“She told me how they used to turn pots down at night so that they could pray. They had big pots then—big enough for you to get into yourself. I’ve seen some of them big old pots and got under ’em myself. You could get under one and pray if you wanted to. You wouldn’t have to prop them up to send your voice in ’em from the outside. The thing that the handle hooks into makes them tilt up on one side so that you could get down on your hands and knees and pray with your mouth close to the opening if you wanted to. Anyway, my grandma said they would turn the pots upside down and stick their heads under them to pray.
“My father could make you cry talking about the way they treated folks in slavery times. He said his old master was so mean that he made him eat off the ground with the dogs. He never felt satisfied unless’n he saw a nigger sufferin’.”
Interviewer’s Comment
Gillie Hill is the daughter of Evelyn Jones already interviewed and reported. The few statements which she hands in make an interesting supplement to her mother’s story. The mother, Evelyn Jones, remembered very few things in her interview and had to be constantly prompted and helped by her daughter and son who were present at each sitting. There was considerable difference of opinion among them over a number of things, especially the age of the mother, the daughter showing letters to prove the age of seventy, the mother saying she had been told she was sixty-eight, and the son arguing that the scattering of the ages of her nineteen children showed that she must be well over eighty.
Gillie Hill claims to be somewhat clairvoyant. She gave a brief analysis of my character, stating accurately my regular calling and a few of my personal traits even indicating roughly my bringing-up and where. She is not a professional fortune-teller, and merely ventured a few statements. My impression was that she was an unusually close and alert observer. Like her mother she is somewhat taciturn. I should have said that her mother was reserved as well as forgetful. The mother never ventured a word except in answer to a question, and used monosyllabic answers whenever possible.
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person Interviewed: Harriett Hill
Forrest City, Ark.
(Visiting at Brinkley, Ark.)
Age: 84
“I was born in Lithonia, Georgia, at the foot of Little Rock Mountain, close to Stone Mountain, Georgia. I been sold in my life twice to my knowing. I was sold away from my dear old mammy at three years old but I can remember it. I remembers it. It lack selling a calf from the cow. Exactly, but we are human beings and ought to be better than do sich. I was too little to remember my price. I was sold to be a nurse maid. They bought me and took me on away that time. The next time they put me up in a wagon and auctioned me off. That time I didn’t sell. John George (white man) was in the war; he wanted some money to hire a substitute to take his place fightin’. So he have Jim George do the sellin’. They was brothers. They talked ’fore me some bit ’fore they took me off. They wouldn’t take me to Atlanta cause they said some of the people there said they wouldn’t give much price—the Negroes soon be set free. Some folks in Atlanta was Yankees and wouldn’t buy slaves. They ’cluded the best market to sell me off would be ten or twelve miles from home. I reckon it was to Augusta, Georgia. They couldn’t sell me and start on back home. A man come up to our wagon and say he’d split the difference. They made the trade. I sold on that spot for $1400. I was nine or ten years old. I remembers it. Course I do! I never could forget it. Now mind you, that was durin’ the war.
“Master Jake Chup owned mammy and me too. He sold me to John George. Jim George sold me to Sam Broadnax. When freedom come on that was my home. Freedom come in the spring. He got some of the slaves to stay to finish up the crops for 1/10 at Christmas. When they got through dividin’ up they said they goin’ to keep me for a bounty. I been talkin’ to Kitty—all I remembers her name Kitty. She been down there at the stream washin’. Some children come told me Kitty say come on. She hung out the clothes. I lit out over the fence and through the field with Kitty and went to Conniars. She left me at the railroad track and went on down the road by myself to Lithonia. I walked all night. I met my brother not long after Kitty left me. He was on a wagon. He knowed me and took me up with him to Mr. Jake Chup’s Jr. He was the young man. Then Chups fed me till he come back and took me to mammy. Master Chups sold her to Dr. Reygans. I hadn’t seen her since I was three years old. She knowed me. My brother knowed me soon as ever he saw me. I might a not knowed them in a gatherin’ but I hadn’t forgot them. They hear back and forth where I be but they never could get to see me. I lived with my folks till I married.
“The first man I lived with ten years. The next one I lived with fifty years and some days over. He died. They both died. The man I married was a preacher. We farmed long with his preachin’. We paid $500.00 for forty acres of this bottom land. Cleared it out. I broke myself plum down and it got mortgaged. The Planters Bank at Forrest City took it over. I ain’t had nothin’ since. I ain’t got no home. I ain’t had nothin’ since then. My husband died two years ago and I has a hard time.