“He! He! He! Look at that black boy passing, will you? Them brichie legs is half way his thighs. He needs to put sugar in his shoes to sweet talk his brichie legs down. And did you notice he didn’t speak to old Aunt Pinkie. Young folks ain’t got no manners these days. Now when I was young back there on that plantation at Hillsboro old Miss Aiken taught all her niggers manners. She would say to us, ‘Now, you all don’ clean your noses, or years, or fingernails before folks; it’s ill manners. And don’ make no ’marks bout folks. Don’ eat onions and go out in company, if you does, eat coffee to kill the taste. Don’t talk with yo’ mouth full of sumpin’ to eat; that ill manners too. Don’ eat too fast cause you is liable to git strangled. And don’ wear yo’ welcome out by staying too long.’
“Ain’t it warm and nice today missy? Jus like a spring day. An see that bee after my flower? Wasn’t it a bee? You know, bees used to swarm in the springtime back on the plantation. The way they would catch em was to ring a bell or beat on a old plow and keep beatin’ and ringin’ till they settled on a tree limb. Then they made a bee gum and covered it and left a hole at the bottom of the gum for them to go in and out, then they sawed the limb off and put the bees in the gum and put some sweetened water made from molasses so they can start to makin’ honey. Sometimes the bees would sting some of us and we would put a little snuff on it and cure it right up.”
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Josephine Howell
Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 72
“My mother was Rebecca Jones. She was born in Nashville, Tennessee. Grandma was a cook and a breeding woman. The Jones thought she was very valuable. They prized her high. She was the mother of twenty-one children. Mother was more than half Indian. She was bright color. The Jones wanted to keep her, thought she would be a fine cook and house woman and a fine breeder. She had such a terrible temper they sold her to McAlways, some of their relations close to Augusta, Arkansas.
“Mama said she was eight years old when Gabe McAlway come to Nashville, Tennessee and got her. He bought her. He was a young man and a saloon-keeper at Augusta, Arkansas. He put her out on the farm at his father’s. She was a field hand. She was part African and a whole lot Indian. She was fractious and high tempered. The old man McAlway and the overseers would drop her clothes down in the field before all the hands and whoop her. Gabe never even slapped her. His aunt Mrs. Jones didn’t want them to put her in the field. She wanted to keep her but couldn’t she was so fractious, and she didn’t know how bad old man treated her.
“When mother was sold she was brought from twenty brothers and her mother and never saw none of them no more. She left them at Wolf River. They took the boat. Wolf River is close to Memphis. They must have brought them that far but I don’t know. This is what all she told me minua and minua time. Her own papa bought her when she was eight years old, Gabe McAlway. When she got to be a young maid he forced motherhood up on her. I was born before freedom. How old I am I don’t know. Gabe McAlway was sort of a young bachelor. He got killed in the Civil War. He was a Scotch-Irishman. I never seen my father.
“Mother married then and had five children. She lived in the back yard of Mrs. Will Thompson. Dr. Goodridge stopped her from having children, she raved wild. She had such a bad fractious temper. She suckled both Mrs. Will Thompson’s children, old man Nathan McGreggor’s grandchildren. She lived in Mrs. Thompson’s back yard but she slept in their house to help with the babies.
“Judge Milwee’s wife and auntie, Mrs. Baxter, raised me from a baby (infant). Judge Milwee was in Brinkley but he moved to Little Rock. Them is my own dear white folks. Honey, I can’t help but love them, they part of me. They raised me. They learned me how to do everything.
“My son live with me and I raising my little great-grandson. We can’t throw him away. My baby’s mother is way off in St. Louis. He is three years old.