FOOTNOTES:
[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 4¢ to 50¢ 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 be they'd go to Sunday school barefooted but now'days, time they is born they got shoes and stockin's on em.
"I used to spin, knit and weave. I even spun thread to make these ropes they use to plow. I could spin a thread you could sew with, and weave cloth with stripes and flowers. Have to know how to dye the thread. That's all done in the warp. Call the other the filler.
"Now let me tell you, when that was goin' on and you raised your meat and corn and potatoes, that was livin'!"
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Edmond Jones
1824 W. Second, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 75
"I growed up in the war. I remember seein' the soldiers—hundreds and thousands of em. Oh, yes'm, I growed up in the war. I was born under Abraham Lincoln's administration and then Grant.
"I remember when that old drum beat everbody had to be in bed at nine o'clock. That was when they had martial law. Hays knocked that out you know. That was when they had the Civil Rights Bill. I growed up in that.
"Abraham Lincoln issued the Proclamation of Freedom in January and I was born in May so you might say I was born right into freedom.
"I always say I was born so close to slavery I could smell it, just like you cookin' somethin' for dinner and I smelled it.
"I tell these young people I can look back to my boy days quick as they can.
"Yes'm, I don't know anything bout slavery. My people say they come from North Carolina, but I been right here on this spot of ground for forty-four years. I come here when they was movin' the cemetery.
"My mother was a cook here for Mrs. Reynolds. After I growed up here I went out to my father where he was workin' on the shares and stayed there a year. I married quite young and bought a place out there. I said I was twenty-one when I got the license but I wasn't but twenty.
"In old times everbody thought of the future and had all kinds of things to eat. First prayer I was taught was the Lord's Prayer—'Give us this day our daily bread.' I said sure was a long time bein' answered cause now we're gettin' it—just our daily bread.
"I never had no luck farmin'—ever' time I farmed river overflowed. I raised everthing I needed or I didn't have it. Had as high as thirty head of cows at one time.
"I went to work as janitor at Merril School to take the regular janitor's place for just two months and how long you reckon I stayed there? Twenty years. Then I come here and sit down and haven't done anything since.
"The first school I went to was in the First Baptist Church on Pullen Street. They had it there till they could put up a building.
"I went to nine different teachers and all of em was white. They was sent here from the North. We studied McGuffy's reader and you stayed with it till you learned it. I got it till today—in my head you understand.
"Sure, Lord, I used to vote and hold ever' kind of office. Used to be justice of the peace six years. I said I been in everthing but a bull fight.
"I've traveled ever' place—Niagara Falls, Toronto, Canada. I been in two World's Fairs and in several inaugurations. Professor Cheney says I know more history than any the teachers at the college."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Eliza Jones
610 E. Eighteenth, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 89
"Yes ma'am, this is Eliza. I was born in slave times and I knowed how to work good.
"You know I was grown in time of the War 'cause I married the first year of freedom.
"Belonged to a widow named Edna Mitchell. That was in Tennessee near Jackson. Oh Lawd, my missis was good to all her niggers—if you should call 'em that.
"She had two men and three women. My mother was the cook. Let's see—Sarah was one, Jane was two, and Eliza was three. (I was Eliza.) Then there was Doc and Uncle Alf. I reckon he was our uncle. Anyway we all called him Uncle Alf. He managed the business—he was the head man and Doc was next. And Miss Edna raised us all to grown.
"Now I'm tellin' you right straight along. I try to tell the truth. I forgits and I can't remember ever'thing like it ought to be but I hit at it.
"Things is hard this year and I don't know how come. I guess it's 'cause folks is so wicked. They is livin' fast—black and white.
"How many chillun? Now, you'd be s'prised. I hardly ever tell folks how many. I had fifteen; I was a good breeder. But they is all dead but one, and they ain't doin' me no good. Never raised but two. Most of 'em just died when they was born.
"I'd a been better off if I had stayed single a while longer and went to school and learned how to read and write and figger. But I went to another kind of a school.
"But I sure has been blest. I been here a long time, got a chile to cook me a little bread—don't have to worry 'bout dat.
"I had to send clean back to where I j'ined the Metropolitan to get my age. That was in Cairo, Illinois 'cause I'd lived there fifteen years. But when my daughter and her husband come here and got settled, why I come to finish it out.
"Yes ma'am, I sure have worked hard. I've plowed, split wood, and done a little bit of ever'thing. But it was all done since freedom. In slavery times I was a house girl. I tell you I was a heap better off a slave than I was free.
"After freedom we had to go and get what we could get to do and work hard.
"They used to talk 'bout ha'nts and squinch owls. Say it was a sign of somebody dead. But I don't believe in that. 'Course what I don't believe in somebody else does."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Evelyn Jones
815 Arch Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: Between 68 and 78?
"I was born in Lonoke County right here in Arkansas. My father's name—I don't know it. I don't know nothin' 'bout my father. My mother's name was Mary Davis.
"My daddy died when I was five weeks old. I don't know nothin' 'bout 'im. Just did manage to git here before he left. I don't know the date of my birth. I don't know nothin' 'bout it and I ain't goin' to tell no lie.
"I have nineteen children. My youngest living child is twenty-eight years old. My oldest living is fifty-three. I have four dead. I don't know how old the oldest one is. That one's dead.
"I have a cousin named Harry Jordan. He lives 'round here somewheres. You'll find him. I don't know where he lives. He says he knows just how old I am, and he says that I'm sixty-eight. My daughter here says I'm seventy. And my son thinks I'm older. Don't nobody know. My daddy never told me. My mama was near dead when I was born; what could she tell me? So how am I to know?
"My mother was born in slavery. She was a slave. I don't know nothin' 'bout it. My mother came from Tennessee. That's what she told me. I was born in a log cabin right here in Arkansas. I was born in a log cabin right in front of the white folks' big house. It was not far from the white folks' graveyard. You know they had a graveyard of their own. Old Bill Pemberton, that was the name of the man owned the place I was born on. But he wasn't my mother's owner.
"I don't know where my father come from. My mother said she had a good time in slavery. She spoke of lots of things but I don't remember them.
"My grandma told me about when she went to church she used to carry her good clothes in a bundle. When she got near there, she would put them on, and hide her old clothes under a rock. When she come out from the meeting, she would have to put on her old clothes again to go home in. She didn't dare let the white folks see her in good clothes.
"I think my mother's white people were named Jordans. My mother and them all belonged to the young mistress. I think her name was Jordan. Yes, that's what it was—Jordan.
"Grandmammy had so many children. She had nineteen children—just like me. My grandmammy was a great big old red woman. She had red hair too. I never heard her say nothin' 'bout nobody whippin' her and my granddaddy. They whipped all them children though. My mama just had six children.
"Mama said her master tried to keep her in slavery after freedom. My mama worked at the spinning-wheel. When she heard the folks say they was through with the War, she was at the spinning-wheel. The white folks ought a tol' them they was free but they didn't. Old Jordan carried them down in De Valla Bluff. He carried them down there—called hisself gittin' away from the Yankees. But the Yankees told mama to quit workin'. They tol' her that she was free. My mama said she was in there at the wheel spinning and the house was full of white men settin' there lookin' at her. You don't see that sort of thing now.
"They had a man—I don't know what his name was. He stalled them steers, stalled 'em twice a day. They used to pick cotton. I dreamed about cotton the other night.
"My father farmed after slavery. I never heard them say they were cheated out of nothin'. I don't know whether they was or not. I'll tell you the truth. I didn't pay them no 'tention. Mighty little I can remember."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: John Jones,
Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 71
"I was raised an orph'ant but I was born in Tennessee. I lived over there and farmed till 'bout fifty year ago. I come out here wid Mr. Woodson to pick cotton. He dead now and I still tryin' to work all I can.
"I haben voted in thirty-five year. Because I couldn't vote in the Primary, then I say I wouldn't vote 'tall. I don't care if the women want to vote. Don't do no good nohow.
"I farmed all my life 'ceptin' 'bout ten years I worked on the section. I got so I couldn't stand up to it every day and had to farm again.
"I never considered times hard till I got disabled to work. It mighty bad when you can't get no jobs to do. My hardest time is in the winter. I has a garden and chickens but I ain't able to buy a cow. Man give me a little pig the other day. He won't be big enough to eat till late next spring. Every winter times is hard for me. It's been thater wa's ever since I begin not to be able to get about. Helped by the PWA."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: John Jones
3109 W. 10th Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 82
"I come here in 1856—you can figure it out for yourself. I was born in Arkansas, fifty miles below here.
"I remember the soldiers. I know I was a little boy drivin' the gin. Had to put me upon the lever. You see, all us little fellows had to work.
"I remember seein' the Indians goin' by to fight at Arkansas Post. They fought on the southern side. When I heard the cannons, I asked my mama what it was and she said 'twas war.
"John Dye—that was my young master—went to the War but Ruben had a kind of afflicted hand and he didn't go.
"Our plantation was on the river and I used to see the Yankee boats go down the river.
"My papa belonged to the Douglases and mama belonged to the Dyes. I was born on the Douglas place and I ain't been down there in over fifty years. They said I was born in March but I don't know any more bout it than a rabbit.
"Papa said he was raised up in the house. Said he didn't do much work—just tended to the gin.
"I remember one night the Ku Klux come to our house. I was so scared I run under the house and stayed till ma called me out. I was so scared I didn't know what they had on.
"I remember when some of the folks come back from Texas and they said peace was declared.
"I think my brother run off and jined the Yankees and come here when they took Pine Bluff. War is a bad thing. I think they goin' keep on till they hatch up another one.
"I didn't go to school much. I was the oldest boy at home and I had to plow. I went seven days all told and since then I learned ketch as ketch can. I can read and write pretty well. It's a consolation to be able to read. If you can't get all of it, you can get some of it.
"Been here in Jefferson County ever since 1867. I come here from Lincoln County.
"After freedom my papa moved my mama down on the Douglas place where he was and stayed one year, then moved on the Simpson place in Lincoln County, and then come up here in Jefferson County. I remember all the moves.
"I remember down here where Kientz Bros, place is was the gallows where they hung folks in slavery times. You know—when they had committed some crime.
"Yes'm, I voted but I never held any office.
"I know I don't look my age but I can tell you a heap of things happened before emancipation.
"I think the people are better off free—they got liberty."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Lidia Jones
228 N. Oak Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 94
Occupation: None—blind
"I was born in Mississippi and emigrated to Arkansas. Born on the Peacock place. Old John Patterson was my old master.
"My first goin' out was to the cow pen, then to the kitchen, and then they moved me to Mrs. Patterson's dining-room.
"I helped weave cloth. Dyed it? I wish you'd hush! My missis went to the woods and got it. All I know is, she said it was indigo. She had a great big kittle and she put her thread in that. No Lord, she never bought her indigo—she raised it.
"Oh, Miss Fannie could do most anything. Made the prettiest counter-panes I ever saw. Yes ma'am, she could do it and did do it.
"She had a loom half as big as this house. Lord a mercy, a many a time I went dancin' from that old spinnin'-wheel.
"They made all the clothes for the colored folks. They'd be sewin' for weeks and months.
"Miss Fannie and Miss Frances—that was her daughter—they wove such pretty cloth for the colored. You know, they went and made themselves dresses and the white and colored had the same kind of dresses.
"Yes Lord, they had some folks.
"Miss Frances wore hoops but Miss Fannie didn't.
"During of the War them Yankees come down the river; but to tell the truth, we run and hid and never seen 'em no more.
"They took Mars John's fine saddle horse named Silver Heels. Yes ma'am, took saddle and bridle and the horse on top of 'em. And he had a mare named Buchanan and they took her too. He had done moved out of the big house down into the woods. Called hisself hidin' I reckon. And he had his horses tied down by the river and the Yankees slipped up on him and took the horses.
"Yankees burned his house and gin house too and set fire to the cotton. Oh Lord, I don't like to talk about it. Them Yankees was rough.
"Right after freedom our white folks left this country and went to Missouri and the last account I heard of 'em they was all dead.
"After freedom, folks scattered out just like sheep.
"I'm tryin' to study 'bout some songs but I can't think of nothin' but Dixie."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Lydia Jones
228 North Oak Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 93
"My name's Lydia—Lydia Jones. Oh my God I'se born in Mississippi. I wish you'd hush—I know all about slavery.
"I never had but one master. That was old John Patterson. No he want good to me. I wish you'd hush! I had two young masters—Marse John and Marse Edward. Marse John go off to war and say he gwine whip them Yankees with his pocket knife, but he didn't do it. They said the war was to keep the colored folks slaves. I tell you I've heard them bull whips a ringin' from sun to sun.
"After the war when they told us we is free, they said to hire ourselves out. They didn't give us a nickel when we left.
"I heered talk of the Ku Klux and they come close enough for us to be skeered but I never seen none of 'em. We never had no slave uprisin's on our plantation—old John Patterson would a shot 'em down. I tell you he was a rabid man.
"I used to pick cotton and chop cotton and help weave the cloth. My old mistress—Miss Fannie—used to go to the woods and get things to dye the cloth. She would dye some blue and some red.
"Only song I 'member is Dixie. I heered talk of some others but God knows I never fooled with 'em.
"Yes'm I believes in hants. Let me tell you something. My mama seen my daddy after he been dead a long time. He come right up through the crack by the fireplace and he said 'Don't you be afraid Emmaline' but she was agoin'. They had to sing and pray in the house 'fore my mama would go back but she never seen him again.
"I'se been blind now for three years and I lives with my granddaughter but lady, I'll tell you the truth—I been around. Yes, madam, I is."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Liza Jones (Cookie)
610 S. Eighteenth Street, Pine Bluff, Ark.
Age: 88
"Come in, this is Cookie. Well, I do know a heap about slavery, cause I worked. I stayed in the house; I was house girl. They called me Cookie cause I used to cook so much.
"That was in Madison County, near Jackson, Tennessee. My mistress was good to me. Yes'm, I got along all right but a heap of others got along all wrong.
"Mistress took care of us in the cold and all kinds of weather. She sho did.
"She had four women and four men. We had plenty to eat. She had hogs and sheep and geese and always cooked enough for all of us. Whatever she had to eat we had.
"We clothed our darkies in slavery times. I was a weaver for four years and never done nothin' else. Yes ma'm, I was a house woman and I am now.
"Yes ma'm, I member seein' different kinds of soldiers. I member once some Rebels come to old mistress to get somethin' to eat but before it was ready the Yankees come and run em off. They didn't have time to eat it all so us colored folks got the rest of it.
"Old mistress had a son Mac and he was in the war. The Yankees captured him and carried him to Chicago and put him in a warehouse over the water.
"Old mistress was a good old Christian woman. All the darkies had to come to her room to prayermeetin' every night. She didn't skip no nights. And her help didn't mind workin'. They'd go the length for her, Miss.
"After I was grown I went most anywhere, but when I was little I sho set on old mistress' dress tail. I used to go to church with her. She'd say, "Open your mouf and sing" and I'd just holler and sing. I can member now how loud I used to holler.
"Aint no use in talkin', I had a good mistress. I never was sold. Old mistress wouldn't sell. There was a speculator come there and wanted to buy us. When we was free, old mistress say, "Now I could a sold you and had the money, and now you is goin' to leave." But they didn't, they stayed. Some stayed with old mistress till she died, but I didn't. I married the first year of freedom.
"My mistress and me spin a many a cut of cotton together. She couldn't beat me neither. If that old soul was livin' today, I'd be right with her. I was gettin' along. I didn't know nothin' but freedom.
"I had freedom then and I ain't been free since, didn't have no sponsibility. But when they turned you loose, you had your doctor bill and your grub bill—now wasn't you a slave then?
"My mammy was a cook and her name was Katy.
"After I was married we went to live at Black Ankle. I learned to cook and I sho did cook for the white folks twenty-one years. I used to go back and see old mistress. If I stay away too long, she send for me.
"How many childen I had? You want the truth? Well, fifteen, but never had but three to live any length of time.
"Well, I told you the best I know and the straightest I know. If I can't tell you the truth, I'm not goin' to tell you nothin'.
"Yes, honey, I saw the Ku Klux."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Lucy Jones,
Marianna, Arkansas
Age: Born 1866
[Date Stamp: MAY 11 1938]
"I was raised second year after the surrender. I don't know a father or mother. They was dead when I was five years old. I had no sisters nor brothers. Mrs. Cynthia Hall raised me. She raised my mother. Master Hall was her husband. They was old people and they was so good to me. They had no children and I lived in the house with them. I never went to school a day in my life. I can't read. I can count money.
"My mother was dark. I married when I was fifteen years old. I have four children living. They are all dark. They are about the same color but darker than I am.
"No ma'am, I don't believe one could be voodooed. I lived nearly all my life with white folks and they don't heed no foolishness like that, do they? I cooked, worked in the field, washed and ironed.
"I married three times. The first time at Raymond, Mississippi. I never had no big weddings.
"Seems like some folks have lost their grip and ain't willing to start over. I don't know much to say for the young people. They are not smart. They got more schooling. They try to shirk all the work they can. I never seen no Ku Klux in my life. People used to raise nearly all their living at home and now they depend on buying nearly everything. Well, I think it is bad."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Mary Jones
1017 Dennison, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 72
"I was born on the twenty-second of March, 1866, in Van Buren, Arkansas. I had six children. All of them were bred and born at the same place.
"I was born in a frame house. My father used to live in the country, but I was born in the town. He bought it just as soon as he come out of the army and married right away and bought this home. I don't know where he got his money from. I guess he saved it. He served in the Union army; he wasn't a servant. He was a soldier, and drawed his pay. He never run through his money like most people do. I don't know whether he made any money in slavery or not but he was a carpenter during slave times and they say he always had plenty of money. I guess he had saved some of that too.
"My mother was married twice. Her name was Louisa Buchanan. My father was named Abraham Riley. My stepfather was named Moses Buchanan. My father was a soldier in the old original war (the Civil War)—the war they ended in 1865.
"I disremember who my mother's master was but I think it was a man named Johnson. I didn't know my father's people. She married him from White County up here. Her and him, they corresponded mostly in letters because he traveled lots. He looked like an Indian. He had straight hair and was tall and rawboned and wore a Texas hat. I had his picture but the pictures fade away. My father was a sergeant. He died sometime after the war. I don't remember when because I wasn't old enough. I can just remember looking at the corpse. I was too small to do any grieving.
"My mother was a nurse in slavery times. She nursed the white folks and their children. She did the housework and such like. She was a good cook too. After freedom, when the old folks died out, she cooked for Zeb Ward—you know him, head of the penitentiary. She used to cook for the Jews and gentiles. That her kind of work. That was her occupation—good cook. She could make all kinds of provisions. She could make preserves and they had a big orchard everywhere she worked.
"I have heard my mother talk about pateroles, jayhawkers, and Ku Klux, but I never knew of them myself. I have heard say they were awful bad—the Ku Klux or somethin'.
"My mother's white folks sold her. I don't know who they sold her to or from. They sold her from her mother. I don't know how she got free. I think she got free after the war ceased. But she had a good time all her life. She had a good time because she was a good cook, and a good nurse, and she had good white folks. My grandma, she had good folks too. They was free before they were free, my ma and grandma. They was just as free before freedom as they were afterwards. My mother had seven children and two sets of twins among them. But I am the only one living.
Occupation
"They say that I'm too old to work now; so I can't make nothin' to keep my home goin'. I have five children living. Two are away from here—one in Michigan, and another in Illinois. I have three others but they don't make enough to help me much. I used to work 'round the laundries. Then I used to work 'round with these colored restaurants. I worked with a colored woman down by the station for twelve or fifteen years. I first helped her wash and iron. She ironed and hired other girls to wait table and wash dishes and so on. Them times wasn't like they are now. They'd hire you and keep you. Then I worked at a white boarding house on Second and Cross. I quit working at the laundries because of the steady work in the restaurants. After the restaurants I went to work in private families and worked with them till I got so I couldn't work no more. Maybe I could do plenty of things, but they won't give me a chance.
"I have been married twice. My second husband was John Jones. He always went by the name of his white folks. They were named Ivory. He came from up in Searcy. I got acquainted with him and we started going together. He'd been married before and had children up in Searcy. He got his leg cut off in a accident. He was working over to the shop lifting ties with another helper and this man helping him gave way on his side and let his end fall. It fell across my husband's foot and blood poison set in and caused him to lose his foot and leg. He had his foot cut off at the county hospital and made himself a peg-leg. He cut it out hisself while he was at the hospital. He lived a long while after that. He died on Tenth and Victory. My first husband was Henry White. He was a shop worker too—the Iron Mountain.
"We went to school together. I lost my health before I married, and I had to stop going to school. The doctor was a German and lived on Cross between Fifth and Sixth. He said that he ought to have written the history of my life to show what I was cured of because I was paralyzed two years. My head was drawed 'way back between my shoulders. I lived with my first husband about six years. He died with T.B. in Memphis, Tennessee. He had married again when he died. We got so we couldn't agree, so I thought it was best for him to live with his mother and me to live with mine. We quit under good conditions. I had a boy after he was separated from me.
"I don't know what to say about the people now. I don't get 'round much. They aren't like they used to be. The young people don't like to have you 'round them. I never did object to any of my children gettin' married because my mother didn't object to me.
"I know Mr. Gillespie. (He passed at the time—ed.) He comes to see me now and then. All my people are dead now 'cept my children."
Interviewer's Comment
Brother Gillespie has a story turned in previously. Evidently he is making eyes at the old lady; but the romance is not likely to bud. She has lost the sight of one eye apparently through a cataract which has spread over the larger part of the iris. Nevertheless, she is more active than he is, and apparently more competent, and she isn't figuring on making her lot any harder than it is.
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Mary Jones
509 E. 23rd Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 78
[Date Stamp: MAY 31 1938]
"I was born three weeks 'fore Christmas in South Carolina.
"I 'member one time the Yankees come along and I run to the door. I know ma made me go back but I peeped out the window. You know how children is. They wore great big old hats and blue coats.
"'Nother time we saw them a comin' and said, 'Yonder come the Yankees' and we run. Ma said, 'Don't run, them's the Yankees what freed you.'
"Old mis' was named Joanna Long and old master was Joe Long. I can't remember much, I just went by what ma said.
"I went to school now and then on account we had to work.
"We had done sold out in South Carolina and was down at the station when some of the old folks said if we was goin' to the Mississippi bottoms where the panthers and wolves was we would never come back. We thought we was comin' to Arkansas but when we found out we was in the Mississippi bottoms. We stayed there and made two crops, then we come to Arkansas.
"The way the younger generation is livin' now, the Lord can't bless 'em. They know how to do right but they won't do it. Yes ma'am."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Nannie Jones
1601 Saracen Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 81
"Good morning. Come in. I sure is proud to see you. Yes ma'am, I sure is.
"I was born in Chicot County. I heerd Dr. Gaines say I was four years old in slavery times. I know I ain't no baby. I feels my age, too—in my limbs.
"I heerd 'em talk about a war but I wasn't big enough to know about it. My father went to war on one side but he didn't stay very long. I don't know which side he was on. Them folks all dead now—I just can remember 'em.
"Dr. Gaines had a pretty big crew on the place. I'm gwine tell you what I know. I can't tell you nothin' else.
"Now I want to tell it like mama said. She said she was sold from Kentucky. She died when I was small.
"I remember when they said the people was free. I know they jumped up and down and carried on.
"Dr. Gaines was so nice to his people. I stayed in the house most of the time. I was the little pet around the house. They said I was so cute.
"Dr. Gaines give me my age but I lost it movin'. But I know I ain't no baby. I never had but two children and they both livin'—two girls.
"Honey, I worked in the field and anywhere. I worked like a man. I think that's what got me bowed down now. I keeps with a misery right across my back. Sometimes I can hardly get along.
"Honey, I just don't know 'bout this younger generation. I just don't have no thoughts for 'em, they so wild. I never was a rattlin' kind of a girl. I always was civilized. Old people in them days didn't 'low their children to do things. I know when mama called us, we'd better go. They is a heap wusser now. So many of 'em gettin' into trouble."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Reuben Jones
Ezell Quarters, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 85
"Well, I'm one of em. I can tell you bout it from now till sundown.
"I was born at Senatobia, Mississippi, this side of Jackson. Born in '52 on April the 16th. That's when I was born.
"Old man Stephen Williams was my master in time of the war and before the war, too. He was pretty good to me. Give me plenty of something to eat, but he whipped me. Oh, I specked I needed it. Put me in the field when I was five years old. Put a tar cap on my head. I was so young the sun made my hair come out so they put that tar cap on my head.
"I member when they put the folks on blocks as high as that house and sell em to the highest bidder. No ma'm, I wasn't sold cause my mother had three or four chillun and boss man wouldn't sell dem what had chillun cause dem chillun was hands for him.
"They made me hide ever'thing they had from the Yankees. Yes'm, I seen em come out after the fodder and the corn. We hid the meat and the mules and the money. Drove the mules in the cave. Kept em der till the Yankees left. We dug the hole for the meat but old marse dug the hole for the money.
"I used to help put timbers on the bridge to keep the Yankees out but dey come right on through just the same. Took the ox wagon but dey sent it back.
"Couldn't go nowhere without a pass. Had a whippin' block right at the horse trough. Yes ma'm, they'd eat you up. I mean they'd whip you, but they give you plenty of somethin' to eat.
"My mother was the weaver and they had a tanyard on the place.
"In slavery days couldn't go see none of your neighbors without a pass. People had meetin' right at the house. Dey'd have prayer and singin'. I went to em. I could sing—Lord yes. I used to know a lot of old songs—'Am I A Soldier of the Cross?'.
"Lord yes, ma'm, don't talk! When the soldiers come out where we was I could hear the guns. Had a battle right in town. Rebels just as scared of the Yankees as if twas a bear. I seed one or two of em come to town and scare the whole business.
"I never knowed but one man run off and jined the Yankees. Carried his master's finest ridin' hoss and a mule. He always had a fine hoss and Yankees come and took it. When the Yankees come out the last time, my owners cleaned out the smoke house and buried the meat.
"I helped gin cotton when I wasn't big enough to stand up to the breast. Stood upon a bench and had a lantern hung up so I could see fore daylight. Yes ma'm, great big gin house. Yes ma'm, I sho has worked—all kinds and plowin'.
"Now my old boss called me Tony—that's what he called me.
"When peace come, we had done gathered our crop and we left there a week later. You know people usually hunts their kinfolks and we went to Hernando. Come to Arkansas in '77. Got offin de boat right der at de cotehouse. Pine Bluff wasn't nothin' when I come here.
"I used to vote. I aimed to vote the Republican ticket—I don't know.
"Oh yes ma'm, I seed the Ku Klux, yes ma'm. They're bad, too. Lord I seed a many of them. They come to my house. I went to the door and that's as far as I went. That was in Hernando. I went back to my old home in Hernando bout three months ago. Went where I was bred and born but I didn't know the place it was tore up so.
"This younger generation whole lot different from when I was comin' up. Yes'm, it's a whole lot different. They ain't doin' so well. I have always tended to my own business. Cose I been arrested for drivin' mules with sore shoulders. Didn't put me in jail, but the officers come up. That was when I was workin' on the Lambert place. I told em they wasn't my mules so they let me go.
"I can't tell you bout the times now. I hope it'll get better—can't get no wusser."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Vergil Jones,
Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 70
"My parents was Jane Jones and Vergil Jones. Their owner was Colonel Jones in Alabama. Papa went to the war and served four years. He got a $30 a month Union pension long as he lived. He was in a number of places. He fought as a field man. He had a long musket he brought home from the war. He told us a heap of things long time ago. Seem lack folks set down and talked wid their children more'n they do nowdays.
"Papa come to this State after the surrender. He married here. I am the oldest of seven children. Mama was in this State before the war. She was bought when she was a girl and brought here. I don't know if Colonel Jones owned her or if papa had seen her somewhere else. He come to her and they married. My mama was a house girl some and she washed and ironed for Miss Fannie Lambert. They had a big family and a big farm. Their farm was seven miles this side of Indian Bay, eight miles to Clarendon. They had thirteen in family and mama had seven children made nine in her family. She had a bed piled full of starched clothes white as snow. Lamberts had three sets of twins. Our family lived with the Lamberts 23 or 24 years. We started working for Mr. B. J. Lambert and Miss Fannie (his wife). Mama nursed me and R. T. from the same breast. We was raised up grown together and I worked for R. T. till he died. We played with J. L. Black too till he was grown. He was county judge and sheriff of this county (Monroe).
"Folks that helped me out is about all dead. I pick cotton but I can't pick very much. Now I don't have no work till chopping cotton times comes on. It is hard now. I would do jobs but I don't hear of no jobs to be done. I asked around but didn't find a thing to do.
"I heard about the Ku Kluxes. My papa used to dodge the Ku Kluxes. He lay out in the bushes from them. It was bad times. Some folks would advise the black folks to do one way and then the Ku Kluxes come and make it hot for them. One thing the Ku Kluxes didn't want much big gatherings among the black folks. They break up big gatherings. Some white folks tell them to do one thing and then some others tell them to do some other way. That is the way it was. The Ku Kluxes was hot headed. Papa wasn't a bad man but he was afraid they did do so much. He was on the lookout and dodged them all the time.
"I haven't voted for a long time. I couldn't keep my taxes up.
"I don't own a home. I pay $4 rent for it. It is a cold house—not so good. I have farmed all my life. I still farm. Times got so that nobody would run you (credit you) and I come here to get jobs between farming. I still farm. They hire mostly by the day—day labor. Them two things and my dis'bility is making it mighty hard for me to live. I work at any jobs I can get.
"I signed up for the Old Age Pension. They said I couldn't work, I was too old. I wanted to work on the government work. I never got nothing. I don't get no kind of help. I thought I didn't know how to get into the Old Age Pension reason I didn't get it. It would help keep in wood this wet weather when work is scarce."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Walter Jones,
Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 72
"My father run away scared of the Yankees. He got excited and left. My mother didn't want him to leave her. She was crying when he left. My father belong to the Wilsons. Mother was sold on the block in Richmond, Virginia when she was twelve years old and never seen her mother again. Mother belong to Charles Hunt. Her name was Lucy Hunt. She married three times. Charles Hunt went to market to buy slaves. We lived in Hardeman County, Tennessee when I was born but he sent us to Mississippi. She worked in the field then but before then she was a house girl. No, she was black. We are all African.
"I got eight children. When my wife died they finished scattering out. I come here from Grand Junction, Mississippi. I eat breakfast on Christmas day 1883 at Forrest City and spent the day at Hazen. I come with friends. We paid our own ways. We come on the train and boat and walked some.
"No, I don't take stock in voting. I never did. I have voted so long ago I forgot it all.
"The biggest thing I can tell you ever happened to us more than I told you was in 1878 I had yellow fever. Dr. Milton Pruitt come to see me. The next day his brother come to see me. Dr. Milton died the next day. I got well. At Grand Junction both black and white died. Some of both color got well. A lot of people died.
"How am I making a living? I don't make one. Mr. Ashly lets me live in a house and gives me scrap meat. I bottom chairs or do what I can. I past heavy work. The Welfare don't help me. I farmed, railroaded nearly all my life. Public work this last few years."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Oscar Felix Junell
1720 Brown Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 60
"My father's name was Peter Junell, Peter W. Junell. I don't know what the W. was for. He was born in Ouachita County near Bearden, Arkansas. Bearden is an old town. It is fourteen miles from Camden. My dad was seventy-five years old when he died. He died in 1924. He was very young in the time of slavery. He never did do very much work.
"His master was named John Junell. That was his old master. He had a young master too, Warren Junell. His old master given him to his young master, Warren. My father's mother and father both belonged to the Junells. His mother's name was Dinah, and his father's name was Anthony. All the slaves took their last names after their owners. They never was sold, not in any time that my father could remember.
"As soon as my father was large enough to go to walkin' about, his old master given him to his son, Master Warren Junell. Warren would carry him about and make him rassle (wrestle). He was a good rassler. As far as work was concerned, he didn't do nothing much of that. He just followed his young master all around rasslin.
"His masters was good to him. They whipped slaves sometimes, but they were considered good. My father always said they was good folks. He never told me how he learnt that he was free.
"Pretty well all the slaves lived in log cabins. Even in my time, there was hardly a board house in that county. The food the slaves ate was mostly bread and milk—corn bread. Old man Junell was rich and had lots of slaves. When he went to feed his slaves, he would feed them jus like hogs. He had a great long trough and he would have bread crumbled up in it and gallons of milk poured over the bread, and the slaves would get round it and eat. Sometimes they would get to fighting over it. You know, jus like hogs! They would be eatin and sometimes one person would find somethin and get holt of it and another one would want to take it, and they would get to fightin over it. Sometimes blood would get in the trough, but they would eat right on and pay no 'tention to it.
"I don't know whether they fed the old ones that way or not. I jus heered my father tell how he et out of the trough hisself.
"I have heered my father talk about the pateroles too. He talked about how they used to chase him. But he didn't have much experience with them, because they never did catch him. That was after the war when the slaves had been freed, but the pateroles still got after them. My father remember how they would catch other slaves. One night they went to an old man's house. It was dark and the old man told them to come on in. He didn't have no gun, but he took his ax and stood behind the door on the hinge side. It was after slavery. When he said for them to come in, they rushed right on in and the old man killed three or four of them with his ax. He was a old African, and they never had been able to do nothin' with him, not even in slavery time. I never heard that they did nothin' to the old man about it. The pateroles was outlaws anyway.
"I heard my father say that in slavery time, they took the finest and portlies' looking Negroes—the males—for breeding purposes. They wouldn't let them strain themselves up nor nothin like that. They wouldn't make them do much hard work."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Sam Keaton,
Brinkley, Ark.
Age: 78
"I was born close to Golden Hill down in Arkansas County. My parents names was Louana and Dennis Keaton. They had ten children. Their master was Mr. Jack Keaton and Miss Martha. They had four boys. They all come from Virginia in wagons the second year of the war—the Civil War. I heard 'em tell about walking. Some of em walked, some rode horse back and some in wagons. I don't know if they knowed bout slave uprisings or not. I know they wasn't in em because they come here wid Mr. Jack Keaton. It was worse in Virginia than it was down here wid them. Mr. Keaton didn't give em nothing at freedom. They stayed on long as they wanted to stay and then they went to work for Mr. Jack Keaton's brother, Mr. Ben Keaton. They worked on shares and picked cotton by the hundred. My parents staid on down there till they died. I been working for Mr. Floria for thirty years.
"My father did vote. He voted a Republican ticket. I haven't voted for fifty years. They that do vote in the General election know very little bout what they doing. If they could vote in the Primary they would know but a mighty little about it. The women ain't got no business voting. Their place is at home. They cain't keep their houses tidied up and like they oughter be and go out and work regularly. That's the reason I think they oughter stay at home and train the children better than it being done.
"I think that the young generation is going to be lost. They killing and fighting. They do everything. No, they don't work much as I do. They don't save nothing! They don't save nothing! Times is harder than they used to be some. Nearly everybody wants to live in town. My age is making times heap harder for me. I live with my daughter. I am a widower. I owns 40 acres land, a house, a cow. I made three bales cotton, but I owe it bout all. I tried to get a little help so I could get out of debt but I never could get no 'sistance from the Welfare."
Interviewer: Watt McKinney
Person interviewed: Tines Kendricks,
Trenton, Arkansas
Age: 104
"My name is Tines Kendricks. I was borned in Crawford County, Georgia. You see, Boss, I is a little nigger and I really is more smaller now dan I used to be when I was young 'cause I so old and stooped over. I mighty nigh wore out from all these hard years of work and servin' de Lord. My actual name what was give to me by my white folks, de Kendricks, was 'Tiny'. Dey called me dat 'cause I never was no size much. Atter us all sot free I just changed my name to 'Tines' an' dats what I been goin' by for nigh on to ninety years.
"'Cordin' to what I 'member 'bout it, Boss, I is now past a hundred and four year old dis past July de fourth two hours before day. What I means is what I 'member 'bout what de old mars told me dat time I comed back to de home place atter de War quit an' he say dat I past thirty then. My mammy, she said I born two hours before day on de fourth of July. Dat what dey tole me, Boss. I is been in good health all my days. I ain't never been sick any in my life 'scusin' dese last years when I git so old and feeble and stiff in de joints, and my teef 'gin to cave, and my old bones, dey 'gin to ache. But I just keep on livin' and trustin' in de Lord 'cause de Good Book say, 'Wherefore de evil days come an' de darkness of de night draw nigh, your strength, it shall not perish. I will lift you up 'mongst dem what 'bides wid me.' Dat is de Gospel, Boss.
"My old mars, he was named Arch Kendricks and us lived on de plantation what de Kendricks had not far from Macon in Crawford County, Georgia. You can see, Boss, dat I is a little bright an' got some white blood in me. Dat is 'counted for on my mammy's side of de family. Her pappy, he was a white man. He wasn't no Kendrick though. He was a overseer. Dat what my mammy she say an' then I know dat wasn't no Kendrick mixed up in nothin' like dat. Dey didn't believe in dat kind of bizness. My old mars, Arch Kendricks, I will say dis, he certainly was a good fair man. Old mis' an' de young mars, Sam, dey was strickly tough an', Boss, I is tellin' you de truth dey was cruel. De young mars, Sam, he never taken at all atter he pa. He got all he meanness from old mis' an' he sure got plenty of it too. Old mis', she cuss an' rare worse 'an a man. Way 'fore day she be up hollerin' loud enough for to be heered two miles, 'rousin' de niggers out for to git in de fields even 'fore light. Mars Sam, he stand by de pots handin' out de grub an' givin' out de bread an' he cuss loud an' say: 'Take a sop of dat grease on your hoecake an' move erlong fast 'fore I lashes you.' Mars Sam, he was a big man too, dat he was. He was nigh on to six an' a half feet tall. Boss, he certainly was a chile of de debbil. All de cookin' in dem days was done in pots hangin' on de pot racks. Dey never had no stoves endurin' de times what I is tellin' you 'bout. At times dey would give us enough to eat. At times dey wouldn't—just 'cordin' to how dey feelin' when dey dishin' out de grub. De biggest what dey would give de field hands to eat would be de truck what us had on de place like greens, turnips, peas, side meat, an' dey sure would cut de side meat awful thin too, Boss. Us allus had a heap of corn-meal dumplin's an' hoecakes. Old mis', her an' Mars Sam, dey real stingy. You better not leave no grub on your plate for to throw away. You sure better eat it all iffen you like it or no. Old mis' and Mars Sam, dey de real bosses an' dey was wicked. I'se tellin' you de truth, dey was. Old mars, he didn't have much to say 'bout de runnin' of de place or de handlin' of de niggers. You know all de property and all the niggers belonged to old mis'. She got all dat from her peoples. Dat what dey left to her on their death. She de real owner of everything.
"Just to show you, Boss, how 'twas with Mars Sam, on' how contrary an' fractious an' wicked dat young white man was, I wants to tell you 'bout de time dat Aunt Hannah's little boy Mose died. Mose, he sick 'bout er week. Aunt Hannah, she try to doctor on him an' git him well an' she tell old mis' dat she think Mose bad off an' orter have de doctor. Old mis', she wouldn't git de doctor. She say Mose ain't sick much, an' bless my Soul, Aunt Hannah she right. In a few days from then Mose is dead. Mars Sam, he come cussin' an' tole Gabe to get some planks an' make de coffin an' sont some of dem to dig de grave over dere on de far side of de place where dey had er buryin'-groun' for de niggers. Us toted de coffin over to where de grave was dug an' gwine bury little Mose dar an' Uncle Billy Jordan, he was dar and begun to sing an' pray an' have a kind of funeral at de buryin'. Every one was moanin' an' singin' an' prayin' and Mars Sam heard 'em an' come sailin' over dar on he hoss an' lit right in to cussin' an' rarein' an' say dat if dey don't hurry an' bury dat nigger an' shut up dat singin' an' carryin' on, he gwine lash every one of dem, an' then he went to cussin' worser an' 'busin' Uncle Billy Jordan. He say iffen he ever hear of him doin' any more preachin' or prayin' 'round 'mongst de niggers at de grave-yard or anywheres else, he gwine lash him to death. No suh, Boss, Mars Sam wouldn't even 'low no preachin' or singin' or nothin' like dat. He was wicked. I tell you he was.
"Old mis', she ginrally looked after de niggers when dey sick an' give dem de medicine. An' too, she would get de doctor iffen she think dey real bad off 'cause like I said, old mis', she mighty stingy an' she never want to lose no nigger by dem dyin'. How-some-ever it was hard some time to get her to believe you sick when you tell her dat you was, an' she would think you just playin' off from work. I have seen niggers what would be mighty near dead before old mis' would believe them sick at all.
"Before de War broke out, I can 'member there was some few of de white folks what said dat niggers ought to be sot free, but there was just one now an' then that took that stand. One of dem dat I 'member was de Rev. Dickey what was de parson for a big crowd of de white peoples in dat part of de county. Rev. Dickey, he preached freedom for de niggers and say dat dey all should be sot free an' gived a home and a mule. Dat preachin' de Rev. Dickey done sure did rile up de folks—dat is de most of them like de Kendricks and Mr. Eldredge and Dr. Murcheson and Nat Walker and such as dem what was de biggest of the slaveowners. Right away atter Rev. Dickey done such preachin' dey fired him from de church, an' 'bused him, an' some of dem say dey gwine hang him to a limb, or either gwine ride him on a rail out of de country. Sure enough dey made it so hot on dat man he have to leave clean out of de state so I heered. No suh, Boss, they say they ain't gwine divide up no land with de niggers or give them no home or mule or their freedom or nothin'. They say dey will wade knee deep in blood an' die first.
"When de War start to break out, Mars Sam listed in de troops and was sent to Virginny. There he stay for de longest. I hear old mis' tellin' 'bout de letters she got from him, an' how he wishin' they hurry and start de battle so's he can get through killin' de Yankees an' get de War over an' come home. Bless my soul, it wasn't long before dey had de battle what Mars Sam was shot in. He writ de letter from de hospital where they had took him. He say dey had a hard fight, dat a ball busted his gun, and another ball shoot his cooterments (accouterments) off him; the third shot tear a big hole right through the side of his neck. The doctor done sew de wound up; he not hurt so bad. He soon be back with his company.
"But it wasn't long 'fore dey writ some more letters to old mis' an' say dat Mars Sam's wound not gettin' no better; it wasn't healin' to do no good; every time dat they sew de gash up in his neck it broke loose again. De Yankees had been puttin' poison grease on the bullets. Dat was de reason de wound wouldn't get well. Dey feared Mars Sam goin' to die an' a short time atter dat letter come I sure knowed it was so. One night just erbout dusk dark, de screech owls, dey come in er swarm an' lit in de big trees in de front of de house. A mist of dust come up an' de owls, dey holler an' carry on so dat old mars get he gun an' shot it off to scare dem erway. Dat was a sign, Boss, dat somebody gwine to die. I just knowed it was Mars Sam.
"Sure enough de next day dey got de message dat Mars Sam dead. Dey brung him home all de way from Virginny an' buried him in de grave-yard on de other side of de garden wid his gray clothes on him an' de flag on de coffin. That's what I'se telling you, Boss, 'cause dey called all de niggers in an' 'lowed dem to look at Mars Sam. I seen him an' he sure looked like he peaceful in he coffin with his soldier clothes on. I heered atterwards dat Mars Sam bucked an' rared just 'fore he died an' tried to get outen de bed, an' dat he cussed to de last.
"It was this way, Boss, how come me to be in de War. You see, they 'quired all of de slaveowners to send so many niggers to de army to work diggin' de trenches an' throwin' up de breastworks an' repairin' de railroads what de Yankees done 'stroyed. Every mars was 'quired to send one nigger for every ten dat he had. Iffen you had er hundred niggers, you had to send ten of dem to de army. I was one of dem dat my mars 'quired to send. Dat was de worst times dat dis here nigger ever seen an' de way dem white men drive us niggers, it was something awful. De strap, it was goin' from 'fore day till 'way after night. De niggers, heaps of 'em just fall in dey tracks give out an' them white men layin' de strap on dey backs without ceastin'. Dat was zackly way it was wid dem niggers like me what was in de army work. I had to stand it, Boss, till de War was over.
"Dat sure was a bad war dat went on in Georgia. Dat it was. Did you ever hear 'bout de Andersonville prison in Georgia? I tell you, Boss, dat was 'bout de worstest place dat ever I seen. Dat was where dey keep all de Yankees dat dey capture an' dey had so many there they couldn't nigh take care of them. Dey had them fenced up with a tall wire fence an' never had enough house room for all dem Yankees. They would just throw de grub to 'em. De mostest dat dey had for 'em to eat was peas an' the filth, it was terrible. De sickness, it broke out 'mongst 'em all de while, an' dey just die like rats what been pizened. De first thing dat de Yankees do when dey take de state 'way from de Confedrits was to free all dem what in de prison at Andersonville.
"Slavery time was tough, Boss. You Just don't know how tough it was. I can't 'splain to you just how bad all de niggers want to get dey freedom. With de 'free niggers' it was just de same as it was wid dem dat was in bondage. You know there was some few 'free niggers' in dat time even 'fore de slaves taken outen bondage. It was really worse on dem dan it was with dem what wasn't free. De slaveowners, dey just despised dem 'free niggers' an' make it just as hard on dem as dey can. Dey couldn't get no work from nobody. Wouldn't airy man hire 'em or give 'em any work at all. So because dey was up against it an' never had any money or nothin', de white folks make dese 'free niggers' sess (assess) de taxes. An' 'cause dey never had no money for to pay de tax wid, dey was put up on de block by de court man or de sheriff an' sold out to somebody for enough to pay de tax what dey say dey owe. So dey keep these 'free niggers' hired out all de time most workin' for to pay de taxes. I 'member one of dem 'free niggers' mighty well. He was called 'free Sol'. He had him a little home an' a old woman an' some boys. Dey was kept bounded out nigh 'bout all de time workin' for to pay dey tax. Yas suh, Boss, it was heap more better to be a slave nigger dan er free un. An' it was really er heavenly day when de freedom come for de race.
"In de time of slavery annudder thing what make it tough on de niggers was dem times when er man an' he wife an' their chillun had to be taken 'way from one anudder. Dis sep'ration might be brung 'bout most any time for one thing or anudder sich as one or tudder de man or de wife be sold off or taken 'way to some other state like Louisiana or Mississippi. Den when a mars die what had a heap of slaves, these slave niggers be divided up 'mongst de mars' chillun or sold off for to pay de mars' debts. Then at times when er man married to er woman dat don't belong to de same mars what he do, then dey is li'ble to git divided up an' sep'rated most any day. Dey was heaps of nigger families dat I know what was sep'rated in de time of bondage dat tried to find dey folkses what was gone. But de mostest of 'em never git togedder ag'in even after dey sot free 'cause dey don't know where one or de other is.
"Atter de War over an' de slaves taken out of dey bondage, some of de very few white folks give dem niggers what dey liked de best a small piece of land for to work. But de mostest of dem never give 'em nothin' and dey sure despise dem niggers what left 'em. Us old mars say he want to 'range wid all his niggers to stay on wid him, dat he gwine give 'em er mule an' er piece er ground. But us know dat old mis' ain't gwine agree to dat. And sure enough she wouldn't. I'se tellin' you de truth, every nigger on dat place left. Dey sure done dat; an' old mars an' old mis', dey never had a hand left there on that great big place, an' all that ground layin' out.
"De gov'ment seen to it dat all of de white folks had to make contracts wid de niggers dat stuck wid 'em, an' dey was sure strict 'bout dat too. De white folks at first didn't want to make the contracts an' say dey wasn't gwine to. So de gov'ment filled de jail with 'em, an' after that every one make the contract.
"When my race first got dey freedom an' begin to leave dey mars', a heap of de mars got ragin' mad an' just tore up truck. Dey say dey gwine kill every nigger dey find. Some of them did do dat very thing, Boss, sure enough. I'se tellin' you de truth. Dey shot niggers down by de hundreds. Dey jus' wasn't gwine let 'em enjoy dey freedom. Dat is de truth, Boss.
"Atter I come back to de old home place from workin' for de army, it wasn't long 'fore I left dar an' git me er job with er sawmill an' worked for de sawmill peoples for about five years. One day I heered some niggers tellin' about er white man what done come in dar gittin' up er big lot of niggers to take to Arkansas. Dey was tellin' 'bout what a fine place it was in Arkansas, an' how rich de land is, an' dat de crops grow without working, an' dat de taters grow big as er watermelon an' you never have to plant 'em but de one time, an' all sich as dat. Well, I 'cided to come. I j'ined up with de man an' come to Phillips County in 1875. Er heap er niggers come from Georgia at de same time dat me an' Callie come. You know Callie, dats my old woman whats in de shack dar right now. Us first lived on Mr. Jim Bush's place over close to Barton. Us ain't been far off from dere ever since us first landed in dis county. Fact is, Boss, us ain't been outen de county since us first come here, an' us gwine be here now I know till de Lord call for us to come on home."
FOLKLORE SUBJECTS
Name of interviewer: Watt McKinney
Subject: Superstitious beliefs
Story—Information (If not enough space on this page, add page)
This information given by: Tines Kendricks (C)
Place of residence: Trenton, Arkansas
Occupation: None
Age: 104
[TR: Personal information moved from bottom of form.]
There is an ancient and traditional belief among the Southern Negroes, especially the older ones, that the repeated and intermitted cries of a whippoorwill near a home in the early evenings of summer and occurring on successive days at or about the same time and location; or the appearance of a highly excited redbird, disturbed for no apparent reason, is indicative of some imminent disaster, usually thought to be the approaching death of some member of the family.
Tines Kendricks, who says that he was born the slave of Arch Kendricks in Crawford County, Georgia, two hours before day on a certain Fourth of July, one hundred and four years ago, recalls several instances in his long and eventful life in which he contends the accuracy of these forecasts was borne out by subsequent occurrences. The most striking of these he says was the time his young master succumbed from the effect of a wound received at the first battle of Manassas after hovering between life and death for several days. The young master, Sam Kendricks, who was the only son of his parents, volunteered at the beginning of the War and was attached to the army in Virginia. He was a very impetuous, high-spirited young man and chafed much under the delay occasioned between the time of his enlistment and first battle, wanting to have the trouble over with and the difficulties settled which he honestly thought could be accomplished in the first engagement with that enemy for whom he held such profound contempt. Sam Kendricks, coming as he did from a long line of slave-owning forebears, was one of those Southerners who felt that it was theirs to command and the duty of others to obey. They would brook no interference with the established order and keenly resented the attitude and utterances of Northern press and spokesmen on the slavery question. Tines Kendricks recalls the time his young master took leave of his home and parents for the war and his remarks on departing that his neck was made to fit no halter and that he possessed no mite of fear for Yankee soldier or Yankee steel. Soon after the battle of Manassas, Arch Kendricks was advised that Sam had suffered a severe wound in the engagement. It was stated, however, that the wound was not expected to prove fatal. This sad news of what had befallen the young master was soon communicated throughout the entire length and breadth of the great plantation and in the early evening of that day Tines sitting in the door of his cabin in the slave quarters a short distance from the master's great house heard the cry of a whippoorwill and observed that the voice of this night bird seemed to arise from the dense hedge enclosing the spacious lawn in front of the home. Disturbed and filled with a sense of foreboding at this sound of the bird, he earnestly hoped and prayed that the cry would not be repeated the following evening, but to his great disappointment it was heard again and nearer the house than before. On each succeeding evening according to Tines Kendricks the call of the bird came clearly through the evening's stillness and each time he noticed that the cry came from a spot nearer the home until at last the bird seemed perched beneath the wide veranda and early on the morning following, a very highly excited redbird darted from tree to tree on the front lawn. The redbird continued these peculiar actions for several minutes after which it flew and came to rest on the roof of the old colonial mansion directly above the room formerly occupied by the young master. Tines was convinced now that the end had come for Sam Kendricks and that his approaching death had been foretold by the whippoorwill and that each evening as the bird approached nearer the house and uttered his night cry just so was the life of young Sam Kendricks slowly nearing its close and the actions of the redbird the following day was revealing evidence to Tines that the end had come to his young master which indeed it had as proven by a message the family received late in the morning of this same day.
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Frank Kennedy,
Holly Grove, Arkansas
Age: 65 or 70?
"My parents' name was Hannah and Charles Kennedy. They b'long to Master John Kennedy. I was raised round Aberdeen, Mississippi but they come in there after freedom. I heard em talk but I couldn't tell you much as where they come from. They said a young girl bout got her growth would auction off for more than any man. They used em for cooks and house women. I judge way they talked she be fifteen or sixteen years old. They brought $1,600 and $2,000. If they was scared up, where they been beat, they didn't sell off good. I knowed Master John Kennedy.
"The Ku Klux come round but they didn't bother much. They would bother if you stole something. Another thing they made em stay close bout their own places and work. I don't know bout freedom.
"I been farmin' and sawmillin' at Clarendon. I gets jobs I can do on the farms now. I got rheumatism so I can't get round. I had this trouble five years or longer now.
"The times is worse, so many folks stealin' and killin'. The young folks don't work steady as they used to. Used to get figured out all you raised till now they refuse to work less en the money in sight. They don't work hard as I allers been workin'.
"I got one girl married. I don't have no land nor home. I works for all I have yet.
"I have voted—not lately. I think my color outer vote like the white folks do long as they do right. The women takin' the mens' places too much it pears like. But they may be honester. I don't know how it will be."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Mrs. A. (Adrianna) W. Kerns
800 Victory Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 85
"When they first put me in the field, they put me and Viney to pick up brush and pile it, to pick up stumps, and when we got through with that, she worked on her mother's row and I worked on my aunt's row until we got large enough to have a row to ourselves. Me and Viney were the smallest children in the field and we had one row each. Some of the older people had two rows and picked on each row.
"My birthday is on the fourth of November, and I am eighty-five years old. You can count back and see what year I was born in.
Relatives
"My mother's first child was her master's child. I was the second child but my father was Reuben Dortch. He belonged to Colonel Dortch. Colonel Dortch died in Princeton, Arkansas, Dallas County, about eighty-six miles from here. He died before the War. I never saw him. But he was my father's first master. He used to go and get goods, and he caught this fever they had then—I think it was cholera—and died. After Colonel Dortch died, his son-in-law, Archie Hays, became my father's second master. Were all with Hays when we were freed.
"My father's father was a white man. He was named Wilson Rainey. I never did see him. My mother has said to me many a time that he was the meanest man in Dallas County. My father's mother was named Viney. That was her first name. I forget the last name. My mother's name was Martha Hays, and my grandmother's name on my mother's side was Sallie Hays. My maiden name was Adrianna Dortch.
A Devoted Slave Husband
"I have heard my mother tell many a time that there was a slave man who used to take his own dinner and carry it three or four miles to his wife. His wife belonged to a mean white man who wouldn't give them what they needed to eat. He done without his dinner in order that she might have enough. Where would you find a man to do that now? Nowadays they are taking the bread away from their wives and children and carrying it to some other woman.
Patrollers
"A Negro couldn't leave his master's place unless he had a pass from his master. If he didn't have a pass, they would whip him. My father was out once and was stopped by them. They struck him. When my father got back home, he told Colonel Dortch and Colonel Dortch went after them pateroles and laid the law down to them—told them that he was ready to kill 'em.
"The pateroles got after a slave named Ben Holmes once and run him clean to our place. He got under the bed and hid. But they found him and dragged him out and beat him.
Work
"I had three aunts in the field. They could handle a plow and roll logs as well as any man. Trees would blow down and trees would have to be carried to a heap and burned.
"I been whipped many a time by my mistress and overseer. I'd get behind with my work and he would come by and give me a lick with the bull whip he carried with him.
"At first when the old folks cut wood, me and Viney would pick up chips and burn up brush. We had to pick dry peas in the fall after the crops had been gathered. We picked two large basketsful a day.
"When we got larger we worked in the field picking cotton and pulling corn as high as we could reach. You had to pull the fodder first before you could pull the corn. When we had to come out of the field on account of rain, we would go to the corn crib and shuck corn if we didn't have some weaving to do. We got so we could weave and spin. When master caught us playing, he would set us to cutting jackets. He would give us each two or three switches and we would stand up and whip each other. I would go easy on Viney but she would try to cut me to pieces. She hit me so hard I would say, 'Yes suh, massa.' And she would say, 'Why you sayin' "Yes suh, massa," to me? I ain't doin' nothin' to you.'
"My mother used to say that Lincoln went through the South as a beggar and found out everything. When he got back, he told the North how slavery was ruining the nation. He put different things before the South but they wouldn't listen to him. I heard that the South was the first one to fire a shot.
"Lemme tell you how freedom came. Our master came out where we was grubbing the ground in front of the house. My father was already in Little Rock where they were trying to make a soldier out of him. Master came out and said to mother, 'Martha, they are saying you are free but that ain't goin' to las' long. You better stay here. Reuben is dead.'
"Mother then commenced to fix up a plan to leave. She got the oxen yoked up twice, but when she went to hunt the yoke, she couldn't find it. Negroes were all going through every which way then. Peace was declared before she could get another chance. Word came then that the government would carry all the slaves where they wanted to go. Mother came to Little Rock in a government wagon.
"She left Cordelia. Cordelia was her daughter by Archie Hays. Cordelia was supposed to join us when the government wagon came along but she went to sleep. One colored woman was coming to get in the wagon and her white folks caught her and made her go back. Them Yankees got off their horses and went over there and made them turn the woman loose and let her come on. They were rough and they took her on to Little Rock in the wagon.
"The Yankees used to come looking for horses. One time Master Archie had sent the horses off by one of the colored slaves who was to stay at his wife's house and hide them in the thicket. During the night, mother heard Archie Hays hollering. She went out to see what was the matter. The Yankees had old Archie Hays out and had guns poked at his breast. He was hollering, 'No sir. I don't.' And mother came and said, 'Reuben, get up and go tell them he don't know where the horses is.' Father got up and did a bold thing. He went out and said, 'Wait, gentlemen, he don't know where the horses is, but if you'll wait till tomorrow morning, he'll send a man to bring them in.' I don't know how they got word to him but he brought them in the next morning and the Yankees taken them off.
"Once a Rebel fired a shot at a Yankee and in a few minutes, our place was alive with them. They were working like ants in a heap all over the place. They took chickens and everything on the place.
Master Archie didn't have no sons large enough for the army. If he had, they would have killed him because they would have thought that he was harboring spies."
Interviewer's Comment
Mrs. A. (Adrianna) W. Kerns is a sister to Charles Green Dortch. Cross reference; see his story.
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: George Key,
Forrest City, Arkansas
Age: 70 plus
"I was born in Fayette County, Tennessee. My mother was Henrietta Hair. She was owned by David Hair. He had a gang of children. I was her only child. She married just after the surrender she said. She married Henry Key.
"One thing I can tell you she told me so often. The Yankees come by and called her out of the cabin at the quarters. She was a brown girl. They was going out on a scout trip—to hunt and ravage over the country. They told her to get up her clothes, they would be by for her. She was grandma's and grandpa's owners' nurse girl. She told them and they sent her on to tell the white folks. They sent her clear off. She didn't want to leave. She said her master was plumb good to her and them all. They kept her hid out. The Yankees come slipping back to tole her off. They couldn't find her nowhere. They didn't ax about her. They was stealing her for a cook she thought. She couldn't cook to do no good she said. She wasn't married for a long time after then. She said she was scared nearly to death till they took her off and hid her.
"I have voted but not for a long time. I'm too old to get about and keep too sick to go to the polls to vote. I got high blood pressure.
"Times is fair. If I was a young man I would go to work. I can't grumble. Folks mighty nice to me. I keeps in line with my kin folks and men my age.
"The young age folks don't understand me and I don't know their ways neither. They may be all right, but I don't know."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Lucy Key,
Forrest City, Arkansas
Age: 70 plus
"I was born in Marshall County, Mississippi. I seen Yankees go by in droves. I was big enough to recollect that. Old mis', Ellis Marshall's mother, named all the colored children on the place. All the white and colored children was named for somebody else in the family. Aunt Mary Marshall stayed in the house wid old mis'.
"Old mis' had a polly parrot. That thing got bad 'bout telling on us. Old mis' give us a brushing. Her son was a bachelor. He lived there. He married a girl fourteen or fifteen years old and Lawrence Marshall is their son. His sister was in Texas. They said old man Marshall was so stingy he would cut a pea in two. Every time we'd go in the orchard old polly parrot tell on us. We'd eat the turning fruit. One day Aunt Mary (colored) scared polly with her dress and apron till he took bad off sick and died. Mr. Marshall was rough. If he'd found that out he'd 'bout whooped Aunt Mary to death. He didn't find it out. He'd have crazy spells and they couldn't handle him. They would send for Wallace and Tite Marshall (colored men on his place). They was all could do anything wid 'em. He had plenty money and a big room full of meat all the time.
"I recollect what we called after the War a 'Jim Crow.' It was a hairbrush that had brass or steel teeth like pins 'ceptin' it was blunt. It was that long, handle and all (about a foot long). They'd wash me and grease my legs with lard, keep them from looking ashy and rusty. Then they'd come after me with them old brushes and brush my hair. It mortally took skin, hair, and all.
"The first shoe I ever wore had a brass toe. I danced all time when I was a child. We wore cotton dresses so strong. They would hang you if you got caught on 'em. We had one best dress.
"One time I went along wid a colored girl to preaching. Her fellar walked home wid 'er. I was coming 'long behind. He helped her over the rail fence. I wouldn't let him help me. I was sorter bashful. He looked back and I was dangling. I got caught when I jumped. They got me loose. My homespun dress didn't tear.
"I liked my papa the best. He was kind and never whooped us. He belong to Master Stamps on another place. He was seventy-five years old when he died.
"I milked a drove of cows. They raised us on milk and they had a garden. I never et much meat. I went to school and they said meat would make you thick-headed so you couldn't learn.
"I think papa was in the War. We cut sorghum cane with his sword what he fit wid.
"Stamps was a teacher. He started a college before the War. It was a big white house and a boarding house for the scholars. He had a scholar they called Cooperwood. He rode. He would run us children. Mama went to Master Stamps and he stopped that. He was the teacher. I think that was toreckly after the War. Then we lived in the boarding house. Four or five families lived in that big old house. It had fifteen rooms. That was close to Marshall, Mississippi.
"Me and the Norfleet children drove the old mule gin together. There was Mary, Nell, Grace. Miss Cora was the oldest. Miss Cora Marshall married the old bachelor I told you about. She didn't play much.
"When the first yellow fever broke out, Master George Stamps sent papa to Colliersville from Germantown. The officers stayed there. While he was waiting for meat he would stay in the bottoms. He'd bring meat back. Master George had a great big heavy key to the smokehouse. He'd cut meat and give it out to his Negroes. That meat was smuggled from Memphis. He'd go in a two-horse wagon. I clem up and look through the log cracks at him cutting up the meat fer the hands on his place.
"I had the rheumatism but I cured it. I cupped my knee. Put water in a cup, put a little coal oil (kerosene) on top, strike a match to it and slap the cup to my knee. It drawed a clear blister. I got it well and the rheumatism was gone. I used to rub my legs from my waist down'ards with mule water. They say that is mighty good for rheumatism. I don't have it no more.
"No sir-ree-bob, I ain't never voted and I don't aim to long as I'm in my mind.
"Times ain't hard as they was when I was coming on. (Another Negro woman says Aunt Lucy Key will wash or do lots of things and never take a cent of pay for it—ed.) Money is scarce but this generation don't know how to work. My husband gets relief 'cause he's sick and wore out. My nephew gives us these rooms to live in. He got money. (We saw a radio in his room and modern up-to-date furnishings—ed.) He is a good boy. I'm good to him as I can be. Seems like some folks getting richer every day, other folks getting worse off every day. Times look dark that way to me.
"I been in Arkansas eight years. I tries to be friendly wid everybody."
Interviewer: Bernice Bowden.
Person interviewed: Anna King (c)
Home: 704 West Fifth, Pine Bluff, Ark.
Age: 80
"Yes honey, I was here in slavery times. I'se gittin' old too, honey. I was nine years old goin' on ten when the war ceasted. I remember when they was volunteerin'. I remember they said it wasn't goin' to be nothin' but a breakfus' spell.
"My fust marster was Nichols Lee. You see I was born in slavery times—and I was sold away from my mother. My mother never did tell us nothin' 'bout our ages. My white people told me after freedom that I was 'bout nine or ten.
"When the white chillun come of age they drawed for the colored folks. Marse Nichols Lee had a girl named Ann and she drawed me. She didn't keep me no time though, and the man what bought me was named Leo Andrew Whitley. He went to war and died before the war ceasted. Then I fell to his brother Jim Whitley. He was my last marster. I was with him when peace was declared. Yes mam, he was good to me. All my white folks mighty good to me. Co'se Jim Whitley's wife slap my jaws sometimes, but she never did take a stick to me.
"Lord honey, its been so long I just can't remember much now. I'se gittin' old and forgitful. Heap a things I remember and heap a things slips from me and is gone.
"Well honey, in slavery times, a heap of 'em didn't have good owners. When they wanted to have church services and keep old marster from hearin', they'd go out in the woods and turn the wash-pot upside down. You know that would take up all the sound.
"I remember Adam Heath—he was called the meanest white man. I remember he bought a boy and you know his first marster was good and he wasn't used to bein' treated bad.
One day he asked old Adam Heath for a chew of tobacco, so old Adam whipped him, and the boy ran away. But they caught him and put a bell on him. Yes mam, that was in slavery times. Honey, I had good owners. They didn't believe in beatin' their niggers.
"You know my home was in North Carolina. I was bred and born in Johnson County.
"I remember seein' the soldiers goin' to war, but I never seed no Yankee soldiers till after freedom.
"When folks heard the Yankees was comin' they run and hide their stuff. One time they hide the meat in the attic, but the Yankees found it and loaded it in Everett Whitley's wife's surrey and took it away. She died just 'fore surrender.
"And I remember 'nother time they went to the smokehouse and got something to eat and strewed the rest over the yard. Then they went in the house and jest ramshacked it.
"My second marster never had no wife. He was courtin' a girl, but when the war come, he volunteered. Then he took sick and died at Manassas Gap. Yes'm, that's what they told me.
"My furst marster had a whiskey still. Now let me see, he had three girls and one boy and they each had two slaves apiece. Ann Lee drawed me and my grandmother.
"No mam, I never did go to school. You better not go to school. You better not ever be caught with a book in your hand. Some of 'em slipped off and got a little learnin'. They'd get the old Blue Back book out. Heap of 'em got a little learnin', but I didn't.
"When I fell to Jim Whitley's wife she kept me right in the house with her. Yes mam, she was one good mistis to me when I was a child. She certainly did feed me and clothe me. Yes mam!
"How long I been in Arkansas? Me? Let me see, honey, if I can give you a guess. I been here about forty years. I remember they come to the old country (North Carolina) and say, if you come to Arkansas you wont even have to cook. They say the hogs walkin' round already barbecued. But you know I knowed better than that.
"We come to John M. Gracie's plantation and some to Dr. Blunson (Brunson). I remember when we got off the boat Dr. Blunson was sittin' there and he said "Well, my crowd looks kinda puny and sickly, but I'm a doctor and I'll save 'em." I stayed there eight years. We had to pay our transportation which was fifty dollars, but they sure did give you plenty of somethin' to eat—yes mam!
"No'm my hair ain't much white. My set o'folks don't get gray much, but I'm old enough to be white. I done a heap a hard work in my life. I hope clean up new ground and I tells folks I done everything 'cept Maul rails.
"Lord honey, I don't know chile. I don't know what to think, about this here younger generation. Now when they raised me up, I took care of myself and the white folks done took care of me.
"Yes mam, honey, I seed the Ku Klux. I remember in North Carolina when the Ku Klux got so bad they had to send and get the United States soldiers. I remember one come and joined in with the Ku Klux till he found out who the head man was and then he turned 'em up and they carried 'em to a prison place called Gethsemane. No mam! They never come back. When they carried you to Gethsemane, you never come back.
"I say the Lord blest me in my old age. Even though I can't see, I set here and praise the Lord and say, Lord, you abled me to walk and hear. Yes, honey, I'm sure glad you come. I'm proud you thought that much of me.
"Good bye, and if you are ever passin' here again, stop and see me."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Anna King
704 W. Fifth (rear), Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 82
"I used to 'member lots but you know, my remembrance got short.
"I was bred and born in Johnston County, North Carolina. I was sold away from my mother but after freedom I got back. I had a brother was sold just 'fore I was. My mother had two boys and three girls and my oldest sister was sold.
"And then you know, in slavery times, when the white children got grown, their parents give 'em so many darkies. My young Missis drawed me.
"My fust master was such a drinker. Named Lee. Lawd a mercy, I knowed his fust name but I can't think now. Young Lee, that was it.
"He sold me, and Leo Andrew Whitley bought me. Don't know how much—all I know is I was sold.
"After freedom I scrambled back to the old plantation and that's the way I found my mother.
"My last master never married. He had what they called a northern trotter.
"Wish I was able to get back to the old country and find some of my kin folks. If they ain't none of the old head livin', the young folks is. I got oceans of kin folks in Sampson County.
"My husband was a preacher and he come to the old country from this here Arkansas. He always said he was going to bring me out to this country. He was always tellin' me 'bout Little Rock and Hot Springs. So I was anxious to see this country. So after he died and when they was emigratin' the folks here, I come. I 'member Dr. Blunson counted us out after we got off the boat and he said, 'Well, my crowd looks kinda sickly, but I'm a doctor and I'll save you.' Lawd, they certainly come a heap of 'em. When the train uncoupled at Memphis, some went to Texas, some to Mississippi, and some to Louisiana and Arkansas. People hollerin' 'Goodbye' made you feel right sad.
"Some of 'em stayed in Memphis but I wouldn't stay 'cause dat's the meanest place in the world.
"John M. Gracie had paid out his money for us and I believe in doin' what's right. That was a plantation as sure as you bawn."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Mose King,
Lexa, Arkansas
Age: 81
"I was born in Richmond, Virginia. My master was Ephriam Hester. He had a wife and little boy. We called her mistress. I forgot their names. It's been so long ago.
"My parents named Lizzie Johnson and Andrew Kent. I had seven sisters and there was two of us boys. When mistress died they sold mother and my eldest sister and divided the money. I don't know her master's name in Virginia. Mother was a cook at Ephriam Hester's. Sister died soon as they come 'way from Virginia. I heard her talk like she belong to Nathan Singleterry in Virginia. They put mother and Andrew Kent together. After the surrender she married Johnson. I heard her say my own father was 'cross the river in a free state.
"There was two row of houses on the side of a road a quarter mile long and that is the place all the slaves lived. Ephriam Hester had one hundred acres of wheat. Mother was the head loom. He wasn't cruel but he let the overseers be hard. He said he let the overseers whoop 'em, that what he hired 'em for. They had a whooping stock. It was a table out in the open. They moved it about where they was working. They put the heads and hands and feet in it. I seen a heap of 'em get mighty bad whoopings. I was glad freedom come on fer that one reason. Long as he lived we had plenty to eat, plenty to wear. We had meal, hogs, goat, sheep and cows, molasses, corn hominy, garden stuff. We did have potatoes. I said garden stuff.
"Ephriam Hester come to a hard fate. A crowd of cavalrymen from Vicksburg rode up. He was on his porch. He went in the house to his wife. One of the soldiers retched in his pocket and got something and throwed it up on top of the house. The house burned up and him and her burned up in it. The house was surrounded. That took place three miles this side of Natchez, Mississippi. They took all his fine stock, all the corn. They hauled it off. They took all the wagons. They sot all they didn't take on fire and let it burn up. They burnt the gin and some cotton. They burnt the loom house, the wheat house; they robbed the smokehouse and burned it. We never got nothing. We come purt nigh starving after then. After that round we had no use fer the Yankees. I was learned young two wrongs don't make a right. That was wrong. They done more wrong than that. I heard about it. We stayed till after freedom. It was about a year. It was hard times. Seemed longer. We went to another place after freedom. We never got a chance to get nothing. Nothing to get there.
"In slavery times they had clog dances from one farm to another. Paddyrollers run 'em in, give them whoopings. They had big nigger hounds. They was no more of them after the War. The Ku Klux got to having trouble. They would put vines across the narrow roads. The horses run in and fell flat. The Ku Klux had to quit on that account.
"We didn't know exactly when freedom was. I went to school at Shaffridge, two miles from Clarks store. That was what is Clarksdale, Mississippi now. He had a store, only store in town. Old man Clark run it. He was old bachelor and a all right fellow, I reckon. I thought so. I went to colored teachers five or six months. I learned in the Blue Back books. I stopped at about 'Baker (?)'.
"I farmed all my life. I got my wife and married her in 1883. We got a colored preacher, Parson Ward. I had four children. They all dead but one. I got two lots and a house gone back to the state. I come to see 'bout 'em today. I going to redeem 'em if I can. I made the money to buy it at the round house. I worked there ten or twelve years. I got two dollars ninety-eight cents a day. I hates to loose it. I have a hard time now to live, Miss.
"I votes Republican mostly. I have voted on both sides. I tries to live like this. When in Rome, do as Romans. I want to be peaceable wid everybody.
"The present times is hard. I can't get a bit of work. I tries. Work is hard fer some young folks to get yet.
"I love to be around young folks. Fer as I know they do all right. The world looks nicer 'an it used to look. All I see wrong, times is hard."
Interviewer: Zillah Cross Peel
Information given by: Aunt Susie King, Ex-slave.
Residence: Cane Hill, Arkansas. Washington County.
Age: about 93.
Across the Town Branch, in what is dubbed "Tin-cup" lives one of the oldest ex-slaves in Washington county, "Aunt Susie" King, who was born at Cane Hill, Arkansas about 1844.
"Aunt Susie" doesn't know just how old she is, but she thinks she is over ninety, just how much she doesn't know. Perhaps the most accurate way to get near her age would be go to the county records where one can find the following bill of sale:
"State of Arkansas, County of Washington, for and in consideration of natural affection that I have for my daughter, Rebecca Rich, living in the county aforesaid above mentioned, and I do hereby give and bequath unto her one negro woman named Sally and her children namely Sam, and Fill, her lifetime thence to her children her lawful heirs forever and I do warrant and forever defend said negro girl and her children against all lawful claims whatsoever.
July, 1840. Tom Hinchea Barker,
Witness, J. Funkhouser.
Filed for record,
Feb. 16, 1841.
When this bill of sale was read to "Aunt Susie" she said with great interest,
"Yes'm, yes'm that sure was my Ma and my two brothers, Sam and Fill, then come a 'nother brother, Allan, and then Jack and then I'm next then my baby sister Milly Jane. Yes'm we's come 'bout every two years."
"Yes'm, ole Missy was rich; she had lots of money, lots of lan'. Her girl, she jes' had one, married John Nunley, Mister Ab, he married Miss Ann Darnell, Mister Jack he married Miss Milly Holt, and Mister Calvin he married Miss Lacky Foster. Yes'm they lived all 'round 'bout us. Some at Rhea's Hill and some at Cane Hill," and to prove the keenness of this old slave's mind, as well as her accuracy, one need only to go to the county deed records where in 1849, Rebecca Rich deeded several 40 acres tracts of land to her sons, James, Calvin, William Jackson and Absaolum. This same deed record gives the names of the wives of these sons just as "Aunt Susie" named them. However, Miss Lacky Foster was "Kelika Foster."
Then Aunt Susie started remembering:
"Yes'm, my mother's name was Sally. She'd belonged to Mister Tom H. Barker and he gived her to Miss Becky, his daughter. I think of them all lots of days. I know a heap of folks that some times I forgot. When the War came, we lived in a big log house. We had a loom room back of the kitchen. I had a good mother. She wove some. We all wove mos' all of the blankets and carpets and counterpans and Old Missey she loved to sit down at the loom and weave some", with a gay chuckle Aunty Susie said, "then she'd let me weave an' Old Missey she'd say I takes her work and the loom away from her. I did love to weave, all them bright colores, blue and red and green and yellow. They made all the colors in the back yard in a big kettle, my mother, Sally did the colorin'".
"We had a heap of company. The preacher came a lot of times and when the War come Ole Missey she say if we all go with her, she'd take us all to Texas. We's 'fraid of the Yankees; 'fraid they get us.
"We went in wagons. Ole Missey in the carriage. We never took nothin' but a bed stead for Ole Missey. They was a great drove of we darkies. Part time we walked, part time we rode. We was on the road a long time. First place we stopped was Collins County, and stayed awhile I recollect. We had lots of horses too. Some white folks drove 'long and offered to take us away from Ole Missey but we wouldn't go. We didn't want to leave Ole Missey, she's good to us. Oh Lord, it would a nearly kilt her effen any body'd hit one of her darkies; I'd always stay in the house and took care of Ole Miss. She was pretty woman, had light hair. She was kinda punny tho, somethin' matter with her mos' all the time, headache or toothache or something'."
"Mister Rich went down to the river swimmin' one time I heard, and got drowned."
"Yes'm, they was good days fo' the War."
"Yes'm we stayed in Texas until Peace was made. We was then at Sherman, Texas. Peace didn't make no difference with us. We was glad to be free, and we com'd back to Arkansas with Ole Missey. We didn't want to live down there. Me and my man, Charlie King, was married after the War, and we went to live on Mister Jim Moores place. Ole Miss giv'd my ma a cow. I made my first money in Texas, workin' for a woman and she giv'd me five dollars."
"Yes'm after Peace the slaves all scattered 'bout."
"The colored folks today lak a whole heap bein' like they was fo' the War. They's good darkies, and some aint so good." Me and my man had seven children all dead but two, Bob lives with me. I don't worry 'bout food. We ain't come no ways starvin'. I have all I want to eat. Bob he works for Missus Wade every mornin' tendin' to her flowers and afternoons works for him self. She owns this house, lets us live in it. She's good all right, good woman."
"I like flowers too, but ain't got no water, no more. Water's scarce. Someone turned off the hydrant."
"I belong to the Baptist church a long while."
"Do you know Gate-eye Fisher?" When I said "yes, I went down to talk to him last week," she said, "well, law me, Gate-eye ain't no fool. He's the best cook as ever struck a stove. He married my baby sister, Milly Jane's child. Harriet Lee Ann, she's my niece. She left him, said she'd never go back no more to him. She's somewhere over in Oklahoma."
"And did you see Doc Flowers? Yes'm, I was mos' a mother to him.
"One time my man and me heard a peckin' at the do'. We's eatin' supper. I went to the do' and there was Doc. He and his step-pa, Ole Uncle Ike, had a fight and Doc come to us and stayed 'bout three years. He started cryin'."
"Yes'm my Pa and Ma had belonged to Mister John Barker, before he giv'd my Ma to Miss Becky, my Pa was a leather worker. He could make shoes, and boots and slippers."
"Yes'm, Good bye. Come back again honey. Yes'm I'd like a little snuff—not the sweet kind. It makes my teeth feel better to have snuff. I ain't got much but snags, and snuff, a little mite helps them."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: William Kirk
1910 W. Sixth Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 84
"I been here ever since 1853—yes ma'm! Cose I 'member the war! I tell you I've seen them cannon balls goin' up just like a balloon. I wasn't big enough to work till peace was declared but they had my mammy and daddy under the lash. One good thing 'bout my white folks, they give the hands three months' schoolin' every year. My mammy and daddy got three months' schoolin' in the old country. Some said that was General Washington's proclamation, but some of 'em wouldn't hear to it. When peace was declared, some of the niggers had as good education as the white man. That was cause their owners had 'lowed it to 'em.
"They used to put us in cells under the house so the Yankees couldn't get us. Old master's name was Sam Kirk and he had overseers and nigger dogs (bloodhounds) that didn't do nothin' but run them niggers.
"I 'member one time when they say the Yankees was comin' all us chillun, boys and girls, white and black, got upon the fence and old master come out and say 'Get in your holes!'
"The war went on four years. Them was turrible times. I don't never want to see no more war. Them that had plenty, time the regiment went by they didn't have nothin'. Old mistress had lots a turkeys and hogs and the Yankees just cleaned 'em out. Didn't have time to pick 'em—just skinned 'em. They had a big camp 'bout as long as from here to town.
"They burned up the big house as flat as this floor. They wasn't nothin' left but the chimneys. Oh the Yankees burned up plenty. They burned Raleigh and they burned Atlanta—that was the southern capital. I've seen the Yankees go right out in people's fields and make 'em take the horses out. Then they'd saddle 'em and ride right off.
"General Grant had ten thousand nigger soldiers outside of the Irishmen and the Dutchmen. I know General Grant looked fearful when he come by. After surrender he had a corps pass through and notify the people that the war was over.
"Abraham Lincoln was a war captain. He was a man that believed in right. He was seven feet four inches high.
"I was born in North Carolina and I come here in 'sixty seven. I worked too!"
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Betty Krump,
Helena, Arkansas
Age: —
[Date Stamp: MAY 31 1938]
"Mother come to Helena, Arkansas from Lake Charles, Louisiana. I was born here since freedom. She had twelve children, raised us two. She jus' raised me en my sister. She lives down the street on the corner. She was a teacher here in Helena years and years. I married a doctor. I never had to teach long as he lived, then I was too old. I never keered 'bout readin' and books. I rather tomboy about. Then I set up housekeepin'. I don't know nothin' 'bout slavery. I know how they come here. Two boats named Tyler and Bragg. The Yankees took 'em up and brought 'em up to their camps to pay them to wait on them. They come. Before 'mancipation my mammy and daddy owned by the very same old fellar, Thomas Henry McNeil. He had a big two-story stone house and big plantation. Mother said she was a field hand. She ploughed. He treated 'em awful bad. He overworked 'em. Mother said she had to work when she was pregnant same as other times. She said the Yankees took the pantry house and cleaned it up. They broke in it. I'm so glad the Yankees come. They so pretty. I love 'em. Whah me? I can tell 'em by the way they talk and acts. You ain't none. You don't talk like 'em. You don't act like 'em. I watched you yeste'd'y. You don't walk like 'em. You act like the rest of these southern women to me.
"Mother said a gang of Yankees came to the quarters to haul the children off and they said, 'We are going to free you all. Come on.' She said, 'My husband in the field.' They sent for 'im. He come hard as he could. They loaded men and all on them two gunboats. The boat was anchored south of Tom Henry McNeill's plantation. He didn't know they was gone. When they got here old General Hindman had forty thousand back here in the hills. They fired in. The Yankees fired! The Yankees said they was goin' to drive 'em back and they scared 'em out of here and give folks that brought in them gunboat houses to live in. Mammy went to helping the Yankees. They paid her. That was 'fore freedom. I loves the Yankees. General Hindman's house was tore down up there to build that schoolhouse (high school). The Yankees said they was goin' to water their horses in the Mississippi River by twelve o'clock or take hell. I know my mammy and daddy wasn't skeered 'cause the Yankees taking keer of 'em and they was the ones had the cannons and gunboats too. I jus' love the Yankees fer freeing us. They run white folks outer the houses and put colored folks in 'em. Yankees had tents here. They fed the colored folks till little after 'mancipation. When the Yankees went off they been left to root hog er die. White folks been free all der lives. They got no need to be poor. I went to school to white teachers. They left here, folks didn't do 'em right. They set 'em off to theirselves. Wouldn't keep 'em, wouldn't walk 'bout wid 'em. They wouldn't talk to 'em. The Yankees sont 'em down here to egercate us up wid you white folks. Colored folks do best anyhow wid black folks' children. I went to Miss Carted and to Mrs. Mason. They was a gang of 'em. They bo'ded at the hotel, one of the hotels kept 'em all. They stayed 'bout to theirselves. 'Course the white folks had schools, their own schools.
"Ku Klux—They dressed up and come in at night, beat up the men 'bout here in Helena. Mammy washed and ironed here in Helena till she died. I never did do much of that kinder work. I been housekeeping purty near all my days.
"Mammy was Fannie Thompson in Richmond, Virginia. She was took to New Orleans on a boat and sold. Sold in New Orleans. She took up wid Edmond Clark. Long as you been going to school don't you know folks didn't have no marryin' in slavery times? I knowed that. They never did marry and lived together all their lives. Preacher married me—colored preacher. My daddy, Edmond Clark, said McNeil got him at Kentucky.
"I done told you 'nough. Now what are you going to give me? The gover'ment got so many folks doin' so much you can't tell what they after. Wish I was one of 'em.
"The present times is tough. We ain't had no good times since dem banks broke her. Three of 'em. Folks can't get no credit. Times ain't lack dey used to be. No use talking 'bout this young generation. One day I come in my house from out of my flower garden. I fell to sleep an' I had $17.50 in little glass on the table to pay my insurance. It was gone when I got up. I put it in there when I lay down. I know it was there. It was broad open daytime. Folks steals and drinks whiskey and lives from hand to mouth now all the time. I sports my own self. Ain't nobody give me nothin' since the day I come here. I rents my houses and sells flowers."
Interviewer's Comment
This old woman lives in among the white population and rents the house next to her own to a white family. The lady down at the corner store said she tells white people, the younger ones, to call her Mrs. Krump. She didn't pull that on me. She once told this white lady storekeeper to call her Mrs. No one told me about her, because the lady said they all know she is impudent talking. She is old, black, wealthy, and arrogant. I passed her house and spied her.
FOLKLORE SUBJECTS
[HW: Ex-slave, Texarkans Dist.]
Name of Interviewer: Mrs. W. M. Ball
Subject: Folk Tales.
Information given by: Preston Kyles
Place of Residence: 800 Block. Laurel St., Texarkana, Ark.
Occupation: Minister. (Age) 81
[TR: Personal information moved from bottom of form.]
One of the favorite folk songs sung to the children of a half century ago was "Run Nigger Run, or the Patty Roll Will Get You." Few of the children of today have ever heard this humorous ditty, and would, perhaps, be ignorant of its meaning. To the errant negro youths of slave times, however, this tune had a significant, and sometimes tragic, meaning. The "patty rolls" were guards hired by the plantations to keep the slaves from running away. The following story is told by an ex-slave:
"When I wuz a boy, dere wuz lotsa Indians livin' about six miles frum de plantation on which I wuz a slave. De Indians allus held a big dance ever' few months, an' all de niggers would try to attend. On one ob dese osten'tious occasions about 50 of us niggers conceived de idea of goin', without gettin' permits frum de Mahster. As soon as it gets dark, we quietly slips outen de quarters, one by one, so as not to disturb de guards. Arrivin' at de dance, we jined de festivities wid a will. Late dat nite one ob de boys wuz goin' down to de spring fo' to get a drink ob water when he notice somethin' movin' in de bushes. Gettin' up closah, he look' again when—Lawd hab mersy! Patty rollers! A whole bunch ob 'em! Breathless, de nigger comes rushin' back, and broke de sad news. Dem niggers wuz scared 'mos' to death, 'cause dey knew it would mean 100 lashes for evah las' one ob dem effen dey got caught. After a hasty consultation, Sammy, de leader, suggested a plan which wuz agreed on. Goin' into de woods, we cuts several pieces of grape vine, and stretches it across de pathway, where we knowed de patty rollers would hab to come, tien' it to trees on both sides. One ob de niggers den starts down de trail whistlin' so as to 'tract de patty rollers 'tention, which he sho did, fo' here dey all cum, runnin' jus' as hard as dey could to keep dem niggers frum gettin' away. As de patty rollers hit de grape vine, stretched across de trail, dey jus' piles up in one big heap. While all dis commotion wuz goin' on, us niggers makes fo' de cotton fiel' nearby, and wends our way home. We hadn' no more'n got in bed, when de mahster begin knockin' on de door. "Jim", he yell, "Jim, open up de doah!" Jim gets up, and opens de doah, an de mahster, wid several more men, comes in de house. "Wheres all de niggers?" he asks. "Dey's all heah," Jim says. De boss walks slowly through de house, countin' de niggers, an' sho' nuf dey wuz all dere. "Mus' hab been Jim Dixon's negroes," he says finally.
"Yes, suh, Cap'n, dey wuz a lot happen in dem times dat de mahsters didn't know nuthin' about."
FOLKLORE SUBJECTS
[HW: Ex-slave, Texarkana Dist., 9/5/31]
Name of Interviewer: Cecil Copeland
Subject: Apparition and Will-o'-the-Wisp.
Story—Information:
Information given by: Preston Kyles / Occupation: Minister
Place of Residence: 800 Block, Laurel St., Texarkana, Ark. (Age) 81
[TR: Personal information moved from bottom of form.]
The negro race is peculiarly susceptible to hallucinations. Most any old negro can recall having had several experiences with "de spirits." Some of these apparitions were doubtless real, as the citizens during Reconstruction Days employed various methods in keeping the negro in subjection. The organizers of the Ku Klux Klan, shortly after the Civil War, recognized and capitalized on the superstitious nature of the negro. This weakness in their character doubtless prevented much bloodshed during this hectic period.
The following is a story as told by a venerable ex-slave in regard to the "spirits":
"One day, when I wuz a young man, me an' a nigger, by de name ov Henry, wuz huntin' in an' old field. In dem days bear, deer, turkey, and squirrels wuz plentiful an' 'twant long befo' we had kilt all we could carry. As we wuz startin' home some monstrous thing riz up right smack dab in front ov us, not more'n 100 feet away. I asked Henry: "Black Boy, does yo' see whut I see?" an' Henry say, "Nigger I hopes yo' don't see whut I see, 'cause dey ain't no such man." But dere it stood, wid its sleeves gently flappin' in de wind. Ovah 8 feet tall, it wuz, an' all dressed in white. I yells at it, "Whut does yo' want?" but it didn't say nuthin'. I yells some mo' but it jus' stands there, not movin' a finger. Grabbin' de gun, I takes careful aim an' cracks down on 'em, but still he don't move. Henry, thinkin' maybe I wuz too scared to shoot straight, say: "Nigger, gib me dat gun!" I gibs Henry de gun but it don't take but one shot to convince him dat he ain't shootin' at any mortal bein'. Throwin' down de gun, Henry say, "Nigger, lets get away frum dis place," which it sho' didn't take us long to do."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Susa Lagrone
25th and Texas Streets, Pine Bluff, Ark.
Age: 79
"I don't know exactly how old I am but I know I was here at surrender. I was born in Mississippi. I seen the soldiers after they come home. They camped right there at our gate.
"I think—now I don't know, but I think I was bout six or seven when they surrendered. I went down to the gate with Miss Sally and the children. Old mistress' name was Sally Stanton. She was a widow woman.
"I learned to knit durin' the war. They'd give me a task to do, so much to do a day, and then I'd have all evenin' to play.
"My father was a mechanic. He laid brick and plaster. You know in them days they plastered the houses. He belonged to old man Frank Scott. He was such a good worker Mr. Scott would give him all the work he could after he was free. That was in Mississippi.
"I went to school right smart after freedom. Fore freedom the white folks learned me my ABC's. My mistress was good and kind to me.
"When we went down to the gate to see the soldiers, I heard Miss Judy say (she was old mistress' sister), I heard her say, 'Well, you let em beat you' and started cryin'. I cried too and mama said, 'What you cryin' for?' I said, 'Miss Judy's cryin'.' Mama said, 'You fool, you is free!' I didn't know what freedom was, but I know the soldiers did a lot of devilment. Had guards but they just run over them guards.
"I think Abraham Lincoln wanted to give the people some land after they was free, but they didn't give em nothin'—just turned em loose.
"Course we ought to be free—you know privilege is worth everything.
"After surrender my mother stayed with old mistress till next year. She thought there wasn't nobody like my mother. When she got sick old mistress come six miles every day to see her and brought her things till she died.
"My mother learned to weave and spin and after we was free the white folks give her the loom. I know I made a many a yard of cloth after surrender. My mother was a seamstress and she learned me how to sew.
"I never did hire out—just worked at home. My mother had six boys and six girls and they're all dead but me and my sister.
"Somebody told me I was twenty-five when I married. Had three children—all livin'.
"I used to see the white folks lookin' at a map to see where the soldiers was fightin' and I used to wonder how they could tell just lookin' at that paper.
"Old mistress said after freedom, 'Now, Susa, I don't want you to suffer for nothin.' I used to go up there and stay for weeks at a time.
"I just got down with rheumatism here bout three or four years ago, and you know it goes hard with me—I always been used to workin' all my life."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Barney A. Laird
Brinkley, (near Moroe) Arkansas
Age: 79
"I was born in Pinola County, Mississippi. I remembers one time soldiers come by on all black horses and had a bundle on one shoulder strapped around under the other arm. They wore blue jackets. Their horses was trained so they marched good as soldiers. They camped not far from our house. There was a long string of soldiers. It took them a long time to go by.
"One time they had a dinner in a sorter grove on a neighbor's farm. All us children went up there to see if they left anything. We et up the scraps. I say it was good eating. The fust Yankee crackers I ever et was there that day. They was fine for a fact.
"Our owner was Dr. Laird. When I come to know anything his wife was dead but his married daughter lived with him. Her husband's name was John Balentine. My parents worked in the field and I stayed up at the house with my old grandpa and grandma. Their house was close to the white folks. Our houses was about on the farm. Some of the houses was pole houses, some hewed out. The fireplace in our house burned long wood and the room what had the fireplace was a great big room. We had shutters at the windows. The houses was open but pretty stout and good. We had plenty wood.
"My parents both lived on the same farm. They had seven children. My mother's name was Caroline and my father's name was Ware A. Laird. Mother never told us if she was ever sold. Father never was sold. He never talked much.
"One thing I know is: My wife's pa was sold, Squire Lester, so him and Adeline could be on the same farm. Them my wife's parents. They never put him on no block, jes' told him to get his belongings and where to go. I never seen nobody sold.
"Dr. Laird was good to his darkies. My whole family stayed on his place till he died. I don't know how long. I don't know if I ever knowed when freedom come on. We had a hard time durin' the Civil War. That why I hate to hear about war. The soldiers tore down houses, burnt houses. They burnt up Dr. Laird's gin. I think it burned some cotton. They tore down fences and hauled em off to make fires at their camps. That let the stock out what they maybe did leave an old snag. Fust cussin' I ever heard done was one of them soldiers. I don't know what about but he was going at it. I stopped to hear what he saying. I never heard nobody cuss so much over nothing as ever I found out. They had cleaned us out. We didn't have much to eat nor wear then. We did have foe then from what they told us. The old folks got took care of. That don't happen no more.
"I never seen a Ku Klux. I heard tell of them all my life.
"Dr. Laird was old man and John Balentine was a peaceable man. He wanted his farm run peaceable. He was kind as could be.
"I been farming all my life. I still be doing it. I do all I can. It is the young boys' place to take the plough handle—the making a man out of their young strength. They don't want to do it. Some do and some won't stay on the farm. Go to town is the cry. I got a wife and two boys. They got families. They are on the farm. I tell them to stay.
"I get help from the Welfare if I'm able to come get what they give me.
"I used to pay my taxes and vote. Now if I have a dollar I have to buy something to eat. Us darkies satisfied with the best the white folks can do. Darkies good workers but poor managers is been the way I seen it all my life. One thing we don't want no wars."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Arey Lamar
612 E. 14th Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 78
[Date Stamp: MAY 31 1938]
"Yes'm, I was born in slavery days but I don't know what day. But you know I been hustlin' 'round here a long time.
"My mother said I was a great big girl when surrender come.
"I was born in Greenville, Mississippi but I was raised down at Lake Dick.
"I was a servant in Captain Will Nichols' house. I got a cup here now that was Captain Nichols' cup. Now that was away back there. That's a slavery time cup. After the handle got broke my mother used it for her coffee cup.
"My mother's name was Jane Condray. After everything was free, a lot of us emigrated from the old country to Arkansas. When we come here we come through Memphis and I know I saw a pair of red shoes and cried for mama to buy 'em for me, but she wouldn't do it.
"After I was grown and livin' in Little Rock, I bought me a pair of red shoes. I know I wore 'em once and I got ashamed of 'em and blacked 'em.
"My brother run away when they was goin' to have that Baxter-Brooks War and ain't been seen since.
"I was the oldest girl and never did get a education, and I hate it. I learned to work though.
"I don't know 'bout this younger generation. It looks like they're puttin' the old folks in the background. But I think it's the old christian people is holdin' the world together today."
Name of Interviewer: Irene Robertson.
Person interviewed: Solomon Lambert,
Holly Grove, Ark., R.F.D.
Age: 89
Subject: EX-SLAVERY
Story:
"My parents belong to Jordon and Judy Lambert. They (the Jordon family) had a big family. They never was sold. I heard 'em say that. They hired their slaves out. Some was hired fer a year. From New Year day to next New Year day. That was a busy day. That was the day to set in workin' overseers and ridin' bosses set in on New Year day. My parents' name was Fannie and Ben Lambert. They had eight children.
"How did they marry? They say they jump the broomstick together! But they had brush brooms so I reckon that whut they jumped. Think the moster and mistress jes havin' a little fun outen it then. The brooms the sweep the floor was sage grass cured like hay. It grows four or five feet tall. They wrap it with string and use that for a handle. (Illustration— [TR: not finished] The way they married the man ask his moster then ask her moster. If they agree it be all right. One of 'em would 'nounce it 'fore all the rest of the folks up at the house and some times they have ale and cake. If the man want a girl and ther be another man on that place wanted a wife the mosters would swop the women mostly. Then one announce they married. That what they call a double weddin'. Some got passes go see their wife and family 'bout every Sunday and some other times like Fourth er July. They have a week ob rest when they lay by the crops and have some time not so busy to visit Christmas.
"I never seen no Ku Klux. There was Jay Hawkers. They was folks on neither side jess goin' round, robbin' and stealin', money, silver, stock or anything else they wanted. We had a prutty good time we have all the hands on our place at some house and dance. We made our music. Music is natur'l wid our color. They most all had a juice (Jew's) harp. They make the fiddle and banjo. White folks had big times too. They had mo big gatherins than they have now. They send me to Indian Bay once or twice a week to get the mail. I had no money. They give my father little money long and give him some 'bout Christmas. White folks send their darkies wid a order to buy things. I never seen a big town till I started on that run to Texas. They took the men 450 miles to Indian Nation to make a crop. We went in May and came back in October. They hired us out. Mr. Jo Lambert and Mr. Beasley took us. One of 'em come back and got us. That kept us from goin' to war. They left the women, children and old men, too old fer war.
"How'd I know 'bout war? That was the big thing they talk 'bout. See 'em. The first I seen was when I was shuckin' corn at the corn pin (crib) a man come up in gray clothes. (He was a spy). The way he talk you think he a southern man 'cept his speech was hard and short. I noticed that to begin wid. They thought other rebels in the corn pin but they wasn't. Wasn't nobody out there but me. Then here come a man in blue uniform. After while here come the regiment. It did scare me. Bob and Tom (white boys) Lambert gone to war then. They fooled round a while then they galloped off. I show was glad when the last man rid off!
Moster Lambert then hid the slaves in the bottoms. We carried provisions and they sent more'long. We stay two or three days or a week when they hear a regiment comin' through or hear 'bout a scoutin gang comin' through. They would come one road and go back another road. We didn't care if they hid us. We hear the guns. We didn't wanter go down there. That was white man's war. In 1862 and 1863 they slipped off every man and one woman to Helena. I was yokin' up oxen. Man come up in rebel clothes. He was a spy. I thought I was gone then but and a guard whut I didn't see till he left went on. I dodged round till one day I had to get off to mill. The Yankees run up on me and took me on. I was fifteen years old. I was mustered in August and let out in 1864 when it was over. I was in the Yankee army 14 months. They told me when I left I made a good soldier. I was with the standing army at Helena. They had a battle before I went in. I heard them say. You could tell that from the roar and cannons. They had it when I was in Texas. I wasn't in a battle. The Yankees begin to get slim then they made the darkies fill up and put them in front. I heard 'em say they had one mighty big battle at Helena. I had to drill and guard the camps and guard at the pickets (roads into Helena). They never let me go scoutin'. I walked home from the army. I was glad to get out. I expected to get shot 'bout all the time. I aint seen but mighty little difference since freedom. I went back and stayed 45 years on the Lambert place. I moved to Duncan. Moster died foe the Civil War. Some men raised dogs-hounds. If something got wrong they go get the dogs and use 'em. If some of the slaves try to run off they hunt them with the dogs. It was a big loss when a hand run off they couldn't ford that thing. They whoop 'em mostly fer stealin'. They trust 'em in everything then they whoop 'em if they steal. They know it wrong. Course they did. The worse thing I ever seen in slavery was when we went to Texas we camped close to Camden. Camden, Arkansas! On the way down there we passed by a big house, some kind. I seen mighty little of it but a big yard was pailened in. It was tall and fixed so they couldn't get out. They opened the big gate and let us see. It was full of darkies. All sizes. All ages. That was a Nigger Trader Yard the worst thing I ever seen or heard tell of in my life. I heard 'em say they would cry 'em off certain times but you could buy one or two any time jes by agreement. I nearly fell out wid slavery then. I studied 'bout that heap since then. I never seen no cruelty if a man work and do right on my moster's place he be honored by both black and white. Foe moster died I was 9 year old, I heard him say I valued at $900.00. I never was sold.
"When I was small I minded the calves when they milk, pick up chips to dry fer to start fires, then I picked up nuts, helped feed the stock, learned all I could how to do things 'bout the place. We thought we owned the place. I was happy as a bird. I didn't know no better than it was mine. All the home I ever knowed. I tell you it was a good home. Good as ever had since. It was thiser way yo mama's home is your home. Well my moster's home was my home like dat.
"We et up at the house in the kitchen. We eat at the darkey houses. It make no diffurence—one house clean as the other. It haft to be so. They would whoop you foe your nasty habits quick as anything and quicker. Had plenty clothes and plenty to eat. Folk's clothes made outer more lastin' cloth than now. They last longer and didn't always be gettin' more new ones. They washed down at the spring. The little darkies get in (tubs) soon as they hang out the clothes on the ropes and bushes. The suds be warm, little darkies race to get washed. Folks raced to get through jobs then and have fun all time.
"Foe I jined the Yankees I had hoed and I had picked cotton. Moster Lambert didn't work the little darkies hard to to stunt them. See how big I am? I been well cared fur and done a sight er work if it piled up so it could be seen.
(Solomon Lambert is a large well proportioned negro.) In 1870 the railroad come in here by Holly Grove. That the first I ever seen. The first cars. They was small.
"I never knowd I oughter recollect what all they talked but she said they both (mother and father) come from Kentucky to Tennessee, then to Arkansas in wagons and on boats too I recken. The Lamberts brought them from Kentucky. For show I can't tell you no more 'bout them. I heard 'em say they landed at the Bay (Indian Bay).
"Fine reports went out if you jin the army whut all you would get. I didn't want to be there. I know whut I get soon as ever I got way from them. Course I was goin' back. I had no other place to go. The government give out rations at Indian Bay after the war. I didn't need none. I got plenty to eat. Two or three of us colored folks paid Mr. Lowe $1.00 a month to teach us at night. We learned to read and calculate better. I learned to write. We stuck to it right smart while.
"I been married twice. Joe Yancey (white) married me to my first wife at the white folks house. The last time Joe Lambert (white) married me in the church. I had 2 boys they dead now and 1 girl. She is living.
During slavery I had a cart I drove a little mule to. I took a barrel of water to the field. I got it at the well. I put it close by in the shade of a tree. Trees was plentiful! Then I took the breakfast and dinner in my cart. I done whatever come to my lot in Indian Nation. After the war I made a plowhand. "Say there, from 1864 to 1937 Sol Lambert farmed." Course I hauled and cut wood, but my job is farmin'. I share croppe. I worked fer 1/3 and 1/4 and I have rented. Farmin' is my talent. That whar all the darkey belong. He is made so. He can stand the sun and he needs meat to eat. That is where the meat grows.
"I got chickens and a garden. I didn't get the pigs I spoke fer. I got a fine cow. I got a house—10-1/2 acres of ground. That is all I can look after. I caint get 'bout much. I rid on a wagon (to town) my mare is sick I wouldn't work her. I got a buggy. Good nough fer my ridin' I don't come to town much. I never did.
I get a Federal soldier's pension. I tell you 'bout it. White folks tole me 'bout it and hope me see 'bout gettin' it. I'm mighty proud of it. It is a good support for me in my old helpless days. I'm mighty thankful for it. I'm glad you sent me word to come here I love to help folks. They so good to me.
"I vote a Republican ticket. I don't vote. I did vote when I was 21 years old. It was stylish then and I voted some since then along. I don't bother with votin' and I don't know nuthin 'bout how it is done now. I tried to run my farm and let them hired run the governmint. I knowed my job like he knowed his job.
I come back to tell you one other thing. My Captain was Edward Boncrow.
"I told you all I know 'bout slavery less you ask me 'bout somethin' I might answer: We ask if we could go to white church and they tell us they wanted certain ones to go today so they could fix up. It was after the war new churches and schools sprung up. Not fast then.
Prices of slaves run from $1600 to $2000 fer grown to middle age. Old ones sold low, so did young ones. $1600 was a slow bid. That is whut I heard.
Name of Interviewer: Martin-Barker
Subject: Ex-Slave
Story—Information (If not enough space on this page add page)
This information given by: Frank Larkin
Place of Residence: RFD #1—Bx. 73
Age —
[TR: Personal information moved from bottom of form.]
I was born a slave, my owner was Mr. Rhodes of Virginia. On a large plantation, my white folks gave a big to do, and served wine. Had corn shuckings. Swapped help around harvesting time. I was sold when 6 or 7 years old. Sold to highest bidder. First marster gave my mother to his white daughter and let her keep me.
I was raised as a house boy. I was always a mean boy. When I was sold I split another boys head open with an axe. Then I runned off. They caught me with blood hounds. My master whipped me with a cowhide whip. He made me take my clothes off and tied me to a tree. He would use the whip and then take a drink out of a jug and rest awhile, then he would whip me again.
Sometimes we would set up until midnight pickin' wool. I would get so sleepy, couldn't hardly pick de wool.
I hung up my stocking at Christmas to get gifts.
When we left de plantation, we had to get a pass to go from one plantation to another.
We went to church, sat on de back seat of the white folks church. It was a Baptist. Baptized in pool. White preacher said: "Obey your master."
When I came to Arkanansas, I was sold to Mr. Larkin.
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Frank Larkin
1126 W. Second Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 77
"Yes ma'm, I was born in slavery times, right about 1860. I was bred and born in Virginia—belonged to a man named Rhodes. When I was a little fellow, me and my mother was sold separate. My mother was sent to Texas and a man named Larkin bought me.
"I member when people was put upon the block and sold. Man and wife might go together and might not. Yes ma'm, they sho did separate mother and childen.
"Take a little chile, they would be worth a thousand dollars. Why old master would just go crazy over a little boy. They knowed what they would be worth when they was grown, and then they kept em busy.
"I can't remember no big sight in Virginia but I remember when the hounds would run em. Some of the colored folks had mighty rough owners.
"I remember when the Yankees come and took the best hoss my old boss had and left old crippled hoss with the foot evil.
"And they'd get up in a tree with a spyglass and find where old boss had his cotton hid, come down and go straight and burn it and the corn crib and take what meat they wanted and then burn the smoke house. Yes'm, I remember all that. I tell you them Yankees was mean. Used to shake old mistress and try to make her tell where the money was hid. If you had a fat cow, just shoot her down and cook what they wanted. My old boss went to the bottoms and hid. Tried to make old mistress tell where he was.
"Not all the old bosses was alike. Some fed good and some didn't. But they clothed em good—heavy cloth. Old man Larkin was pretty good man. We got biscuits every Sunday morning, other times got shorts. People was really healthier then.
"I was brought up to work. The biggest trainin' we got was the boss told us to go there and come here and we learned to do as we was told. People worked in them days. A deal of em that won't work now.
"During slavery days, colored folks had to go to the same church as the white folks and sit in the back.
"My father died a long time ago. I don't remember anything bout him and I never did see my mother any more after she was sold.
"After the war, old boss brought me to Arkansas when I was bout twelve years old. Biggest education I got, sit down with my old boss and he'd make me learn the alphabet. In those times they used the old Blue Back Speller.
"After we come to Arkansas I worked a great deal on the farm. Farmin'—that was my trade. I staid with him four or five years. He paid me for my work.
"Well, I hope we'll never have another war, we don't need it.
"I never had trouble votin' but one time. They was havin' a big row between the parties and didn't want us to vote unless we voted democratic, but I voted all right. I believe every citizen ought to have the right to vote. I believe in people havin' the right what belongs to em.
"I'm the father of thirteen childen by one woman—seven living somewhere, but they ain't no service to me.
"Younger people not takin' time to study things. They get a little education and think they can do anything and get by with it. And there's a lot of em down here on this Cummins farm now."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Frank Larkin
618 E. Fifteenth, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 85
"I was somewhere 'bout twelve years old when the Civil War ended. I was the carriage driver, fire maker, and worked in the field some.
"I was bred and born in Virginia and I was sold; I was sold. My first old boss was a Rhodes and he sold me to a man named Larkin. See, we had to take our names from our boss. Me and my mother both was sold. I was somewhere between seven and eight years old.
"Then old boss give my mother to his daughter and she carried her to Texas and he kept me. Never have seen her since.
"He was good to me sometimes but he worked us night and day. Had a pile of wool as big as this room and we had to pick it and card it 'fore we went to bed. Old boss was sittin' right there by us. Oh, yes'm.
"Old boss was better to me than old missis. She'd want to whip me and he'd say he'd do it; and he'd take me down to the quarters and have a cow-hide whip and he would whip a tree and say, 'Now you holler like I'm whippin' you.' I'd just be a bawlin' too I'm tellin' you but he never hit me nary a lick.
"All the chillun, when they was clearin' up new ground, had to pick up brush and pile it up. Ever'body knowed how much he had to do. Ever' woman knowed how much she had to weave. They made ever'thing—shoes and all.
"Them Yankees sure did bad—burned up the cotton and the corn. I seen one of 'em get up in a tree and take his spyglass and look all around; directly he'd come down and went just as straight to that cotton as a bird to its nest. Oh, yes ma'am, they burned up everything. I was a little scared of 'em but they said they wasn't goin' to hurt us. Old master had done left home and gone to the woods. It was enough to scare you—all them guns stacked up and bayonets that long and just as keen. Come in and have old missis cook for 'em. Sometimes they'd go and leave lots to eat for the colored folks and maybe give 'em a blanket. Wouldn't give old missis anything; try to make her tell where the money was though.
"When they said Vicksburg was captured, old master come out hollerin' and cryin' and said they taken Vicksburg and we was free. Some of 'em stayed and some of 'em left. Me and my grandma and my aunt stayed there after we was freed 'bout two years. They took care of me; I was raised motherless.
"I farmed all my life. Never done public work two weeks in my life. Don't know what it is.
"Old master had them blue back spellers and 'fore freedom sometimes he'd make us learn our ABC's.
"And he'd let you go to church too. He'd ask if you got 'ligion and say, 'Now, when the preacher ask you, go up and give him your hand and then go to the back.' In them days, didn't have any but the white folks' church. But I was pretty rough in them days and I didn't j'ine.
"But I tell you, you'd better not leave the plantation without a pass or them paddyrollers would make you shout. If they kotch you and you didn't have a pass, a whippin' took place right there.
"Oh Lord, that's been a long time. I sits here sometimes and looks back and think it's been a long time, but I'm still livin'.
"I've always tried to keep out of trouble. 'Co'se I've had some pretty tough times. I ain't never been 'rested fer nothin'. I ain't never been inside of a jail house. I've had some kin folks in there though.
"I've been a preacher forty years. Don't preach much now. My lungs done got decayed and I can't hold up. Some people thinks preachin' is an easy thing but it's not.
"Prettiest thing I ever saw when the Yankees was travelin' was the drums and kettledrums and them horses. It was the prettiest sight I ever saw. Them horses knowed their business, too. You couldn't go up to 'em either. They had gold bits in their mouths and looked like their bridles was covered with gold. And Yankees sittin' up there with a sword.
"Old boss had a fine saddle horse and you know the Yankees had a old horse with the footevil and you know they turned him loose and took old boss's saddle horse. He didn't know it though; he was in the woods.
"I believe there is people that can give you good luck. I know a woman that told me that I was goin' to have some good luck and it worked just like she said. She told us I would be the onliest man on the place that would pay out my mule and sure 'nough I was. I cleared forty dollars outside my mule and my corn. She said I was born to be lucky. Told me they would be lots of people work agin me but it wouldn't do no good."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: William Lattimore
606 West Pullen Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 78
"Yes'm I was a slave—I was born in 1859 in Mississippi. During the war I wasn't grown but I can remember when the Yankee soldiers come to Canton, Mississippi. We was sittin' out in the yard and the white folks was on the porch when they was bombardin' Jackson. We could hear the cannons. The white people said the Yankees was tryin' to whip the rebellion and set the niggers free. When they got done I didn't know what had happened but I remember the colored people packed up and we all went to Vicksburg. My father ran off and jined the Yankee army. He was in Colonel Zeigler's regiment in the infantry. I knowed General Grant when I seed him. I know when Abraham Lincoln died the soldiers (Yankees) all wore that black band around their arms.
"After my father was mustered out we went to Warren County, Mississippi to live. He worked on the halves with a schoolteacher named Mr. Hannum. He said he was my godfather.
"One time after the war Mr. Lattimore came and wanted my father to live with him but I didn't want him to because before the surrender old master whipped my father over the head with a walking stick 'cause he stayed too long and I was afraid he would whip him again.
"'Did you ever vote?' Me? Yes ma'm I voted. I don't remember who I voted for first—my 'membrance don't serve me—I ain't got that fresh enough in my memory. I served eight years as Justice of the Peace after I come to Arkansas. I remember one time they put one colored man in office and I said that's pluckin' before it is ripe. We elected a colored sheriff in Warren County once. The white men went on his bond, but after awhile the Ku Klux compelled them to get off and then he couldn't make bond. He appealed to the citizens to let him stay in office without bond but they wouldn't do it. When a man is trying to get elected they promise a lot of things but afterwards they is just like a duck—they swim off on the other side.
"I went to school after freedom and kept a goin' till I was married. I was a school director when I was eighteen. I didn't have any children and the superintendent who was very rigid and strict said 'Boy you is not even a patron of the school.' But he let me serve. I used to visit the school 'bout twice a week and if the teacher was not doin' right, I sure did lift my voice against it.
"I lived in Chicot County when I first come to Arkansas and when I moved to Jefferson County, Judge Harry E. Cook sent my reputation up here. I ain't never peeped into a jailhouse or had handcuffs on these hands.
"We've got to do something 'bout this younger generation. You never saw anything sicker. They is degenerating.
"I hold up my right hand, swear to uphold the Constitution and preserve the flag and I don't think justice is being done when they won't let the colored folks vote. We'd like to harmonize things here. God made us all and said 'You is my chillun.'"
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Bessie Lawsom,
Helena, Arkansas
Age: 76
[Date Stamp: MAY 31 1938]
"I was born in Georgia. My mama was brought from Virginia to one of the Carolina states, then to Georgia. She was sold twice. I don't recollect but one of her masters. I heard her speak of Master Bracknell. His wife, now I remember her well. She nursed me. I was sickly and they needed her to work in the crop so bad. She done had a baby leetle older than I was, so I nursed one breast and Jim the other. She raised me and Jim together. Mama was name Sallie and papa Mathew Bracknell. They called him Mat Bracknell. I don't know my master's name. They had other children.
"Me and Jim dug wells out in the yard and buried all the little ducks and chickens and made graves. We had a regular burying ground we made. They treated us pretty good as fur as I knowed. I never heard mama complain. She lived till I was forty years old. Papa died a few years after freedom. He had typhoid fever. He was great to fish. I believe now he got some bad water to drink out fishing. There was six of us and three half children. I'm the onliest one living as I knows of. One sister died in 1923 in Atlanta. She come to see me. She lived with big rich folks there. She was a white man's girl. She never had so much bad luck as we dark skin children the way it was. My papa had to go to war with some of Master Bracknell's kin folks, maybe his wife's kin folks, and they took him to wait on them at the battle-fields. Some soldiers camped by at the last of the war. They stole her out. She went to take something to a sick widow woman for old mistress. She never got back for a week. She said she was so scared and one day when her man, the man that claimed her, went off on a scout trip she asked a man, seemed to be a big boss, could she go to that thicket and get some black gum toothbrushes. He let her ride a little old broken down horse out there. She had a bridle but she was bare back. She come home through the pasture and one of the colored boys took the horse back nearly to the camps and turned him loose. 'Fo'e my own papa got back she had a white chile. Master Bracknell was proud of her. Papa didn't make no difference in her and his children. After the War he bought a whole bolt of cloth when he went to town. Mama would make us all a dress alike. The Yankees whooped mama at their camp. She said she was afraid to try to get away and that come in her mind. Old mistress thought that widow woman was keeping her to wait on her and take care of her small children. She wasn't uneasy and they took care of me.
"I don't recollect freedom. I heard mama say a drove come by and ask her to come go to Atlanta; they said Yankees give 'em Atlanta. She said she knowed if she went off papa wouldn't know where she was. She told 'em she had two young children she couldn't leave. They went on. She told old mistress and she said she done right not to go.
"The Yankees stole mama's feather bed. Old mistress had great big high feather beds and big pillows. Mama had a bed in a shed room open out on the back piazza. They put them big beds across their horses and some took pillows and down the road they went. It was cold and the ground froze. They made cotton beds then and the Yankees done got all the geese and chickens. They nearly starved. The Yankees took all the cows and stock.
"Master Bracknell was cripple. He had a store at Cross Roads. It was twenty-five miles from Marietta, Georgia. They never troubled him like they did old mistress. She was scared of them. She knowed if they come and caught her gone they would set fire to the house. No, they never burned nothing on our place but they did some in sight. I can remember seeing big fires about at night and day time too.
"We lived on Master Bracknell's place till I was eight years old and my sister five. We come to South, Alabama, then to Mississippi and then up the river to Helena. I married in Jackson, Mississippi. A white boy married us. We lived on his place and he was going to preach. He wasn't a preacher then. Richard Moore was his name. It took him several weeks to learn what to say. He practiced on us. He thought a heap of me and he ask Jesse if he could marry us. He brought us a big fine cake his mother cooked for us when he come. My husband named Jesse Lawsom. He was raised in Louisiana. We lived together till he died. My mother went blind before she died. His mother lived there, then we took care of them and after he died his mother lived with me. Now I lives with this niece here some and my daughter in Jackson. I had fourteen children. I just got one left and grandchildren I go to see. I make the rounds. Some of 'em good and some of them ain't no account at tall.
"I used to take advice. They get up and leave the place. They don't want old folks to advise 'em. If they can't get their price they sit around and go hungry. They won't work for what I used to be glad to get. I keep my girl on the right path and that is all I can do. My niece don't work out but her husband works on the farm all the time. She helps him. They go out and live till the work is done. He is off now ploughing. Times is fast sure as you born, girl. Faster 'an ever I seen."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Henry Lee
R.F.D., two and one-half miles, Palestine, Arkansas
Age: 87
"I was born close to Huntsville, Alabama during slavery. My master was Tom Laughinghouse and Miss Fannie, his wife. They had two children, Jarman and Mattie. He was Dr. George Laughinghouse's brother. Dr. George lived at Forrest City.
"He brung us to the old Pope place close to Forrest City after 'mancipation. We didn't know we was free. Finally we kept hearing folks talk, then Master Tom told us we was free. We cleared land right on after freedom like we was slaves.
"General Lee, a white man, owned a boat on the Mississippi River. He owned my father. We took on his name way after freedom. Mother was Becky Laughinghouse and father was Willis Lee. They had six children.
"After I come to Arkansas I went to school three days to a white man. He was sont here from the North somewhere.
"My folks was all black pure stock niggers and field folks same as I is.
"Mother's owners was good to her. They give them all day Saturday to wash and iron and cook for her folks. They got a whooping if they went to the field Monday morning dirty. They was very good to us. I can recollect that. They was a reasonable set of white folks. They weighed out everything. They whooped their hands. They had a white overseer but he wasn't hired to whoop Laughinghouse's slaves.
"They 'lowed mother to weave at her home at night. He had seven or eight families on his farm.
"The well was a curiosity to me then and would sure be one now. We had a walled and curbed well. A long forked pole, a short chain and a long rope. We pulled up the water by the long forked pole. Cold! It was good cold water. Beats our water all to pieces.
"The soldiers come up in a drove one day and ask mother for me. She didn't let any of us go.
"Our master got killed over here close to Forrest City. We all picked cotton, then we all went to gin. A coupling pin broke and let a wooden block come down on him. It weighed one thousand pounds I expect. He was spreading a sheet and smoothing the cotton. It mashed and smothered him both. That was first of our scattering.
"The colored folks raised gardens in the fence corners. They raised a heap of stuff that way. We lived a heap better then than now.
"My father died and mother started sharecropping. First, one-half and then, one-third went to us. Things went on very well till the commissary come about. The nigger got figured clean out.
"Nearly all the women of them days wore bonnets or what they called hoods one the other. Boys wore long shirts to calf of their legs.
"We rode oxen to church. Many time rode to church and home in ox wagon.
"Ku Kluxes followed Pattyrollers, then come on White Caps. If the Pattyrollers kilt a slave he had to pay the master the price. The Ku Kluxes rode at night. All of 'em's main business was to keep the slaves at their own places and at work. Iffen the master instructed them to keep offen his place they kept off. They never come on our place. But though I was feared of 'em.
"I needs help and I don't git it. I applied. 'Cause a grandson helps us a little I don't git the welfare pension. I need it and I think I ought to git it. I worked hard, bought this house, paid my taxes—still trying. Still they don't aid me now and I passed aiding my own self. I think I oughten to git lef' out 'cause I help myself when I could. I sure is left out. Been left out.
"A part of the people is accountable for the way the times is going on. Some of them is getting it all and don't give the others no show a tall. Times is powerful hard for some and too easy for others. Some is turned mean and some cowed down and times hard for them what can't work hard."
Interviewer: Miss Sallie C. Miller
Person interviewed: Mandy Lee,
Coal Hill, Arkansas
Age: 85
"Yes'm I was a slave. I been here. I heard the bugles blowing, the fife beat, the drums beat, and the cannons roar. We started to Texas but never got across the river. I don't know what town it was but it was just across the river from Texas. My white folks was good to me. I staid with them till they died. Missy died first, then master died. I never was away from them. They was both good. My mammy was sold but I never was. They said they was surrendered when we come back from Texas. I heard the drums beat at Ft. Smith when we come back but I don't know what they was doing. I worked in the house with the children and in the field too. I help herd the horses. I would card and spin and eat peaches. No, that wasn't all I had to eat. I didn't have enough meat but I had plenty of milk and potatoes. I was born right here in Coal Hill. I ain't never lived anywhere else except when we went South during the war.
"Law woman I can't tell you what I think of the present generation. They are good in their way but they don't do like we did. I never did go naked. I don't see how they stand it.
"I could sing when I was young. We sang everything, the good and bad."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Mary Lee
1308 Texas Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 74
[Date Stamp: MAY 31 1938]
"I was born in 1864, March the fourth, the year before the Civil War ended. All I know is what they told me and what I read.
"Born in Texas, but my mother and father was both born in Georgia.
"My mother said her white folks was good to her. She was the house girl, she didn't have to work in no field.
"I went to school when I was six or eight. I don't remember which. I had right smart schooling.
"I remember my mother's young missis run off and got married. She was just a young girl, 'bout seventeen. That's been a long time.
"I got a book sent to me a while back. It's a Catholic book—'History of Church and State.' Yes'm, I'm a Catholic. Used to belong to the Methodist church, but I wouldn't be a Methodist no more. I like the Catholics. You would too if you was one of 'em.
"I been here in Arkansas since 1891. That's goin' right on up the road.
"I can't do much work now, my breath gets short.
"I used to make thirty-five dollars a month washin' and ironin'. Oh, that was a long time 'fore the depression.
"I don't think nothin' of this younger generation. All goin' the same way. Oh lord, you better let 'em alone, they won't take no foolishness."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Talitha Lewis
300 E. 21st Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 86
[Date Stamp: MAY 31 1938]
"I should say I was born in slavery times! Now if you ask me something I don't know, I couldn't tell you, honey, 'cause I believe in people tellin' the truth.
"In a way I know how old I is. I give what my white folks give me. They told me I was born in 1852. Yes ma'am, my young missis used to set down and work on me. She'd say, 'Get it in your head' 'cause I ain't got no education.
"I 'member my old missis. Know her name as good as I do mine. Name was Maria Whitley. After old master died, his property was divided and Jim Whitley drawed me and my mother and my sister. Yes ma'am, it was my sister.
"Goldsboro, North Carolina is where I was born, in Johnston County.
"Do I 'member anything 'bout peace declared? I should say I do—'member long time 'fore it come.
"I seed so many different regiments of people I didn't know which was which. I know the Yankees called ever'body Dinah. They'd say to me, 'Dinah, hold my horse,' and my hands would be full of bridles. And they'd say, 'You got anything buried?' The white folks had done buried the meat under my mother's house. And say, 'Is they good to you?' If they hadn't a been we wouldn't a known any better than to tell it.
"I 'member they found where the meat was buried and they ripped up my mother's feather bed and filled it full of hams and shoulders, and there wasn't a middlin' in the lot. And kill chickens and geese! They got ever'thing and anything they wanted.
"There was a battle-field about four miles from us where they fit at.
"Honey, I can't tell it like I know it, but I know it.
"Old master was a good man. You had plenty to eat and plenty to wear. And on Monday morning all his colored folks had clean clothes. I wish I could tell it like I know. He was a good man but he had as mean a wife as I ever saw. She used to be Nettie Sherrod and she did not like a black face. Yes ma'am, Jim Whitley was a good man but his father was a devil.
"If Massa Jim had a hand he couldn't control, he sold him. He said he wasn't goin' to beat 'em or have 'em run off and stay in the woods. Yes'm, that was my master, Jim Whitley.
"His overseer was Zack Hill when peace declared.
"How long I been in Arkansas? Me? We landed at Marianna, Arkansas in 1889. They emigranted us here. They sure said they had fritter trees and a molasses pond. They said to just shake the tree and the fritters would fall in the pond. You know anybody that had any sense wouldn't believe that. Yes ma'am, they sure told that lie. 'Course there was times when you could make good money here.
"I know I is a slave time chile. I fared well but I sure did see some that didn't.
"Our white folks had hands that didn't do nothin' but make clothes and sheets and kivers.
"Baby, them Ku Klux was a pain. The paddyrollers was bad enough but them Ku Klux done lots of devilment. Yes ma'am, they done some devilment.
"I worked for a white man once was a Ku Klux, but I didn't know it for a long time. One time he said, 'Now when you're foolin' around in my closet cleanin' up, I want you to be pertickler.' I seed them rubber pants what they filled with water. I reckon he had enough things for a hundred men. His wife say, 'Now, Talitha, don't let on you know what them things is.'
"Now my father belonged to the Adkins. He and my mother was married with a stiffcate 'fore peace declared and after peace declared they got a license and was married just like they marry now.
"My master used to ask us chillun, 'Do your folks pray at night?' We said 'no' 'cause our folks had told us what to say. But the Lawd have mercy, there was plenty of that goin' on. They'd pray, 'Lawd, deliver us from under bondage.'
"Colored folks used to go to the white folks' church. I was raised up under the old Primitive Baptist feet washin' church. Oh, that's a time, baby!
"What I think of the younger generation? I don't know what to think of 'em. I don't think—I know they is goin' too fast.
"I learned how to read the Bible after I 'fessed religion. Yes ma'am, I can read the Bible, praise the Lawd!"
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Abbie Lindsay
914 W. Tenth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 84
[HW: cf. Will Glass' story, No. ——?]
"I was born June 1, 1856; the place at that time was called Lynngrove, Louisiana. It was just about a mile from the post office, and was in Morehouse Parish in the first ward—in the tenth ward I mean.
Relatives
"My father was named Alec Summerville. He named himself after the Civil War. They were going around letting the people choose their names. He had belonged to Alec Watts; but when they allowed him to select his own name after the war, he called himself Summerville after the town Summerville (Somerville), Alabama. His mother was named Charlotte Dantzler. She was born in North Carolina. John Haynes bought her and brought her to Arkansas. My father was an overseer's child. You know they whipped people in those days and forced them. That is why he didn't go by the name of Watts after he got free and could select his own name.
"The name of my mother's mother was Celia Watts. I don't know my grandfather's first name. Old man Alec Watts' father gave my mother to him. I didn't know anything about that except what was told to me. They bought her from South Carolina. They came to Louisiana. My father was bought in South Carolina too. After the Haynes met the Watts, Watts married old man Haynes' daughter. He gave my father to his daughter, Mary Watts. She was Mary Watts after she was married. She was Mary Haynes before. Watts' father gave my mother to Alec Watts. That is just the way it was.
"My mother and father had three children to live. I think there were about thirteen in all. There are just two of us living now. I couldn't tell you where Jeffrey Summerville, my living brother, is living now.
Slave Houses
"The slaves lived in hewed-log houses. I have often seen hewed-log houses. Have you ever seen one? You cut big logs and split them open with a maul and a wedge. Then you take a pole ax and hack it on both sides. Then you notch it—cut it into a sort of tongue and groove joint in each end. Before you cut the notches in the end, you take a broad ax and hew it on both sides. The notch holds the corners of the house-ties every corner. You put the rafters up just like you do now. Then you lathe the rafters and then put boards on top of the rafters. Sometimes shingles were used on the rafters instead of boards.
"You would finish off the outside of the walls by making clay cakes out of mud and filling up the cracks with them. When that clay got hard, nothing could go through the walls. Sometimes thin boards were nailed on the inside to finish the interior.
Furniture and Food
"They had planks—homemade wooden beds. They made tables and chairs. They caned the chairs. They made the tables with four legs. You made it just like you would make a box, adding the legs.
"A little house called the smokehouse was built in one of the corners of the yard. They would weigh out to each one so much food for the week's supply—mostly meat and meal, sometimes rice. They'd give you parched meal and rye too.
"Sometimes they had the slaves cook their food in the cabins. Mostly all the time. My people ate in the kitchen because my mother was the cook and my father was the yard man. The others mostly cooked at home—in their cabins.
Work
"My mother and father worked around the house and yard. Slaves in the field had to pick a certain amount of cotton. The man had to pick from two to three hundred pounds of cotton a day if he wasn't sick, and the woman had to pick about one hundred fifty. Of course some of them could pick more. They worked in a way of speaking from can till can't, from the time they could see until the time they couldn't. They do about the same thing now.
Recreation
"I remember the time the white folks used to make the slaves all come around in the yard and sing every Sunday evening. I can't remember any of the songs straight through. I can just remember them in spots.
'Give me Jesus, you can have all the world
In the morning when I arise, Give me Jesus.'
(Fragment)
'Lie on him if you sing right
Lie on him if you pray right
God knows that your heart is not right
Come, let us go to heaven anyhow.'
(Fragment)
'The ark was seen at rest upon the hill
On the hills of Calvary
And Great Jehovah spoke
Sanctify to God upon the hill.'
(First verse)
'Peter spied the promised land
On the hill of Calvary
And Great Jehovah spoke
Sanctify to God upon the hill.'
(Second verse)
There was lots more that they sung.
"They could go to parties too, but when they went to them or to anything else, they had to have a pass. When they went to a party the most they did was to play the fiddle and dance. They had corn huskings every Friday night, and they ground the meal every Saturday. The corn husking was the same as fun. They didn't serve anything on the place where I was. I never knew them to serve anything at the corn shuckings or at the parties. Sometimes they would give a picnic, and they would kill a hog for that.
Life Since Freedom
"Right after the war, my father hired me out to nurse. Then I stayed around the house and helped my stepmother, and the white girls taught me a little until I got to be thirteen years old. Then I got three months' schooling in a regular school. I came here in 1915. I had been living in Newport before that. Yes, I been married, and that's all you need to know about that. I got two children: one fifty-three years old, and the other sixty.
Opinions
"I don't have much thinking to do about the young people. It's a lost race without a change."
Interviewer's Comment
"Mother" Lindsay is a Bible-reading, neat and clean-appearing, pleasant-mannered business woman, a little bulky, but carrying herself like a woman thirty years. She runs a cafe on Ninth Street and manages her own business competently. She refers to it as "Hole in the Wall." I had been trying for sometime to catch her away from her home. It was almost impossible for me to get a story from her at her restaurant or at her home.
She doesn't like to sit long at a time and doesn't like to tell too much. When she feels quarters are a little close and that she is telling more than she wants to, she says, "Honey, I ain't got no more time to talk to you; I got to get back to the cafe and get me a cup of coffee."
Will Glass, who has a story of his own, collaborated with her on her story. He has an accurate and detailed memory of many things. He is too young to have any personal memories. But he remembers everything he has been told by his grandparents and parents, and they seem to have talked freely to him unlike the usual parents of that period.
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Rosa Lindsey
302 S. Miller Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 83
"I was born in Georgia and I'm 83.
"My white folks was named Abercrombie.
"I don't remember my mother and I hardly remember my father. My white folks raised me up. I 'member my missis had me bound to her when I was twelve. I know when my grandma come to take me home with her, I run away from her and went back to my white folks.
"My white folks was rich. I belonged to my young missis. She didn't 'low nobody to hit me. When she went to school she had me straddle the horse behind her. The first readin' I ever learned was from the white folks.
"I think the Yankees took Columbus, Georgia on a Sunday morning. I know they just come through there and tore up things and did as they pleased.
"I stayed there a long time after the Yankees went back.
"Old master wasn't too old to go to war but he didn't go. I think he had to dodge around to keep the Yankees from gettin' him. I think he went to Texas but we didn't go.
"I loved my white folks 'cause I knowed more about them than anybody else.
"I come here to Arkansas with a young white lady just married. She 'suaded me to come with her and I just stayed.
"Biggest thing I have did is washin' and ironin'. But now I am doing missionary work in the Sanctified church.
"I don't know 'bout the younger generation. Looks like 'bout near ever'body lost now. There's some few young people is saved now but they ain't many."
Interviewer: Thomas Elmore Lucy
Person interviewed: William Little,
Atkins, Arkansas
Age: 83
"I was born on the plantation of Dr. Andrew Scott, but my old ma'ster was Col. Ben T. Embry. The 14th of March, in the year 1855, was my birthday. Yes suh, I was born right here at old Galla Rock! My old Ma'ster Embry had a good many slaves. He went to Texas and stayed about three years. Took a lot of us along, and de first work I ever done after I was set free was pickin' cotton at $2 a hundred pounds. Dere was seventy-five or a hundred of us freed at once. Yes suh! Den we drove five hundred miles back here from Texas, and drove five hundred head of stock. We was refigees—dat's de reason we had to go to Texas.
"Father and mother both passed away a good many years ago. Oh, yes, dey was mighty well treated while dey was in slavery; never was a kinder mas'r anywhere dan my old mas'r. And he was wealthy, too—had lots of land, and a store, and plenty of other property. Many of the slaves stayed on as servants long after the War, and lived right around here at old Galla Rock.
"No suh, I never belonged to no chu'ch; dey thought I done too much of the devil's work—playin' the fiddle. Used to play the fiddle for dances all around the neighborhood. One white man gave me $10 once for playin' at a dance. Played lots of the old-time pieces like 'Turkey in the Straw', 'Dixie', and so on.
"We owns our home here, and I has another one. Been married twice and raised eighteen chillun. Yes suh, we've lived here eighteen years, and had fine health till last few years, but my health is sorter po'ly now. Got a swellin' in my laigs.
"(Chuckling) I sure remembers lots of happy occasions down here in days before the War. One day the steamboat come up to the landin'. It was named the Maumelle—yes suh, Maumelle, and lots of hosses and cattle was unloaded from the steamer. Sure was busy days then. And our old mas'r was mighty kind to us."
NOTE: "Uncle Bill" did not know how he came about the name "Little." Perhaps it was a nickname bestowed upon him to distinguish him from some other William of larger stature. However, he stands fully six feet in height, and has a strong, vigorous voice. He is the sole surveying ex-slave of the Galla Rock community.
Interviewer: Thomas Elmore Lucy
Person interviewed: "Aunt Minerva" Lofton
Russellville, Arkansas
Age: 69
"Come in! Yes, my name's Minerva Lofton—at least it was yistiddy. Now, whatcha gonna ask me? Hope you ain't saying something that'll git me in bad. Don't want to git in any more trouble. Hard times' bad enough.
"I was born in the country nine miles from Clarendon, Monroe County, December 3, 1869. Father died before I was born. My mother came from Virginia, and her mistress' name was Bettie Clark. They lived close to Richmond, and people used to say 'Blue Ridge,' so I think it was Blue Ridge County, Virginia. Mother was sold to Henry Cargile—C-a-r-g-i-l-e.
"When they were expecting peace to be declared soon a lot of the colored people named Parks took many of the slaves to Texas to escape from the Yankees, but when they got to Corpus Christi they found the Yankee soldiers there just the same, so they came back to Arkansas. I sure used to laugh at my dear old mother when she'd tell about the long trip to Corpus Christi, and things that happened on the way. They stopped over at Camden as they went through, and one of the colored gals who hated her played a prank on her to take out her spite on mother: They had stopped at a dairyman's home near Camden, and she sent my mother in to get a gallon of buttermilk. After drinking all she could hold she grabbed mother by the hair of the head and churned her up and down in the buttermilk till it streamed down her face, and on her clothes—a sight to behold. I laughed and laughed until my sides ached when mother told me about this.
"Old mistis' name (that is, one of the old mistis') was Bettie Young, and my mother was named Bettie for her; she was a namesake—sort of a wedding present, I think.
"I've been a member of the Pentecostal church for nineteen years.
"No sir, I never have voted and never expect to. Why? Because I have a religious opinion about votin'. I think a woman should not vote; her place is in the home raising her family and attending to the household duties. We have raised only two boys (stepchildren)—had no children of our own—but I have decided ideas about women runnin' around among and votin'. When I see em settin' around the ballot box at the polls, sometimes with a cigarette in their mouths, and again slingin' out a 'damn' or two, I want to slap em good and hard.
"Yes, the old time religious songs—I sure remember some of them! Used to be able to sing lots of em, but have forgotten the words of many. Let's see:
'I'm a-goin' to tell my Lord, Daniel in de lion's den;
I'm a-goin' to tell my Lord, I'm a-goin' to tell my Lord,
Daniel in de lion's den.'
Here's another:
'Big bells a-ringin' in de army of de Lord;
Big bells a-ringin' in de army.
I'm so glad I'm in de army of de Lord;
My soul's a-shoutin' in de army.'
"Modern youth? Humph! I think they are just a fulfilling of what Christ said: 'They shall grow wiser as they grow older, but weaker.' Where is it in the Scripture? Wait a minute and I'll look it up. Now, let's see—where was that passage? It says 'weaker' here and 'weaken'. Never mind—wait—I'll find it. Well, anyway, I don't know jest how to describe this generation. I heard a white woman once say that she had to do a little cussin' to make herself understood. 'Cussin'?' Why, 'cussin'' is jist a polite word for it.
"Good-bye, mister. You oughta thank the Lawd you've got a job!"
FOLKLORE SUBJECTS
Name of Interviewer: S. S. Taylor
Subject: Biographical Sketch of Robert Lofton
Story—Information (If not enough space on this page add page)
This information given by: Robert Lofton
Place of Residence: 1904 Cross Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Occupation: Farmer (no longer able to work)
Age: 82
[TR: Personal information moved from bottom of form.]
Robert Lofton was born March 11, 1855 in McDonogh, Georgia. His master lived in town and owned two Negro women and their children. One of these was Lofton's mother.
His father was a Negro who lived back of him and belonged to the local postmaster. He had a wagon and did public hauling for his master, Dr. Tie. He was allowed to visit his wife and children at nights, and was kept plentifully supplied with money by his master.
Lofton's master, Asa Brown, bought, or acquired from time to time in payment of debts, other slaves. These he hired out to farmers, collecting the wages for their labor.
After the war, the Lofton family came to Arkansas and lived in Lee County just outside of Oak Forest. They were share croppers and farmers throughout their lives. He has a son, however, a war veteran and unusually intelligent.
Robert Lofton is a fine looking old man, with silky white hair and an octoroon appearance, although the son of two colored persons.
He remembers scarcely anything because of fading mental powers, but he is able to take long walks and contends that only in that way can he keep free from rheumatic pains. He speaks of having died recently and come back to life, is extremely religious, and is fearful of saying something that he should not.
"I was in McDonogh, Georgia when the surrender came. [HW: That is where I was born on March 11, 1855.] There was plenty of soldiers in that little town—Yankees and Rebels. And they was sending mail out through the whole country. The Rebels had as good chance to know what was in the mail as the Yanks (his mother's husband's master was postmaster) did.
How Freedom Came
"The slaves learned through their masters that they were free. The Yankees never told the niggers anything. They could tell those who were with them that they were free. And they notified the people to notify their niggers that they were free. 'Release him. If he wants to stay with you yet, he may. We don't require him to go away but you must let him know he is free.'
"The masters said, 'You are free now, Johnnie, just as free as I am.' Many of them put their things in a little wagon and moved to some other plantation or town or house. But a heap of them stayed right where they were.
"My father found out before my mother did. He was living across town behind us about one-fourth of a mile. Dr. Tie, his master, had a post office, and that post office was where they got the news. My father got the news before my master did. He got on to it through being on with Dr. Tie. So my father got the news before my master, Asa Brown, did and he come over and told my mother before my master did. But my master came out the next thing and told her she could go or come as she pleased. She said she'd stay right along. And we got along just as we always did—until my father came and told us he was going to Atlanta with a crew of Yankees.
Employment and Post-War Changes in Residence
"He got a wagon and a team and run us off to the railroad. He got a job at Atlanta directly. After he made a year in Atlanta, he got dissatisfied. He had two girls who were big enough to cut cotton. So he decided to go farm. He went to Tennessee and we made a crop there. Then he heard about Arkansas and came here.
"When he came here, somehow or other, he got in a fight with a colored man. He got the advantage of that man and killed him. The officers came after him, but he left and I ain't never seen nor heard of him since. He went and left my poor mother and her five children alone. But I was getting big enough to be some help. And we made crops and got along somehow.
"I don't know what we expected. I never heerd anyone say a word. I was children you know, and it was mighty little that children knew because the old folks did not talk with them much.
What They Got
"I never heerd of anything any of them got. I never heerd of any of them getting anything except work. I don't recollect any pension or anything being given them—nothing but work.
Folks on this place would leave and go over on that place, and folks on that place would come over here. They ate as long as the white folks ate. We stayed with our old master and mistress, (Mr. Asa Brown and Mrs. Sallie Brown).
Good Master and Mistress
"They did not whip us. They didn't whip nobody they had. They were good white folks. My mother never was whipped. She was not whipped after the surrender and she wasn't whipped before. [We lived in the same house as our master] [HW: (in margin) see p. 6] and we ate what he ate.
Wives and Husbands
"There was another woman my master owned. Her husband belonged to another white man. My father also belonged to another white man. Both of them would come and stay with their wives at night and go back to work with their masters during the day. My mother had her kin folks who lived down in the country and my mother used to go out and visit them. I had a grandmother way out in the country. My mother used to take me and go out and stay a day or so. She would arrange with mistress and master and go down Saturday and she would take me along and leave her other children with this other woman. Sunday night she would make it back. Sometimes she wouldn't come back until Monday.
"It didn't look like she was any freer after freedom than she was before. She was free all the time she was a slave. They never whipped her. Asa Brown never whipped his niggers.
Letting Out Slaves
"Asa Brown used to rent out his niggers, sometimes. You know, they used to rent them. But he never rented my mother though. He needed her all the time. She was the cook. He needed her all the time and he kept her all the time. He let her go to see grandmother and he let her go to church.
"Sometimes my mother went to the white church and sometimes she went to the colored folks church. When we went to the white folks church, we took and sat down in the back and behaved ourselves and that was all there was to it. When they'd have these here big meetings—revivals or protracted meetings they call them—she'd go to the white and black. They wouldn't have them all at the same time and everybody would have a chance to go to all of them.
"They wouldn't allow the colored to preach and they wouldn't even call on them to pray but he could sing as good as any of them.
"Generally all colored preachers that I knowed of was slaves. The slaves attended the churches all right enough—Methodists and Baptists both white and black. I never heard of the preachers saying anything the white folks did not like.
"The Methodists' church started in the North. There was fourteen or fifteen members that got dissatisfied with the Baptist church and went over to the Methodist church. The trouble was that they weren't satisfied with our Baptism. The Baptists were here before the Methodists were thought of. These here fourteen or fifteen members came out of the North and started the Methodist church going.
Share Cropping
"Share cropping has been ever since I knowed anything. It was the way I started. I was working the white man's land and stock and living in his house and getting half of the cotton and corn. We had a garden and raised potatoes and greens and so on, but cotton and corn was our crop. Of course we had them little patches and raised watermelon and such like.
Food and Quarters
"We ate whatever the white man ate. My mother was the cook. She had a cook-room joined to her room [which reached clear over to the white folks' house.] [HW: see p. 4] Everything she cooked on that stove, we all ate it, white and black—some of the putting, [HW: pudding] some of the cakes, some of the pies, some of the custard, some of the biscuits, some of the corn bread—we all had it, white and black. I don't know no difference at all. Asa Brown was a good old man. There was some mean slave owners, but he wasn't one.
Whippings
"You could hear of some mean slave owners taking switches and beating their niggers nearly to death. But I never heard of my old master doing that. Slaves would run away and it would be a year or two before they would be caught. Sometimes they would take him and strip him naked and whip him till he wasn't able to stand for running away. But I never heard of nothing like that happening with Asa Brown. But he sometimes would sell a hand or buy one sometimes. He'd take a nigger in exchange for a debt and rent him out.
Voting
"There wasn't any voting by the slaves. But ever since freedom they have been voting. None of my friends ever held any office. I don't know anything about the niggers not voting now. Don't they vote?
Patter Rollers, K. K. K., White Carmelias, Etc.
"My mother and father knowed about Patter Rollers, but I don't know nothing about them. But they are dead and gone. I have heard of the Ku Klux but I don't know nothing about it. I don't know what I used to know. No sir, I am out of the question now.
"There is one thing I keep straight. When I wants to drink or when I wants to eat—oh yes, I know how to go to bed.
"You know I have seen the time when they would get in a close place and they would make me preach, but it's all gone from me now. I can't recollect."
Mary D. Hudgins
107 Palm Street,
Hot Springs, Ark.
Interviewer: Mary D. Hudgins
Person interviewed: John H. Logan
Aged: c. 89
Home: 449 Gaines Avenue.
[Date Stamp: MAY 11 1938]
Gaines Avenue was once a "Quality Street". It runs on a diagonal from Malvern Avenue, a one-time first class residential thorofare to the Missouri Pacific Tracks. Time was when Gaines led almost to the gates of the fashionable Combes Racetrack.
Built up during the days of bay windows Gaines Avenue has preserved half a dozen land marks of former genteelity. Long stretches between are filled "shot gun" houses, unaquainted for many years with a paintbrush.
Within half a block of the streetcar line on Malvern an early spring had encouraged plowing of a 200 foot square garden. Signs such as "Hand Laundry" appear frequently. But by far the most frequent placard is "FOR SALE" a study in black and white, the insignia of a local real estate firm specializing in foreclosures.
The street number sought proved to be two doors beyond the red brick church. A third knock brought a slight, wrinkled face to the door, its features aquiline, in coloring only the mildest of mocha. Its owner Laura Burton Logan, after satisfying herself that the visitor wasn't just an intruder, opened the door wide and invited her to come inside.
"Logan, oh Logan, come on here, come on in here," she called to an old man in the next room. "Law, I don't know whether he can tell you anything or not. He's getting pretty feeble. Now five or six years ago he could have told you lots of things. But now——I don't know."
Into the "front room" hobbled the old fellow. His back was bent, his eyes dimmed with age. His face was the sort often called "good"—not good in the sense stupid acquiescence—but rather evidence of an intelligent, non-preditory meeting of the problems of life.
A quarter, handed the old fellow at the beginning of the interview remained clutched in his hand throughout the entire conversation. Because of events during the talk the interviewer reached for her change purse to find and offer another quarter. It was not in her purse. Getting up from her chair she looked on the floor about her. It wasn't there. Mrs. Logan, who had gone back to bed, wanted to know what the trouble was, and was worried when she found what was missing. By manner the interviewer put over the idea that she wasn't suspecting either of the two. But Logan, not having heard the entire conversation got to his feet and extended his hand—the one holding the quarter, offering it back to the interviewer.
When he rose, there was the purse as it had slipped down on the seat of the rocker which the interviewer had almost taken and in which she had probably carelessly tossed her purse. A second quarter, added to his first, brought a beaming smile from the old man. But for the rest of the afternoon there was a lump in the interviewer's throat. Here was a man, evidently terribly in need of money, ready, without even a tiny protest, to return a gift of cash which must have meant so much to him—on the barest notion in his mind that the interviewer wanted it back.
"Be patient with me ma'am," Logan began, "I can't remember so good. And I want to get it all right. I don't want to spoil my record now. I been honest all my life, always stood up and told the truth, done what was right. I don't want to spoil things and lie in my mouth now. Give me time to think.
I was born, on——December——December 15. It was in 1848——I think. I was born in the house of Mrs. Cozine. She was living on Third Street in Little Rock. It was near the old Catholic Church. Was only a little ways from the State House. Mrs. Cozine, she was my first mistress. Then she sold me, me and my mother and a couple of brothers.
It was Governor Roane she sold me to. Don't know just how old I was——good sized boy, though. Guess I was five—maybe six years old. He was a fine man, Governor Roane was—a mighty fine man. He always treated me good. Raised me up to be a good man.
I remember when he gives us a free-pass. That was during the war. He said, 'Now boys, you be good. You stand for what is right, and don't you tell any stories. I've raised you up to do right.'
When he wasn't governor any more he went back to Pine Bluff. We lived there a long time. I was with Governor Roane right up until I was grown. I can't right correct things in my mind altogether, but I think I was with him until I was about 20.
When the war come on, Governor Roane helped to gather up troops. He called us in out of the fields and asked us if we wanted to go. I did. Right today I should be getting a pension. I was truly in the army. Ought to be getting a pension. Once a white man, Mr. Williams, I believe his name was, tried to get me to go with him to Little Rock. Getting me a pension would be easy he said. But somehow we never did go.
I worked in the powder factory for a while. Then they set me to hauling things——mostly food from the Brazos river to Tyler, Texas. We had hard times then——we had a time——and don't you let anybody tell you we didn't. Sometimes we didn't have any bread. And even sometimes we didn't have any water. I wasn't so old, but I was a pretty good man——pretty well grown up.
After the war I went back with my pappy. While I'd belonged to Governor Roane, Roane was my name. But when I went back with father, I took his name. We farmed for a while and later I went to Little Rock.
I did lots of things there. Worked in a cabinet maker's shop for one thing. Was classed as a good workman, too. I worked the lathes. Did a good job of it. I never was the sort that had to walk around looking for work. Folks used to come and get me and ask me to work for them.
How'd I happen to come to Hot Springs? They got me to come to work on the water mains. Worked for the water works a long time. Then I worked for a Mr. Smith in the bath house. I fired the furnace for him. Then for about 15 years I kept the yard at the Kingsway——the Eastman it was then. I kept the lawn clean at the Eastman Hotel. That was about the last steady work I did.
Yes and in between I used to haul things. Had me an express wagon. Used to build rock walls too. Built good walls.
Who did you say you was, Miss? Your father was Jack Hudgins—Law, child, law——"
A feeble hand reached for the hand of the white woman and took it. The old eyes filled with tears and the face distorted in weaping. For a few minutes he sat, then he rose, and the young woman rose with him. For a moment she put a comforting arm around him and soon he was quieter.
"Law, so your father was Jack Hudgins. How well I does remember him. Whatever did become of that fine boy? Dead did you say? I remembers now. He was a fine man, a mighty—mighty fine man. Jack Hudgins girl!
Yes, Miss, I guess you has seen me around a lot. Lots of folks know me. They'll come along the street and they'll say, 'Hello Logan!' and sometimes I won't know who they are, but they'll know me.
I remember once, it's been years and years ago, a man come along Central Avenue—a white man. I was going along the street and suddenly he grabbed me and hugged me. It scared me at first. 'Logan,' he says, 'Logan' he says again. 'Logan, I'd know you anywhere. How glad I am to see you.' But I didn't recognize him. 'Wife,' he says 'wife, come on over and speak to Logan, he saved my life once.' Invited me to come and see him too, he did.
Things have been mighty hard for the last few years. Seems like we could get the pension. First they had a rule that we'd have to sign away the home if we got $9.00 a month. Well, my wife's daughter was taking care of us. Even if we got the $9 she'd still have to help. She wasn't making much, but she was dividing everything—going without shoes and everything. So we thought it wasn't fair to her to sign away our home after all she'd done for us——so that they'd just kick her out when we was dead—she'd been too good to us. So we says 'No!' We been told that they done changed that rule, but we can't seem to get help at all. Maybe, Miss, there's somthing you can do. We sure would be thankful, if you could help us get on.
All my folks is dead, my mother and my father and all my brothers, my first and my second wives and both my children. My wife's daughter helps us all she can. She's mighty good to us. Don't know what we'd do without her. Thank you, glad you come to see us. Glad to know you. If you can talk to them over at the Court House, we'd be glad. Good-bye. Come to see us ag in."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Elvie Lomack
Residence: Foot of King Street on river bank,
no number; Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 78
"Come right in and I'll tell you what I know. I was born in Tennessee in slavery days. No ma'm I do not know what year, because I can't read or write.
"I know who my mistress was. She was Miss Lucy Ann Dillard. She come from Virginia. She was an old maid and she was very nice. Some very good blooded people come from Virginia. She brought my mother with her from Virginia before I was born.
"My father belonged to the Crowders and mammy belonged to Miss Lucy Ann Dillard. They wouldn't sell pappy to Miss Lucy and she wouldn't sell mammy to the Crowders, so mammy lost sight of him and never married again. She just married that time by the consent of the white folks. In them times they wasn't no such thing as a license for the colored folks.
"I remember my mother milked and tended to the cows and issued out the milk to the colored folks.
"Miss Lucy lived in town and come out once a week to see to us. When the overseer was there she come out oftener. We stayed right on there after the war, till we come to Arkansas. I was betwixt eleven and twelve years old.
"And we was fooled in this place. A man my mother knowed had been here two years. He come back to Tennessee and, oh Lord, you could do this and do that, so we come here.
"First year we come here we all got down sick. When we got well we had to go to work and I didn't have a chance to go to school.
"I've seen my mother wring her hands and cry and say she wished she was back in Tennessee where Lucy Ann Dillard was.
"When I got big enough I went to work for Ben Johnson and stayed there fifteen years. I never knew when my payday was. Mammy come and got my pay and give me just what she wanted me to have. And as for runnin' up and down the streets—why mammy would a died first. She's dead and in her grave but I give her credit—she took the best of care of us. She had three girls and they didn't romp up and down the big road neither.
"I just looks at the young folks now. If they had been comin' along when I was, they'd done been tore all to pieces. They ain't raisin' em now, they're just comin' up like grass and weeds. And as for speakin' to you now—just turn their heads. Now I'm just fogy nuf that if I meet you out, I'll say good mornin' or good evenin'.
"If it hadn't been for the Yankees, we'd have the yoke on our necks right today. The Lord got into their hearts.
"Now I don't feel bitter gainst people. Ain't no use to hold malice gainst nobody—got to have a clean heart. Folks does things cause they's ignorant and don't know no better and they shouldn't be crowned with it.
"But I'll tell you the truth—I've heard my mother say she was happier in slavery times than after cause she said the Dillards certainly took good care of her. Southerners got a heart in em."
Interviewer: Mary D. Hudgins
Person interviewed: Henry Long
Home: 112 East Grand
Age: c. 71
"Yes, 'um, I owns my own home—and what's more it's on the same street with the Mayor's house. Yes 'um, I owns a good home, has my own chickens and my flowers and I has a pension of $50 a month.
"Just the other day I got a letter. It wanted me to join the National Association of Retired Federal Workers. I took the letter to the boss and he told me not to bother. Guess I'd better spend my money on myself.
"I got some oil stock too. Been paying pretty good dividends since I had it. Didn't pay any this year. They are digging a new well. That'll maybe mean more money. It's paid pretty good up to now. Yes, me and my wife, we're getting along pretty good. Nothing to worry about.
"Where was I born—it was in Kentucky, Russellville it was, just a few miles from Bowling Green. Yes, 'um, Kentucky was a regular slave state——a genuine slave state. Lots of 'em there.
"The man we belonged to——his name was Gabe Long. I remember hearin' 'em tell how they put him up on one block and sold him. They put his wife up on another and sold her too. Only they both went in different directions. They didn't see each other again for 30 years. By that time he had married again twice. My mother was his third wife. She lived to be 102 and he lived to be 99. Yes, 'um, I comes from a long lived family. There's four of us still living. I got two brothers and one sister. They all live back in Kentucky——pretty close to where we was all born. One time, when I had a vacation——you know they gives you a vacation with pay——30 days vacation it was. Well one time on my vacation I went back to see my sister. She is living with her daughter. She is 78. One brother is living with his son. He's 73. My youngest brother owns his own farm. He is 64. All of 'em back in Kentucky, they've been farmers. I'm the only one who has worked in town. And I never worked in town until I come to Arkansas.
"Been in Hot Springs for over 50 years. Law, when I first come there wasn't any Eastman hotel. There wasn't any Park hotel. I don't mean that Park Hotel up in Happy Hollow. The one I mean was down on Malvern. It burned in the fire of 1913. Law, when I come there wasn't nothing but mule street cars. Hot Springs has seen lots of changes.
"Back in Kentucky I'd been working around where I was born. Worked around the houses mostly. They paid me wages and wanted me to go on working for them. But I decided I wanted to get away. So I went to Little Rock. But didn't find nothing much to do there. Then I went on up Cedar Glades way. Then I come to Hot Springs.
"First I worked for a man who had a big garden——it's out where South Hot Springs is now——oh you know what the man's name was——he was named——he was named—name was Barker, that's it, Barker." (The "Barker Place" has been divided up into lots and blocks and is one of the more popular residential districts.)
"Then I got a job at the Park hotel. No ma'am. I didn't work in the yard. I worked in the refrigerators and the pantry. Then about meal times I served the fruit. You know how a big, fashionable hotel is—there's lots of things that has to be done around 'em.
"Finally I got rheumatism and I had to quit that kind of work. So I got a job firing the furnace at the electric light plant. It was down on Malvern then. That was before the fire of 1913. I was working right there when the fire come. It was pretty awful. It burned just about everything out there on Malvern——and places on lots of other streets too.
"After that I got a job at the Eastman hotel. I fired the furnace and worked on the boilers. Worked there a long time. Then they sent me to the Arlington. You know at that time the same company owned both the Eastman and the Arlington. It wasn't this new Arlington——it was the second one—the red brick one. Built that second one while I was here. The first one was wood.
"Back in the time when I come, there was a creek running through most of the town. There wasn't any Great Northern hotel. There was just a big creek there.
"But how-some-ever, to go on. After I worked at the Arlington on the boilers and the furnace—I got a job at the Army and Navy Hospital. Now that wasn't the new hospital either. It was the old one—it was red brick too.
"Next, I worked at the LaMar Bath house. I was there a long time——for years and years. Then they got to building over the bath houses. One by one they tore down the old ones and put new ones up. I worked on at the LaMar until they tore the old one down to build the new one. Then I went up to the Quapaw to work. Worked there for quite some time.
"Finally they sent for me to come on down and work for the government. I's worked under a lot of the Superintendents. I started working for the government when Dr.——Dr.——Dr. Warring——Warring was his name. He was a nice man. Then there was Dr. Bolton. I worked for him too. Then there was——there was——oh, what was his name——De—De—DeValin—that's it. Then there was Dr. Collins. He was the last of the Doctors. Then there was Mr. Allen and now Mr. Libbey.
"Yes, 'um, I worked for a lot of 'em and made a HOME RUN with all of 'em. Every one of 'em liked me. I always did good work. All of 'em liked the way I worked.
"Yes 'um. I been married 41 years——20 years to the first woman——21 to this one. The first one come from Mississippi. Her name was Ula. This one's name is Charlotte. She come from Magnolia—that's in Arkansas.
"You know ma'am, I come from Kentucky where they raise fine race horses. I worked around 'em a lot. But I ain't seen many races. We lived out in the country. We had good horses, but they didn't race 'em. I worked with the horses around the place, but we didn't go in town to see the races. What did we raise? Well tobacco and wheat and the usual things. All my folks, but me is still working on farms.
"No 'um, I didn't rightly know how old I was. I was working along, not thinking much about what I was doing. Then the men down at the office" (Hot Springs National Park) "started asking me how old I was. I couldn't tell 'em. But I thought I was born the year the slaves was freed. They said I ought to be retired.
"So they wrote back——or somebody stopped over while he was on his vacation—can't quite remember which. Anyhow they found I was old enough to retire——ought to have retired several years ago. So now I got my home, got my pension and got my time to do what I wants to do."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Annie Love
1116 E. Twelfth Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 85?
"I don't know exactly how old I am. I was here when the war was goin' on. I know I used to see the soldiers come by and come in, but I wasn't big enough to work. I was born in Richmond, Virginia.
"My owners moved from Virginia to Mississippi. My mother and I lived on one place and my father lived on another plantation. I remember one Sunday he come to see me and when he started home I know I tried to go with him. He got a little switch and whipped me. That's the onliest thing I can remember bout him.
"Billy Cole was my master and I didn't have any mistress cause he never was married.
"My mother worked in the field and I was out there with her when the cannons commenced shootin' at Helena. We said they was shootin' at us and we went to the house. Oh Lord, we said we could see em, Lord yes!
"After surrender, our owner, Billy Cole, told us we was free and that we could go or stay so we stayed there for four or five years. I don't know whether we was paid anything or not. After that we just went from place to place and worked by the day.
"I never did see any Ku Klux but they come to my mother's house one night and wanted my stepfather to show'em where a man lived. He went down the road with 'em a piece. They wanted a drink and, oh Lord, they'd drink mighty nigh a bucket full.
"Oh Lord, when I was young goin' to parties and dances, that was my rule. Oh Lord, I went to them dances.
"I went to church, too. That was one thing I did do. I ain't able to go now but I'll tell anybody when I could, I sure went.
"I went to school mighty little—off and on bout two years. I never learned nothin' though.
"I lived right in Memphis mighty nigh twenty years then I come to Arkansas bout thirty-two years ago and I'm mighty near right where I come to Pine Bluff.
"I don't know of anything else but all my days I believe I've worked hard, cookin' and washin' and ironin'."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Needham Love
1014 W. Seventeenth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 80, or older
"Old Joe Love sold us to old Jim McClain, Meridian, Mississippi, and old McClain brought us down on the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi. That was during the War. It was down there on a big old plantation where the cane was high as this house. I was born in Alabama. When the War started, he brought us all down to Meridian and sold us. He sold me in my mother's arms.
"We cut down all that cane and woods and cleared up the place on the Tallahatchie. We did all that before we learned we was free.
"They built log houses for the white and black. They sealed the white folks' houses and chinked the colored folks'. They didn't have but one house for the white folks. There was only one white person down there and that was old Jim McClain. Just come down there in time of harvest. He lived in Lexington the rest of the time. He told his people, 'When I die, bury me in a bale of cotton.' One time he got sick and they thought he would die. They gathered all the hands up and all the people about the place. There was about three hundred. He come to his senses and said, 'What's all these people doing here?'
"His son said, 'Papa, they thought you was goin' to die and they come up to see you.'
"And he said to his son, 'Well, I ain't dead yet. Tell 'em to git back on the job, and chop that cotton.'
"I did not have any work to do in slavery time. When the War ended I was only five years old. But I played the devil after the War though. When the slaves were freed, I shouted, but I ain't got nothin' yet. I learned a lot though. My father used to make a plow or a harrow. They made cotton in those days. Potatoes ain't no 'count now. In them days, they made potatoes so good and sweet that they would gum up your hands. Mothers used to make good old ash cakes. Used to have pot-liquor with grease standin' up on it. People don't know nothin' now. Don't know how to cook.
"My father's name was Joe Love and my mother's name was Sophia. I don't know any of my grandparents. All of them belonged to old Joe Love. I never did know any of them. I know my father and mother—my mammy and pappy—that's what we called 'em in them days.
"Old man Joe would go out sometimes and come in with a hog way in the night. He was a cooper—made water buckets, pans to make bread up in and things like that. Mammy would make us git up in the night and clean our mouths. If they didn't, children would laugh at them the next day and say the spiders had been biting your mouth, 'cause we were sposed to had so much grease on our mouths that the spiders would swing down and bite them.
"I professed religion when I was sixteen years old. It was down in the Free Nigger Bend where my father had bought a little place on the public road between Greenwood and Shellmount.
"I married that fall. My father had died and I had got to be a man. Done better then than I do since I got old. I had one cow and my mother let me have another. I made enough money to buy a pair of mules and a wagon. My wife was willing to work. She would go out and git some poke greens and pepper and things and cook them with a little butter. Night would come, we'd go out and cut a cord of wood. Got 'long better then than people do now.
"I began preaching soon as I joined the church. I began at the prayer-meetings. I preached for forty-seven years before I fell. I've had two strokes. It's been twenty-eight years or more since I was able to work for myself.
"I have heard about the pateroles but I never did know much about them. I have heard my father talk about them. He never would get a new suit and go to town but what they would catch him out and say, 'You got a pass?' He would show it to them, and they would sit down and chew old nasty tobacco and spit the juice out on him all over his clothes.
"The Ku Klux never did bother us any. Not after I got the knowledge to know what was what. They was scared to bother people 'cause the niggers had gone and got them some guns and would do them up.
"Old Jim McClain had one son who was bad. He used to jump on the niggers an' 'buse and beat them up. The niggers got tired of it and he started gittin' beat up every time he started anything and they didn't have no more trouble.
"Jim McClain didn't mistreat his niggers. The boys did after he was dead though. He died way after slavery. If a nigger went off his place and stole a cow or a hog or something, you better not come 'round there and try to do nothin' about it. Jim McClain would be right there to protect him.
"When he died, the horses could hardly pull him up the hill. He wanted to stay back down there in the bottoms where that cotton was.
"When I got to realizing, it was after freedom. But they had slavery rules then. There was one old woman who used to take care of the children while their parents were working in the fields. Sometimes it would be a week before I would see my mother and father. Children didn't set up then and look in old folks' faces like they do now. They would go to bed early. Wake up sometimes way in the middle of the night. Old folks would be holding a meeting and singing and praying.
"They used to feed the children pot-liquor and bread and milk. Sometimes a child would find a piece of meat big as your two fingers and he would holler out, 'Oh look, I got some meat.'
"Fourth of July come, everybody would lay by. Niggers all be gathered together dancing and the white folks standin' 'round lookin' at them.
"Right after the surrender, I went to night school a little, but most of my schooling was got by the plow. After I come to be a minister I got a little schooling.
"I can't get about now. I have had two strokes and the doctor says for me not to go about much. I used to be able to go about and speak and the churches would give me something, but since this new 'issue' come out, theology and dogology and all such as that, nobody cares to pay any 'tention to me. Think you are crazy now if you say 'amen.' Don't nobody carry on the church now but three people—the preacher, he preaches a sermon; the choir, he sings a song; and another man, he lifts a collection. People go to church all the years now and never pray once.
"I get some help from the Welfare. They used to pay me ten dollars pension. They cut me down from ten to eight. And now they cut me down to four. They cut the breath out of me this time.
"I got some mighty good young brothers never pass me up without givin' me a dime or fifteen cents. Then I got some that always pass me up and never give me nothing. I have built churches and helped organize churches from here back to Mississippi.
"I don't know what's goin' to become of our folks. All they study is drinking whiskey and gamblin' and runnin' after women. They don't care for nothin'. What's ruinin' this country is women votin'. When a woman comes up to a man and smiles at him, he'll do what she wants him to do whether it's right or wrong.
"The best part of our preachers is got so they are dishonest. Stealing to keep up automobiles. Some of them have churches that ain't no bigger than this room."
Interviewer's Comment
The statements of Needham Love like those of Ella Wilson are not consistent on the subject of age. It is evident, however, that he is eighty years old or older. He thinks so. He has memories of slave times. He has some old friends who think him older.
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Louis Lucas
1320 Pulaski Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 83
Masters, Birth, Parents, Grandparents
"I was born in 1855 down on Bayou Bartholomew near Pine Bluff, Jefferson County.
"My mother's name was Louisa. She married a man named Bill Cardrelle after freedom. Her husband in slavery time was Sam Lucas. He belonged to a man by the name of O'Neil. They took him in the War and he never did come back to her. (He didn't much believe he was my father, but I went in his name anyway.)
"My mother's father's name was Jacob Boyd. I was young, but I know that. He was free and didn't belong to nobody. That was right here in Arkansas. He had three other daughters besides my mother, and all of them were slaves because their mother was a slave. His wife was a woman by the name of Barclay. Her master was Antoine Barclay (?). She was a slave woman. She died down there in New Cascogne. That was a good while ago.
"The French were very kind to their slaves. The Americans called all us people that belonged to the Frenchmen free people. They never gave the free Negroes among them any trouble. I mean the Frenchmen didn't give them no trouble.
"The reason we finally left the place after freedom was because of the meanness of a colored woman, Amanda Sanders. I don't know what she had against us. The old mistress raised me right in the house and fed me right at the table. When she died, this woman used to beat the devil out of me. We had had good owners. They never had no overseers until just before the War broke out, and they never beat nobody.
"The first overseer was on a boat named the Quapaw when the mate knocked him in the head and put him in a yawl and took him to the shore. The boss saw it and took four men and went and got him and had the doctor attend to him. It was a year before he could do anything. He didn't stay there long before they had him in the War. He just got to oversee a short time after he got well. He was in the cavalry. The other boys went off later. They took the cavalry first. None of them ever came back. They were lost in the big fight at Vicksburg. My paran, Mark Noble, he was the only one that got back.
"I don't remember my father's father. But I know that his mother went in the name of Rhoda. I don't know her last name. She was my grandma on his side.
"I belonged to a man named Brumbaugh. His first name was Raphael. He was a all right man. He had a colored man for an overseer before this here white man I was tellin' you about came to him. 'Uncle' Jesse was the foreman. He was not my uncle. He was related to my wife though; so I call him uncle now. Of course, I didn't marry till after freedom came. I married in 1875.
Early Days
"When I was a little child, my duty was to clean up the yard and feed the chickens. I cleaned up the yard every Friday.
House, Furniture, and Food
"My mother lived in a cabin—log, two rooms, one window, that is one window in each room.
"They didn't have anything but homemade furniture. We never had no bed bought from the store—nothin' like that. We just had something sticking against the wall. It was built in a corner with one post out. They made their table and used benches—two-legged and sometimes four-legged. The two-legged benches was a long bench with a wide plank at each end for legs.
"For food we got just what the white folks got. We didn't have no quarters. They didn't have enough hands for that. They raised their own meat. They had about seven or eight. There was Dan, Jess, Bill, Steve. They bought Bill and Steve from Kentucky.
"Old 'Free Jack' Jenkins, a colored man, sold them two men to ol' master. Jenkins was the only Negro slave trader I ever knowed. He brought them down one evening and the old man was a long time trading. He made them run and jump and do everything before he would buy them. He paid one thousand five hundred dollars for each one of them. 'Free Jack' made him pay it part in silver and some in gold. He took some Confederate paper. It was circulating then. But he wouldn't take much of that paper money.
"He stole those boys from their parents in Kentucky. The boys said he fooled them away from their homes with candy. Their parents didn't know where they were.
"Then there were my brothers—two of them, John Alexander and William Hamilton. They were half-brothers. That makes six men altogether on the place. I might have made a miscount. There was old man Wash Pearson and his two boys, Joe and Nathan. That made ten persons with myself.
"Brumbaugh didn't have such a large family. I never did know how large it was.
Soldiers
"The rebel soldiers were often at my place. A bad night the jayhawkers would come and steal stock and the slaves too, if they got a chance. They cleaned the old man's stock out one night. The Yankees captured them and brought them back to the house. They gave him his stallion, a great big fine horse. They offered him five thousand dollars for him but he wouldn't take it. They kept all the other horses and mules for their own use, but they gave the stallion back to the old man. If they hadn't give him back the stallion, the old man would have died. That stallion was his heart. The Yankees didn't do nobody no harm.
"When the soldier wagons came down to get the feed, they would take one crib and leave one. They never bothered the smokehouse. They took all the dry cattle to feed the people that were contrabands. But they left the milk cows. The quartermaster for the contrabands was Captain Mallory. The contrabands were mostly slaves that they kept in camps just below Pine Bluff for their own protection.
How Freedom Came
"It was martial law and twelve men went 'round back and forth through the county. They come down on a Monday, and told the children they were free and told them they had no more master and mistress and told them what to call them. No more master and mistress, but Mr. and Mrs. Brumbaugh. Then they came down and told them that they would have to marry over again. But my ma never had a chance to see the old man any more. She didn't marry him over again because he didn't come back to her. But they advised them to stay with their owners if they wanted to. They didn't say for none of the slaves to leave their old masters and go off. We wouldn't have left but that old colored woman beat me around so all the time, so my mother came after me and took me home since I wanted to go. The Yankees' officer told her it would be good to move me from that place so I wouldn't be so badly treated. The white folks was all right; it was that old colored woman that beat on me all the time.
Right After Freedom
"Right after freedom my mother married Bill Cardrelle. She moved from the O'Neil place and went up to a place called the Dr. Jenkins' place. She kept house for her husband in the new place. I didn't do much there of anything. After they moved away from there when I was twelve years old, they taught me to plow (1867). I went to school in the contraband camp. Mrs. Clay and Mr. Clay, white folks from the North, were my teachers. At that time, the colored people weren't able to teach. I went a while to school with them. I got in the second reader—McGuffy's—that's far as I got.
"I stayed with my mother and stepfather till I was about sixteen years old. She sent me away to come up here to my father, Sam Lucas. My oldest brother brought me here and I worked with him two years. Then I went to a man named Cunningham and stayed with him about six months. He paid me fifteen dollars a month and my board. He was going to raise my wages when his wife decided she wanted women to do the work. The women would slip things away and she wouldn't mention them to her husband till weeks afterwards. Then long after the time, she would accuse me. Those women would have the keys. When they went in to get soap, they would take out a ham and carry it off a little ways and hide. By the time his wife would tell him about it, you wouldn't be able to find it nowhere.
"He owed me for a month's work. She told him not to pay it, but he paid it and told me not to let her know he did it. I didn't either.
"When I left him, I came over the river here down here below Fourche Dam. I stayed there forty or fifty years in that place. When I was between thirty-two and thirty-three years old, I married, and I stayed right on in that same place. I farmed all the time down there. I had to go in a lawsuit about the last crop I made. Then I came here to Little Rock in 1904 and followed ditching with the home water company. Then I did gas ditching with the gas people. Then I worked on the street car line for old man White. I come down then—got broke down, and couldn't do much. The relief folks gave me a labor card; then they took it away from me—said I was too old. I have done a heap of work here in this town. I got old and had to stop.
"I get old age assistance from the Welfare. That is where I get my groceries—through them. I wouldn't be able to live if it wasn't for them.
Opinions
"There is a big difference between the young people now and what they used to be. The old folks ain't the same neither."
Interviewer's Comment
Lucas told his story very fluently but with deliberation and care. The statement about his father on the first page was not a slip. He told what he wanted to tell but he discouraged too much effort to go into detail on those matters. One senses a tragedy in his life and in the life of his mother that is poignant and appealing. Although he states no connection, one will not miss the impression that his stepfather was hostile. Suddenly we find his mother sending him to his father. But after he reached his father, there is little to indicate that his father did anything for him. Then, too, it is evident that his father deliberately neglected to remarry his mother after freedom.
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Lizzie Luckado,
Hazen, Ark.
Age: 71
"I was born at Duck Hill, Mississippi. There was three of us children. All dead now but me. My parents was Molly Louden and Jake Porter. One master my parents talked about was Missis Molly and Dr. McCaskill. I don't think my mother was mixed with Indian. Her father was a white man, but my father said he was Indian and African. My father was in the Civil War.
"When the war was coming on they had the servants dig holes, then put rock on bottom, then planks, then put tin and iron vessels with money and silver, then put plank, then rocks and cover with dirt and plant grass on top. Water it to make it grow. They planted it late in the evening. I don't know what become of it.
"When I was eight or nine years old I went to a tent show with Sam and Hun, my brothers. We was under the tents looking at a little Giraffe; a elephant come up behind me and touched me with its snout. I jumped back and run under it between its legs. That night they found me a mile from the tents asleep under some brush. They woke me up hunting me with pine knot torches. I had cried myself to sleep. The show was "Dan Rice and Coles Circus" at Dednen, Mississippi. They wasn't as much afraid of snakes as wild hogs, wolves and bears.
"My mother was cooking at the Ozan Hotel at Sardis, Mississippi. I was a nurse for a lady in town. I took the children to the square sometimes. The first hanging I ever seen was on Court Square. One big crowd collected. The men was not kin, they called it "Nathaniel and DeBonepart" hanging. They was colored folks hung. One killed his mother and the other his father. I never slept a wink for two or three nights, I dream and jump up crying. I finally wore it off. I was a girl and I don't know how old I was. Besides the square full of people, Mrs. Hunter's and Mrs. Boo's yards was full of people.
"We cooked for Capt. Salter at Sardis, Mississippi.
"The first school I went to was to Mrs. J. P. Settles. He taught the big scholars. She sent me to him and he whooped me for singing:
"Cleveland is elected
No more I expected."
I was a grown woman. They didn't want him elected I recken the reason they didn't want to hear it. Nobody liked em teaching but the last I heard of them he was a lawyer in Memphis. If folks learned to read a little that was all they cared about."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: John Luckett
Highway No. 65, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 83
"I was born in Mississippi up above Vicksburg. I 'member the old Civil War but I was just a little boy.
"Oh, I've seen the Yankees in Vicksburg where the battle was.
"I was 'bout ten when freedom come—nothin' but a boy.
"Clara Luckett was my mother. When the War was in Fort Pillow, I was a small boy. I don't know 'bout nothin' else—that's all I know about it.
"I been workin' at these mills ever since surrender. I been firin' for 'em.
"I voted the Republican ticket. I voted for General Grant and Garfield. I was a young man then. I voted for McKinley too. I never did hold no office, I was workin' all the time. I knowed Teddy Roosevelt—I voted for him.
"They wouldn't let me go to school I was so bad. I went one day and whipped the teacher. I didn't try—I whipped him and they 'xpelled me from school.
"Since I been in this country, firin' made me deaf."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: John Lynch,
Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 69
"My mother was a slave of Buck Lynch. They lived close to Nashville, Tennessee. My father run away from Buck Lynch before the Civil War. He lived in the woods till he nearly went wild. My mother fed him at night. I was twenty-one years old before I ever seen him. My mother worked several years and didn't know she was free. She come with some traders from close to Nashville out here. I was born at Cotton Plant. I got two living brothers in Memphis now.
"I was raised a farmer. The first work I ever done away from home was here in Brinkley. I worked at the sawmill fur Gun and Black. Then I went to Ft. Smith and worked in er oil mill. I come back here and farmed frum 1911 till 1915. Then I worked in the Brinkley oil mill. I cooked the cotton seed meal. One of my bosses had me catch a small cup full fur him every once in awhile. The oil taste something like peanut butter. It taste very well while it is hot and smells fine too. I quit work when they quit the mill here. It burned up. I do like the work. They got some crazy notion and won't hire old fellows like me no more. Jobs are hard to get. Younger men can get something seems like pretty easy. I make a garden. That is 'bout all I can do or get to do.
"My mother's name was Molly Lynch. She cooked some at Cotton Plant and worked in the field. She talked a right smart bout the way she had to do in slavery times but I don't recollect much.
Shes been dead a long time. I heard folks say times was awful hard right after the war, that times was easier in slavery for de reason when they got sick they got the best of care. She said they had all kinds of herbs along the side of the walks in the garden. I don't guess after they got settled times was near as hard. She talked about how hard it was to get clothes and something to eat. Prices seemed like riz like they are now.
"I don't know 'bout my father's votin' cause I didn't know him till after I was grown and not much then. He was down about Marianna when I knowed him. I did vote. I vote the Republican ticket. I like the way we voted the best in 1886 or '87. It was called Fair Divide. Each side put his man and the one got most votes got elected. I don't think it necessary fur the women to vote. Her place is in the home. Seem like the women all going to work and the men quit. About 40 years ago R. P. Polk was justice of the peace here and Clay Holt was the constable. They made very good officers. I don't recollect nothing 'bout them being elected. Brinkley is always been a very peaceable town. The colored folks have to go clear away from town with any rowdiness." (The Negroes live among the whites and at their back doors in every part of town.)
"I live with my son-in-law. He works up at the Gazzola Grocery Company. He owns this house. He is doing very well but he works hard.
"The young generation so far as I knows is getting along fairly well. I don't know if times is harder; they is jes' different. When folks do right seems there's a way provided for 'em.
"I signed up with the PWA. I signed up two or three times but they ain't give us nothing much yet. They wouldn't let me work. They said I was too old. I works if I can get any work to do."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Josephine Scott Lynch,
Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 69
"Josephine Scott Lynch is my name and I sho don't know a thing to tell you. I don't remember my father at tall. The first thing I can remember about my mama she was fixing to come to Arkansas. She come as a immigrant. They paid her fare but she had to pay it back. We come on the train to Memphis and on the boat to Gregory Point (Augusta). We left her brother with grandma back in Tennessee. There was three children younger than me. The old folks talked about old times more than they do now but I forgot all she said too much to tell it straight.
"We farmed, cleared land and mama and me washed and ironed and sewed all our lives. I cooked for Mr. Gregory at Augusta for a long time. I married then I cooked and washed and ironed till I got so porely I can't do much no more.
"I never voted and I wouldn't know how so ain't no use to go up there.
"Some of the younger generation is better off than they used to be and some of them not. It depends a whole heap on the way they do. The colored folks tries to do like the white folks far as they's able. Everything is changing so fast. The present conditions is harder for po white folks and colored folks than it been in a long time. Nearly everything is to buy and prices out of sight. Work is so scarce."