Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Leonard Franklin
Temporary: 301 Ridgeway, Little Rock, Arkansas
Permanent: Warren, Arkansas
Age: 70
[HW: Mother Whipped Overseer]
"I don't know exactly the year I was born. But my father told me I was born since the Civil War. I am seventy years old. They always tell me when my birthday come 'round it will be in January—the eighteenth of January.
"My father's name was Abe Franklin and my mother's name was Lucy Franklin. I know my father's mother but I didn't ever know his father. His mother's name was Maria Franklin. My mother's father was Harris Pennington. I never did see her mother and never did see her.
"I was born in Warren, Arkansas. My mother and father were born in Warren. That is on the outer edge of Warren. My mother's slavery farm was on what they called Big Creek. It is named Franklin Creek. Two or three miles of it ran through Franklin's Farm.
"My father's master was Al Franklin. And my mother's master's name was Hill Pennington. One of Hill Pennington's sons was named Fountain Pennington. He lives about five miles from Warren now on the south highway.
"My mother had about three masters before she got free. She was a terrible working woman. Her boss went off deer hunting once for a few weeks. While he was gone, the overseer tried to whip her. She knocked him down and tore his face up so that the doctor had to 'tend to him. When Pennington came back, he noticed his face all patched up and asked him what was the matter with it. The overseer told him that he went down in the field to whip the hands and that he just thought he would hit Lucy a few licks to show the slaves that he was impartial, but she jumped on me and like to tore me up. Old Pennington said to him, 'Well, if that is the best you could do with her, damned if you won't just have to take it.'
"Then they sold her to another man named Jim Bernard. Bernard did a lot of big talk to her one morning. He said, 'Look out there and mind you do what you told around her and step lively. If you don't, you'll get that bull whip.' She said to him, 'Yes, and we'll both be gittin' it.' He had heard about her; so he sold her to another man named Cleary. He was good to her; so she wasn't sold no more after that.