“My auntie was a slave and she lived in the edge of the field. Of course I was born a slave but didn’t know much about it because my aunty did the bossing of me but I had a pretty hard time. Our wash tubs, water buckets, bread trays and such were made out of tupelo gum logs dug out with some kind of an axe and when aunty would wash I had to use the battling stick. I would carry the wet clothes to a stump and beat them with that battling stick and we hung the clothes out on bushes and on the fence. We used water from a spring.
“In my young days all we wore was homespun and lowel. We lived in a log house with a dirt floor and the cracks was chinked with mud and our bed was some poles nailed against the wall with two legs out on the dirt floor, and we pulled grass and put in a lowel bed tick. My aunty would get old dresses, old coats, and old pants and make quilts.
“I never went to school a day in my life. No, the back of my head has never rubbed against the walls of a schoolhouse and I never did go to Sunday School and I never did like it. And I didn’t go to church until I was grown and the church that I did attend was called the Iron Jacket Church. Now they call it the Hard Shell Church. I believe in foot washing. I don’t go to church now because there is no Hard Shell church close around here.”
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Henrietta Isom, Biscoe, Arkansas
Age: 81
“I was born in Mississippi. It wasn’t far from Memphis, Tennessee. I heard em talking bout it then. When I first knowed anything we lived way down in Mississippi. It was on a big farm not close to no place much. My ma’s and pa’s master was named Thornton. Seems lack it was Jack and her name was Miss Lucretia. They show did have a big family, little ones on up. I have three sisters and a brother all dead—ma was a farm hand. She left us wid a real old woman—all the little children stayed right wid her. We minded her lack our ma’s. She switch our legs if we didn’t. She carded and sewed about all the time.
“I don’t know much about master and mistress; their house was way over the field. They lived on a hill and had the finest well of water. It was so cold. They had two buckets on a chain to pull it up by. The cabins down closer to the creek. There was two springs one used mostly for washing and the other for house use.
“I don’t know how many cabins they was scattered. He had a lot of hands about all I remembers—on Saturdays we get to go up to the house to fetch back something; some provisions. They tell us if we be good we could go. They done their own cooking. When they work their dinners was sent to the shade trees from white folks house and the childrens was sent too. We would all stand around Miss Rachel (white) when she bring it then we go sit on the steps and eat. We show did have plenty to eat. We wear the dresses new in cold weather then they wear thin for summer. They be lighter in color too when they fade.
“I remember when the white folks left an went to war. They worked on. They had a white man and a colored man boss. When freedom was declared nearly all of them walked off so glad they was free. I don’t know where they all went. My folks went to another big place. We had a hard time. We all farmed. I don’t know what they expected from freedom. Nobody didn’t ask for nuthin. I remembers when some new hands was bought and put on the place. I think they sold em off in town.
“After de war at the church they talked bout if they didn’t get freedom they would clang together for der rights but they never did do nuthin. Times was so hard they had to work harder than before.