“After freedom grandpa named himself Spencer Scott. He buried his money. He made a truck garden and had patches in slavery both in South Carolina and at Magnolia. He told me he had rusty dollars never been turned over since they made him came here. He left some money buried back there. We found his money on his place at Magnolia when he died. He tole us where it was.
“One night he was going across a bridge and taking a sack of melons to Magnolia to sell in slavery times. A bear met him. He jumped at the bear and said ‘boo’. The bear growled and run on its way. He said he was so scared he was stiff. They let them work some patches at night and sell some things to make a little money. The ole master give them some money if they went to the city. That was about twice a year papa said. He never seen a city till years after freedom. His pa and grandpa got to go every now and then. Magnolia was no city in them days.
“It is hard to raise children in this day and time. When I went on the Betzner place (near Biscoe, Arkansas) my son was eight years old. He growed up along side Brooks (Betzner). I purt nigh talked my tongue out of my head and Brooks’ (white boy) mother did the same thing. Every year when we would lay by, me and my husband (white Negro) would go on a camp. Brooks would ask me if he could go. We took the two of them. (The Hawkens boy is said to be a dark mulatto—ed.) He’s a smart boy, a good farmer down in Lee County now. He married when he was nineteen years old. It is hard to raise a boy now. There is boxing and prize fighting and pool halls and that’s not right! Times are not improving as I can see in that way. Worse than I have ever seen them.”
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Becky Hawkins
717 Louisiana Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 75
“Yes’m, I was born in slave times but my mammy was sucklin’ me. Don’t know much bout slavery but just come up free.
“My mammy’s old master was Calvin Goodloe in Alabama, Pulaski County, near Tuscumbia. I heered my uncle say old master favored his niggers.
“Mammy told me bout em gettin’ whippin’s, but she never let the overseer whip her—she’d go to old master.
“My grandmama’s hair was straight but she was black. She was mixed Indian. My mammy’s father was Indian and she say he fought in the Revolution. She had his pistol and rocks. When he died he was the oldest man around there.
“I tell you what I remember. I ’member my mammy had a son named Enoch and he nussed me in slave days when mammy was workin’ in the field. They didn’t low em to go to the house but three times a day—that was the women what had babies. But I was so sickly mammy had Enoch bring me to the fence so she could suckle me.