. He had four farms and he told her she could have ary one
of em and any of the stock, but my father had done spoke for a place
in Cleveland County--he had done bought him a place.
"And old master on his dying bed, he asked my mother to take his two
youngest children and raise em cause their mother was sickly, but she
didn't do it.
"I don't know hardly what to think of this younger generation. Used to
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