Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States
by
Work Projects Administration
Part 1 out of 6
Produced by PG Distributed Proofreaders. Produced from images provided
by the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division.
[TR: ***] = Transcriber Note
[HW: ***] = Handwritten Note
[Illustration: Old Slave]
SLAVE NARRATIVES
A Folk History of Slavery in the United States
From Interviews with Former Slaves
TYPEWRITTEN RECORDS PREPARED BY
THE FEDERAL WRITERS' PROJECT,
1936-1938
ASSEMBLED BY
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS PROJECT
WORK PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
SPONSORED BY THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Illustrated with Photographs
WASHINGTON 1941
VOLUME II
ARKANSAS NARRATIVES
PART I
Prepared by
the Federal Writers' Project of
the Works Progress Administration
for the State of Arkansas
INFORMANTS
Abbott, Silas
Abernathy, Lucian
Abromsom, Laura
Adeline, Aunt
Adway, Rose
Aiken, Liddie
Aldridge, Mattie
Alexander, Amsy O.
Alexander, Diana
Alexander, Fannie
Alexander, Lucretia
Allen, Ed
Allison, Lucindy
Ames, Josephine
Anderson, Charles
Anderson, Nancy
Anderson, R.B.
Anderson, Sarah
Anderson, Selie
Anderson, W.A.
Anthony, Henry
Arbery, Katie
Armstrong, Campbell
Armstrong, Cora
Baccus, Lillie
Badgett, Joseph Samuel
Bailey, Jeff
Baker, James
Baltimore, William
Banks, Mose
Banner, Henry
Barnett, John W.H.
Barnett, Josephine Ann
Barnett, Lizzie
Barnett, Spencer
Barr, Emma
Barr, Robert
Bass, Matilda
Beal, Emmett
Beard, Dina
Beck, Annie
Beckwith, J.H.
Beel, Enoch
Belle, Sophie D.
Bellus, Cyrus
Benford, Bob
Bennet, Carrie Bradley Logan
Benson, George
Benton, Kato
Bertrand, James
Biggs, Alice
Billings, Mandy
Birch, Jane
Black, Beatrice
Blackwell, Boston
Blake, Henry
Blakeley, Adeline
Bobo, Vera Roy
Boechus, Liddie
Bond, Maggie (Bunny)
Bonds, Caroline
Boone, Rev. Frank T.
Boone, J.F.
Boone, Jonas
Bowdry, John
Boyd, Jack
Boyd, Mal
Braddox, George
Bradley, Edward
Bradley, Rachel
Brannon, Elizabeth
Brantley, Mack
Brass, Ellen
Bratton, Alice
Briles, Frank
Brooks, Mary Ann
Brooks, Waters
Brown, Casie Jones
Brown, Elcie
Brown, F.H.
Brown, George
Brown, J.N.
Brown, Lewis
Brown, Lewis
Brown, Mag
Brown, Mary
Brown, Mattie
Brown, Molly
Brown, Peter
Brown, William
Brown, William
Broyles, Maggie
Bryant, Ida
Buntin, Belle
Burgess, Jeff
Burkes, Norman
Burks, Sr., Will
Burris, Adeline
Butler, Jennie
Byrd, E.L.
Byrd, Emmett Augusta
ILLUSTRATIONS
Old Slave _Frontispiece_
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person Interviewed: Silas Abbott
R.F.D.
Brinkley, Ark.
Age: 73
"I was born in Chickashaw County, Mississippi. Ely Abbott and Maggie
Abbott was our owners. They had three girls and two boys--Eddie and
Johnny. We played together till I was grown. I loved em like if they was
brothers. Papa and Mos Ely went to war together in a two-horse top
buggy. They both come back when they got through.
"There was eight of us children and none was sold, none give way. My
parents name Peter and Mahaley Abbott. My father never was sold but my
mother was sold into this Abbott family for a house girl. She cooked and
washed and ironed. No'm, she wasn't a wet nurse, but she tended to Eddie
and Johnny and me all alike. She whoop them when they needed, and Miss
Maggie whoop me. That the way we grow'd up. Mos Ely was 'ceptionly good
I recken. No'm, I never heard of him drinkin' whiskey. They made cider
and 'simmon beer every year.
"Grandpa was a soldier in the war. He fought in a battle. I don't know
the battle. He wasn't hurt. He come home and told us how awful it was.
"My parents stayed on at Mos Ely's and my uncle's family stayed on. He
give my uncle a home and twenty acres of ground and my parents same
mount to run a gin. I drove two mules, my brother drove two and we drove
two more between us and run the gin. My auntie seen somebody go in the
gin one night but didn't think bout them settin' it on fire. They had a
torch, I recken, in there. All I knowed, it burned up and Mos Ely had to
take our land back and sell it to pay for four or five hundred bales of
cotton got burned up that time. We stayed on and sharecropped with him.
We lived between Egypt and Okolona, Mississippi. Aberdeen was our
tradin' point.
"I come to Arkansas railroading. I railroaded forty years. Worked on the
section, then I belong to the extra gang. I help build this railroad to
Memphis.
"I did own a home but I got in debt and had to sell it and let my money
go.
"Times is so changed and the young folks different. They won't work only
nough to get by and they want you to give em all you got. They take it
if they can. Nobody got time to work. I think times is worse than they
ever been, cause folks hate to work so bad. I'm talking bout hard work,
field work. Jobs young folks want is scarce; jobs they could get they
don't want. They want to run about and fool around an get by.
"I get $8.00 and provisions from the government."
Interviewer: Watt McKinney
Person interviewed: Lucian Abernathy, Marvell, Arkansas
Age: 85
"I was borned in de 'streme norf part of Mississippi nigh de Tennessee
line. You mought say dat it was 'bout straddle of de state line and it
wasn't no great piece from where us libed to Moscow what was de station
on de ole Memfis en Charston Railroad. My white folks was de Abernathys.
You neber do hear 'bout many folks wid dat name these times, leastwise
not ober in dis state, but dere sure used to be heap of dem Abernathys
back home where I libed and I spect dat mebbe some dere yit en cose it's
bound to be some of the young uns lef' dar still, but de ole uns, Mars
Luch en dem, dey is all gone.
"Mars Luch, he was my young boss. Though he name was Lucian us all
called him Luch and dat was who I is named for. Ole mars, he was name
Will and dat was Mars Luch's pa and my ole miss, she name Miss Cynthia
and young miss, her name Miss Ellen. Ole mars an' ole miss, dey just had
de two chillun, Mars Luch and Miss Ellen; dat is what libed to be grown.
Mars Luch, he 'bout two year older dan me and Miss Ellen, she 'bout two
year older dan Mars Luch. Miss Ellen, she married er gentman from
Virginny and went dar to lib and Mars Luch, he married Miss Fannie
Keith.
"Miss Fannie's folks, dey libed right nigh us on to 'j'ining place and
dem was my ole man's peoples. Yas sah, boss, dat ole man you see settin'
right dar now in dat chere. She was Ella Keith, dats zackly what her
named when us married and she named fer Miss Fannie's ma. Dat she was.
Us neber did leave our folkses eben atter de War ober and de niggers git
dey freedom, yit an' still a heap of de niggers did leave dey mars' and
a heap of dem didn' an' us stayed on an farmed de lan' jus' like us been
doin' 'cept dey gib us a contract for part de crop an' sell us our grub
'gainst us part of de crop and take dey money outen us part of de cotton
in de fall just like de bizness is done yit and I reckon dat was de
startin' of de sharecrop dat is still goin' on.
"Soon atter Mars Luch good and grown an' him an' Miss Fannie done
married, ole mars and ole miss, dey bofe died and Mars Luch say he gwine
sell out an' lebe 'cause de lan' gittin' so poor and wore out and it
takin' three an' more acres to make a bale and he tell us all dat when
we wind up de crop dat fall and say, 'You boys mebbe can stay on wid
whoever I sell out to er if not den you can fin' you homes wid some one
close if you wants to do dat.' And den he says dat he gwine fin' him
some good lan' mebbe in Arkansas down de riber from Memfis. Mighty nigh
all de ole famblys lef' de place when Mars Luch sole it out.
"My pappy and my mammy, dey went to Memfis and me wid 'em. I was growed
by den and was fixin' to marry Ella just es soon es I could fin' a good
home. I was a country nigger en liked de farm an' en cose wasn't
satisfied in town, so 'twasn't long 'fore I heered 'bout han's beein'
needed down de riber in Mississippi and dats where I went en stayed for
two years and boss, I sure was struck wid dat lan' what you could make a
bale to a acre on an' I just knowed dat I was gwine git rich in a hurry
an' so I writ er letter to Ella en her peoples tellin' dem 'bout de rich
lan' and 'vising dem to come down dere where I was and I was wantin' to
marry Ella den. Boss, and you know what, 'twasn't long afore I gits er
letter back an' de letter says dat Ella an' her peoples is down de riber
in Arkansas from Memfis at Bledsoe wid Mars Luch an' Miss Fannie where
Mars Luch had done moved him an' Miss Fannie to a big plantation dey had
bought down dere.
"Dat was a funny thing how dat happened an' Bledsoe, it was right 'cross
de riber from where I was en had been for two years an' just soon es I
git dat letter I 'range wid a nigger to take me 'cross da riber in er
skift to de plantation where dey all was and 'bout fust folkses dat I
see is Ella an' her peoples en lots of de famblys from de ole home place
back in Tennessee an' I sure was proud to see Mars Luch en Miss Fannie.
Dey had built demselves a fine house at a p'int dat was sorter like a
knoll where de water don' git when de riber come out on de lan' in case
of oberflow and up de rode 'bout half mile from de house, Mars Luch had
de store en de gin. Dey had de boys den, dat is Mars Luch and Miss
Fannie did, and de boys was named Claude an' Clarence atter Miss
Fannie's two brudders.
"Dem was de finest boys dat one ever did see. At dat time Claude, he
'bout two year old and Clarence, he 'bout four er mebbe little less.
Ella, she worked in da house cooking for Miss Fannie an' nussin' de
chillun and she plumb crazy 'bout de chillun an' dey just as satisfied
wid her as dey was wid dere mama and Ella thought more dem chillun dan
she did anybody. She just crazy 'bout dem boys. Mars Luch, he gibe me
job right 'way sort flunkying for him and hostling at de lot an' barn
and 'twasn't long den 'fore Ella and me, us git married an' libs in a
cabin dat Mars Luch had built in de back of de big house.
"Us git 'long fine for more dan a year and Mars Luch, he raise plenty
cotton an' at times us ud take trip up to Memfis on de boat, on de Phil
Allin what was 'bout de fineist boat on de riber in dem days and de one
dat most frequent put in at us landin' wid de freight for Mars Luch and
den he most ginally sont he cotton an' seed to Memfis on dis same Phil
Allin.
"I jus' said, boss, dat us git 'long fine for more dan a year and us all
mighty happy till Miss Fannie took sick an' died an' it mighty nigh
killed Mars Luch and all of us and Mars Luch, he jus' droop for weeks
till us git anxious 'bout him but atter while he git better and seam
like mebbe he gwine git ober he sadness but he neber was like he used to
be afore Miss Fannie died.
"Atter Miss Fannie gone, Mars Luch, he say, 'Ella, you an' Luch mus'
mobe in de big house an' make you a bed in de room where de boys sleep,
so's you can look atter 'em good, 'cause lots nights I gwine be out late
at de gin an' store an' I knows you gwine take plumb good care of dem
chillun.' An' so us fixed us bed in de big house an' de boys, dey
sleeped right dar in dat room on dere bed where us could take care of
'em.
"Dat went on for 'bout two years an' den Mars Luch, he 'gun to get in
bad health an' jus' wasted down like and den one night when he at de
store he took down bad and dey laid him down on de bed in de back room
where he would sleep on sich nights dat he didn' come home when he was
so busy an' he sont a nigger on a mule for me to come up dar an' I went
in he room an' Mars Luch, he say, 'Lissen, Luch, you is been a good
faithful nigger an' Ella too, an' I is gonna die tonight and I wants you
to send er letter to Miss Ellen in Virginny atter I is daid en tell her
to come an' git de boys 'cause she is all de kin peoples dat dey habe
lef' now cepn cose you an' Ella an' it mought be some time afore she
gits here so you all take good en faithful care dem till she 'rives an'
tell her she habe to see dat all de bizness wind up and take de boys
back wid her an' keep dem till dey is growed,'
"Well, boss, us done jus' like Mars Luch tell us to do an' us sure feel
sorry for dem two little boys. Dey jus' 'bout five an' seben year old
den and day sure loved dere pa; day was plumb crazy 'bout Mars Luch and
him 'bout dem too.
"'Bout two weeks from time dat Mars Luch daid, Miss Ellen come on de
boat one night an' she stayed some days windin' up de bizness and den
she lef' an' take de boys 'way wid her back to Virginny where she libed.
Us sure did hate to 'part from dem chillun. Dat's been nigh on to sixty
years ago but us neber forgit dem boys an' us will allus lobe dem. Dey
used to sen' us presents an' sich every Christmas for seberal years and
den us started movin' 'bout an' I reckon dey don' know where we's at
now. I sure would like to see dem boys ag'in. I betcha I'd know dem
right today. Mebbe I wouldn't, it's been so long since I seen 'em; but
shucks, I know dat dey would know me."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Laura Abromsom, R.F.D., Holly Grove, Arkansas
Receives mail at Clarendon, Arkansas
Age: 74
"My mama was named Eloise Rogers. She was born in Missouri. She was sold
and brought to three or four miles from Brownsville, Tennessee. Alex
Rogers bought her and my papa. She had been a house girl and well cared
for. She never got in contact wid her folks no more after she was sold.
She was a dark woman. Papa was a ginger cake colored man. Mama talked
like Alex Rogers had four or five hundred acres of land and lots of
niggers to work it. She said he had a cotton factory at Brownsville.
"Mistress Barbara Ann was his wife. They had two boys and three girls.
One boy George went plumb crazy and outlived 'em all. The other boy died
early. Alex Rogers got my papa in Richmond, Virginia. He was took outer
a gang. We had a big family. I have eight sisters and one brother.
"Pa say they strop 'em down at the carriage house and give 'em five
hundred lashes. He say they have salt and black pepper mixed up in er
old bucket and put it all on flesh cut up with a rag tied on a stick
(mop). Alex Rogers had a nigger to put it on the place they whooped. The
Lord puts up wid such wrong doings and den he comes and rectifies it. He
does that very way.
"Pa say they started to whoop him at the gin house. He was a sorter
favorite. He cut up about it. That didn't make no difference 'bout it.
Somehow they scared him up but he didn't git whooped thater time.
"They fed good on Alex Rogers' place. They'd buy a barrel of coffee, a
barrel molasses, a barrel sugar. Some great big barrels.
"Alex Rogers wasn't a good man. He'd tell them to steal a hog and git
home wid it. If they ketch you over there they'll whoop you. He'd help
eat hogs they'd steal.
"One time papa was working on the roads. The neighbor man and road man
was fixing up their eating. He purty nigh starved on that road work. He
was hired out.
"Mama and papa spoke like they was mighty glad to get sat free. Some
believed they'd git freedom and others didn't. They had places they met
and prayed for freedom. They stole out in some of their houses and
turned a washpot down at the door. Another white man, not Alex Rogers,
tole mama and papa and a heap others out in the field working. She say
they quit and had a regular bawl in the field. They cried and laughed
and hollered and danced. Lot of them run offen the place soon as the man
tole 'em. My folks stayed that year and another year.
"What is I been doing? Ast me is I been doing? What ain't I been doing
be more like it. I raised fifteen of my own children. I got four living.
I living wid one right here in dis house wid me now. I worked on the
farm purty nigh all my life. I come to dis place. Wild, honey, it was! I
come in 1901. Heap of changes since then.
"Present times--Not as much union 'mongst young black and white as the
old black and white. They growing apart. Nobody got nothin' to give. No
work. I used to could buy second-handed clothes to do my little children
a year for a little or nothin'. Won't sell 'em now nor give 'em 'way
neither. They don't work hard as they used to. They say they don't git
nothin' outen it. They don't want to work. Times harder in winter 'cause
it cold and things to eat killed out. I cans meat. We dry beef. In town
this Nickellodian playing wild wid young colored folks--these Sea Bird
music boxes. They play all kind things. Folks used to stay home Saturday
nights. Too much running 'round, excitement, wickedness in the world
now. This generation is worst one. They trying to cut the Big Apple
dance when we old folks used to be down singing and praying, 'Cause dis
is a wicked age times is bad and hard."
Interviewer's Comment
Mulatto, clean, intelligent.
Interviewer: Mrs. Zillah Cross Peel
Person interviewed: "Aunt Adeline" Age: 89
Home: 101 Rock Street, Fayetteville, Arkansas
"I was born a slave about 1848, in Hickmon County, Tennessee," said Aunt
Adeline who lives as care taker in a house at 101 Rock Street,
Fayetteville, Arkansas, which is owned by the Blakely-Hudgens estate.
Aunt Adeline has been a slave and a servant in five generations of the
Parks family. Her mother, Liza, with a group of five Negroes, was sold
into slavery to John P.A. Parks, in Tennessee, about 1840.
"When my mother's master come to Arkansas about 1849, looking for a
country residence, he bought what was known as the old Kidd place on the
Old Wire Road, which was one of the Stage Coach stops. I was about one
year old when we came. We had a big house and many times passengers
would stay several days and wait for the next stage to come by. It was
then that I earned my first money. I must have been about six or seven
years old. One of Mr. Parks' daughters was about one and a half years
older than I was. We had a play house back of the fireplace chimney. We
didn't have many toys; maybe a doll made of a corn cob, with a dress
made from scraps and a head made from a roll of scraps. We were playing
church. Miss Fannie was the preacher and I was the audience. We were
singing "Jesus my all to Heaven is gone." When we were half way through
with our song we discovered that the passengers from the stage coach had
stopped to listen. We were so frightened at our audience that we both
ran. But we were coaxed to come back for a dime and sing our song over.
I remember that Miss Fannie used a big leaf for a book.
"I had always been told from the time I was a small child that I was a
Negro of African stock. That it was no disgrace to be a Negro and had it
not been for the white folks who brought us over here from Africa as
slaves, we would never have been here and would have been much better
off.
"We colored folks were not allowed to be taught to read or write. It was
against the law. My master's folks always treated me well. I had good
clothes. Sometimes I was whipped for things I should not have done just
as the white children were.
"When a young girl was married her parents would always give her a
slave. I was given by my master to his daughter, Miss Elizabeth, who
married Mr. Blakely. I was just five years old. She moved into a new
home at Fayetteville and I was taken along but she soon sent me back
home to my master telling him that I was too little and not enough help
to her. So I went back to the Parks home and stayed until I was over
seven years old. [1]My master made a bill of sale for me to his
daughter, in order to keep account of all settlements, so when he died
and the estate settled each child would know how he stood.
"I was about 15 years old when the Civil War ended and was still living
with Mrs. Blakely and helped care for her little children. Her daughter,
Miss Lenora, later married H.M. Hudgens, and I then went to live with
her and cared for her children. When her daughter Miss Helen married
Professor Wiggins, I took care of her little daughter, and this made
five generations that I have cared for.
"During the Civil War, Mr. Parks took all his slaves and all of his fine
stock, horses and cattle and went South to Louisiana following the
Southern army for protection. Many slave owners left the county taking
with them their slaves and followed the army.
"When the war was over, Mr. Parks was still in the South and gave to
each one of his slaves who did not want to come back to Arkansas so much
money. My uncle George came back with Mr. Parks and was given a good
mountain farm of forty acres, which he put in cultivation and one of my
uncle's descendants still lives on the place. My mother did not return
to Arkansas but went on to Joplin, Missouri, and for more than fifty
years, neither one of us knew where the other one was until one day a
man from Fayetteville went into a restaurant in Joplin and ordered his
breakfast, and my mother who was in there heard him say he lived in
Fayetteville, Arkansas. He lived just below the Hudgens home and when my
mother enquired about the family he told her I was still alive and was
with the family. While neither of us could read nor write we
corresponded through different people. But I never saw her after I was
eleven years old. Later Mr. Hudgens went to Joplin to see if she was
well taken care of. She owned her own little place and when she died
there was enough money for her to be buried.
"Civil War days are vivid to me. The Courthouse which was then in the
middle of the Square was burned one night by a crazy Confederate
soldier. The old men in the town saved him and then put him in the
county jail to keep him from burning other houses. Each family was to
take food to him and they furnished bedding. The morning I was to take
his breakfast, he had ripped open his feather bed and crawled inside to
get warm. The room was so full of feathers when I got there that his
food nearly choked him. I had carried him ham, hot biscuits and a pot of
coffee.
"After the War many soldiers came to my mistress, Mrs. Blakely, trying
to make her free me. I told them I was free but I did not want to go
anywhere, that I wanted to stay in the only home that I had ever known.
In a way that placed me in a wrong attitude. I was pointed out as
different. Sometimes I was threatened for not leaving but I stayed on.
"I had always been well treated by my master's folks. While we lived at
the old Kidd place, there was a church a few miles from our home. My
uncle George was coachman and drove my master's family in great splendor
in a fine barouche to church. After the war, when he went to his own
place, Mr. Parks gave him the old carriage and bought a new one for the
family.
"I can remember the days of slavery as happy ones. We always had an
abundance of food. Old Aunt Martha cooked and there was always plenty
prepared for all the white folks as well as the colored folks. There was
a long table at the end of the big kitchen for the colored folks. The
vegetables were all prepared of an evening by Aunt Martha with someone
to help her.
"My mother seemed to have a gift of telling fortunes. She had a brass
ring about the size of a dollar with a handwoven knotted string that she
used. I remember that she told many of the young people in the
neighborhood many strange things. They would come to her with their
premonitions.
"Yes, we were afraid of the patyroles. All colored folks were. They said
that any Negroes that were caught away from their master's premises
without a permit would be whipped by the patyroles. They used to sing a
song:
'Run nigger run,
The patyroles
Will get you.'
"Yes'm, the War separated lots of families. Mr. Parks' son, John C.
Parks, enlisted in Colonel W.H. Brooks' regiment at Fayetteville as
third lieutenant. Mr. Jim Parks was killed at the Battle of Getysburg.
"I do remember it was my mistress, Mrs. Blakely, who kept the Masonic
Building from being burned. The soldiers came to set it on fire. Mrs.
Blakely knew that if it burned, our home would burn as it was just
across the street. Mrs. Blakely had two small children who were very ill
in upstairs rooms. She told the soldiers if they burned the Masonic
Building that her house would burn and she would be unable to save her
little children. They went away."
While Aunt Adeline is nearing ninety, she is still active, goes shopping
and also tends to the many crepe myrtle bushes as well as many other
flowers at the Hudgens place.
She attends to the renting of the apartment house, as caretaker, and is
taken care of by members of the Blakely-Hudgens families.
Aunt Adeline talks "white folks language," as they say, and seldom
associates with the colored people of the town.
[Footnote 1: This statement can be verified by the will made by John
P.A. Parks, and filed in Probate Court in the clerk's office in
Washington County.]
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Rose Adway
405 W. Pullen, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 76
"I was born three years 'fore surrender. That's what my people told me.
Born in Mississippi. Let me see what county I come out of. Smith
County--that's where I was bred and born.
"I know I seen the Yankees but I didn't know what they was. My mama and
papa and all of 'em talked about the War.
"My papa was a water toter in durin' the War. No, he didn't serve the
army--just on the farm.
"Mama was the cook for her missis in slavery times.
"I think my folks went off after freedom and then come back. That was
after they had done been sot free. I can remember dat all right.
"I registered down here at the Welfare and I had to git my license from
Mississippi and I didn't remember which courthouse I got my license, but
I sent letters over there till I got it up. I got all my papers now, but
I ain't never got no pension.
"I been through so much I can't git much in my remembrance, but I was
_here_--that ain't no joke--I _been_ here.
"My folks said their owners was all right. You know they was 'cause they
come back. I remember dat all right.
"I been farmin' till I got disabled. After I married I went to farmin'.
And I birthed fourteen head of chillun by dat one man! Fourteen head by
dat one man! Stayed at home and took care of 'em till I got 'em up some
size, too. All dead but five out of the fourteen head.
"My missis' name was Miss Catherine and her husband named Abe Carr.
"I went to school a little bit--mighty little. I could read but I never
could write.
"And I'm about to go blind in my old age. I need help and I need it bad.
Chillun ain't able to help me none 'cept give me a little bread and give
me some medicine once in a while. But I'm thankful to the Lord I can get
outdoors.
"I don't know what to think of this young race. That baby there knows
more than I do now, nearly. Back there when I was born, I didn't know
nothin'.
"I know they said it was bad luck to bring a hoe or a ax in the house on
your shoulder. I heard the old folks tell dat--sure did.
"And I was told dat on old Christmas night the cows gets down on their
knees and gives thanks to the Lord.
"I 'member one song:
'I am climbin' Jacob's ladder
I am climbin' Jacob's ladder
I am climbin' Jacob's ladder
For the work is almost done.
'Every round goes higher and higher
Every round goes higher and higher
Every round goes higher and higher
For my work is almost done.
'Sister, now don't you get worried
Sister, now don't you get worried
Sister, now don't you get worried
For the work is almost done.'
My mother used to sing dat when she was spinnin' and cardin'. They'd
spin and dye the thread with some kind of indigo. Oh, I 'member dat all
right."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Liddie Aiken, Wheatley, Arkansas
Age: 62
"My mother was born in southwest Georgia close to the Alabama line. Her
mother come from Virginia. She was sold with her mother and two little
brothers. Her mother had been sold and come in a wagon to southwest
Georgia. They was all field hands. They cleaned out new ground. They was
afraid of hoop-snakes. She said they look like a hoop rolling and
whatever they stuck a horn or their tail in it died. They killed trees.
"Mama said she druther plough than chop. She was a big woman and they
let her plough right along by her two little brothers, Henry and Will
Keller. Will et so many sweet potatoes they called him 'Tater Keller.'
After he got grown we come out here. Folks called him 'Tate Keller.'
Henry died. I recollect Uncle Tate.
"I was born close to Mobile, Alabama. Mama was named Sarah Keller.
Grandma was called Mariah. Banks Tillman sold her the first time. Bill
Keller bought them all the last time. His wife was named Ada Keller.
They had a great big family but I forgot what they said about them. Mack
clem up in a persimmon tree one day and the old man hollered at him,
'Get out of that tree 'fore you fall.' 'Bout then the boy turned 'loose
and fell. It knocked the breath out him. It didn't kill him. Three or
four of Miss Ada's children died with congestive chills. Mama said the
reason they had them chills they played down at the gin pond all the
time. It was shady and a pretty place and they was allowed to play in
the pond. Three or four of them died nearly in a heap.
"One of the boys had a pet billy-goat. It got up on top mama's house one
time. It would bleat and look down at them. They was afraid it would
jump down on them if they went out. It chewed up things Aunt Beanie
washed. She had them put out on bushes and might had a line too. They
fattened it and killed it. Mama said Mr. Bill Keller never had nothing
too good to divide with his niggers. I reckon by that they got some of
the goat.
"They lived like we live now. Every family done his own cooking. I don't
know how many families lived on the place.
"I know about the Yankees. They come by and every one of the men and
boys went with them but Uncle Cal. He was cripple and they advised him
not to start. Didn't none of the women go. Mama said she never seen but
one ever come back. She thought they got killed or went on some place
else.
"Mr. Keller died and Miss Ada went back to her folks. They left
everything in our care that they didn't move. She took all her house
things. They sold or took all their stock. They left us a few cows and
pigs. I don't know how long they stayed after the old man died. His
children was young; he might not been so old.
"I recollect grandma. She smoked a pipe nearly all the time. My papa was
a livery stable man. He was a fine man with stock. He was a little black
man. Mama was too big. Grandma was taller but she was slick black. He
lived at Mobile, Alabama. I was the onliest child mama had. Uncle 'Tate
Keller' took grandma and mama to Mobile. He never went to the War. He
was a good carpenter and he worked out when he didn't have a lot to do
in the field. He was off at work when all the black men and boys left
Mr. Bill. He never went back after they left till freedom.
"They didn't know when freedom took place. They was all scattering for
two years about to get work and something to eat. Tate come and got
them. They went off in a wagon that Tate made for his master, Bill
Keller. We come to Tupelo, Mississippi from Mobile when I was a little
bit of a girl. Then we made one crop and come to Helena. Uncle Tate died
there and mama died at Crocketts Bluff. My papa died back in Mobile,
Alabama. He was breaking a young horse and got throwed up side a tree.
He didn't live long then.
"I got three boys now and I had seben--all boys. They farms and do
public work. Tom is in Memphis. Pete is in Helena and I live wid Macon
between here (Wheatley) and Cotton Plant. We farm. I done everything
could be thought of on a farm. I ploughed some less than five year ago.
I liked to plough. My boy ploughs all he can now and we do the chopping.
We all pick cotton and get in the corn. We work day laborers now.
"If I was young the times wouldn't stand in my way. I could make it. I
don't know what is the trouble lessen some wants too much. They can't
get it. We has a living and thankful for it. I never 'plied for no help
yet.
"I still knits my winter stockings. I got knitting needles and cards my
own mother had and used. I got use for them. I wears clothes on my body
in cold weather. One reason you young folks ain't no 'count you don't
wear enough clothes when it is cold. I wear flannel clothes if I can get
holt of them.
"Education done ruint the world. I learnt to read a little. I never went
to school. I learnt to work. I learnt my boys to go with me to the field
and not to be ashamed to sweat. It's healthy. They all works."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person Interviewed: Mattie Aldridge
Age: 60? Hazen, Arkansas
"My mother's old owner named Master Sanders. She born somewhere in
Tennessee. I heard her say she lived in Mississippi. I was born in
Tennessee. My pa was born in Mississippi. I know he belong to the
Duncans. His name George Washington Duncan. There ain't nary drap white
blood in none us. I got four brothers. I do remembers grandma. She set
and tell us tales bout old times like you want to know. Been so long I
forgotten. Ma was a house girl and pa a field hand. Way grandma talked
it must of been hard to find out what white folks wanted em to do, cause
she couldn't tell what you say some times. She never did talk plain.
"They was glad when freedom declared. They said they was hard on em.
Whoop em. Pa was killed in Crittenden County in Arkansas. He was
clearin' new ground. A storm come up and a limb hit him. It killed him.
Grandma and ma allus say like if you build a house you want to put all
the winders in you ever goin' to want. It bad luck to cut in and put in
nother one. Sign of a death. I ain't got no business tellin' you bout
that. White folks don't believe in signs.
"I been raisin' up childern--'dopted childern, washin', ironin',
scourin', hoein', gatherin' corn, pickin' cotton, patchin', cookin'.
They ain't nothin' what I ain't done.
"No'm, I sure ain't voted. I don't believe in women votin'. They don't
know who to vote for. The men don't know neither. If folks visited they
would care more bout the other an wouldn't be so much devilment goin'
on."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor.
Person Interviewed: Amsy O. Alexander
2422 Center Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 74
[HW: Helps Build Railroad]
"I was born in the country several miles from Charlotte in Macklenberg,
County, North Carolina in 1864.
"My father's name was John Alexander and my mother was Esther McColley.
That was her maiden name of course.
"My father's master was named Silas Alexander and my mother belonged to
Hugh Reed. I don't know just how she and my father happened to meet.
These two slaveholders were adjoining neighbors, you might say.
"My father and my mother married during the war. I was the first child.
I had three half brothers and three half sisters from the father's side.
I didn't have no whole brothers and sisters. I am the only one on my
mother's side. My father was not in the war.
"I don't know that the pateroles bothered him very much. My father and
mother were well treated by our master and then both she and my father
were quiet and their masters were good to them naturally.
"During slavery times, my father was a farmer. My mother farmed too. She
was a hand in the field. They lived in a little log cabin, one room.
They had a bed in there, a few chairs and a homemade table. They had a
plank floor. I only know what I heard my people speak of. I don't know
what was what for myself because I was too young.
"From what I can understand they had a big room at the house and the
slaves came there and ate there. They had a colored woman who prepared
their meals. The children mostly were raised on pot liquor. While the
old folk were working the larger young uns mongst the children would
take care of the little ones.
"Their masters never forced any breeding. I have heard of that happening
in other places but I never heard them speak of it in connection with
our master.
"When the master came back from the war, they told the slaves they were
free. After slavery my people stayed on and worked on the old
plantation. They didn't get much. Something like fifty cents a day and
one meal. My folks didn't work on shares.
"Back there in North Carolina times got tight and it seemed that there
wasn't much doing. Agents came from Arkansas trying to get laborers. So
about seven or eight families of us emigrated from North Carolina. That
is how my folks got here.
"The Ku Klux were bad in North Carolina too. My people didn't have any
trouble with them in Arkansas, though. They weren't bothered so much in
North Carolina because of their owners. But they would come around and
see them. They came at night. We came to Arkansas in the winter of 1897.
"I went to public school after the war, in North Carolina. I didn't get
any further than the eighth grade. My father and mother didn't get any
schooling till after the war. They could read a little but they picked
it up themselves during slavery. I suppose their Master's children
learned it to them.
"My father never did see any army service. I have heard him speak of
seeing soldiers come through though. They looted the place and took
everything they wanted and could carry.
"When I first come to this state, I settled in Drew County and farmed. I
farmed for three years. During the time I was there, I got down sick
with slow fever. When I got over that I decided that I would move to
higher ground. There was a man down there who recommended Little Rock
and so I moved here. I have been here forty-nine years. That is quite a
few days.
"I belong to the Presbyterian Church and have been a member of that
church for fifty-five years. I have never gotten out publicly, but I
even do my little preaching round in the house here.
"When I came to Little Rock, I came in a very dull season. There wasn't
even a house to be rented. It was in the winter. I had to rent a room at
"Jones" hall on Ninth and Gaines streets and paid one dollar a day for
it. I stayed there about a month. Finally there was a vacant house over
on Nineteenth street and Common and I moved there. Then I commenced to
look for work and I walked the town over daily. No results whatever.
Finally I struck a little job with the contractor here digging ditches,
grubbing stumps, grading streets and so forth. I worked with him for
three years and finally I got a job with the street car company, as
laborer in the Parks. I worked at that job two years. Finally I got a
job as track laborer. I worked there a year. Then I was promoted to
track foreman. I held that seven years.
"I quit that then and went to the railroads. I helped to build the
Choctaw Oklahoma and Gulf Railway. When the road was completed, I made
the first trip over it as Porter. I remained there till August 9, 1928.
During that time I was operated on for prostatitis and doctors rendered
me unfit for work, totally disabled; so that is my condition today.
"I think the future looks bright. I think conditions will get better. I
believe that all that is necessary for betterment is cooperation.
"I believe the younger generation--the way it looks--is pretty bad. I
think we haven't done anything like as much as we could do in teaching
the youngsters. We need to give them an idea of things. They don't know.
Our future depends on our children If their minds aren't trained, the
future will not be bright. Our leaders should lecture to these young
people and teach them. We have young people who dodge voting because of
the poll tax. That is not the right attitude. I don't know what will
become of us if our children are not better instructed. The white people
are doing more of this than we are.
"There was a time when children didn't know but what the foot was all
there was of a chicken. The foot was all they had ever seen. But young
folks nowaday should be taught everything."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Diana Alexander, Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 74
"I was born in Mississippi close to Bihalia. Our owner was Myers(?)
Bogan. He had a wife and children. Mama was a field woman. Her name was
Sarah Bogan and papa's name was Hubberd Bogan.
"I heard them talk about setting the pot at the doors and having singing
and prayer services. They all sung and prayed around the room. I forgot
all the things they talked about. My parents lived on the same place
after freedom a long time. They said he was good to them.
"Dr. Bogan in Forrest City, Arkansas always said I was his brother's
child. He was dead years ago, so I didn't have no other way of knowing.
"The only thing I can recollect about the War was once my mistress took
me and her own little girl upstairs in a kind of ceiling room (attic).
They had their ham meat and jewelry locked up in there and other fine
stuff. She told us to sit down and not move, not even grunt. Me and
Fannie had to be locked up so long. It was dark. We both went to sleep
but we was afraid to stir. The Yankees come then but I didn't get to see
them. I didn't want to be took away by 'em. I was big enough to know
that. I heard 'em say we was near 'bout eat out at the closing of the
War. I thought it muster been the Yankees from what they was talking
about, eating us out.
"I been washing and ironing and still doing it. All my life I been doing
that 'ceptin' when I worked in the field.
"Me and my daughter is paying on this house (a good house). I been
making my own living--hard or easy. I don't get no relief aid. Never
have. I 'plied for the old people's pension. Don't get it."
Interviewer's Comment
This must be Myers Bogan, yet she told me Bogan Myers. Later she said
Dr. Bogan of Forrest City was thus and so.
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Fannie Alexander, Helena, Arkansas
Age: 62
"I was an orphant child. My mother-in-law told me during slavery she was
a field hand. One day the overseer was going to whoop one of the women
'bout sompin or other and all the women started with the hoes to him and
run him clear out of the field. They would killed him if he hadn't got
out of the way. She said the master hadn't put a overseer over them for
a long time. Some of 'em wouldn't do their part and he put one of the
men on the place over the women. He was a colored foreman. The women
worked together and the men worked together in different fields. My
mother-in-law was named Alice Drummond. She said they would cut the
hoecakes in half and put that in your pan, then pour the beef stew on
top. She said on Christmas day they had hot biscuits. They give them
flour and things to make biscuit at home on Sundays. When they got
through eating they take their plate and say, 'Thank God for what I
received.' She said they had plenty milk. The churns was up high--five
gallon churns. Some churns was cedar wood. The children would churn
standing on a little stool. It would take two to churn. They would
change about and one brushed away the flies. She lived close to Meridian
and Canton.
"My mother talked the bright side to her children. She was born in
Tennessee. She had two older sisters sold from her. She never seen them
no more. They was took to Missouri. Mother was never sold. She was real
bright color. She died when I was real little. From what I know I think
my parents was industrious. Papa was a shoemaker. He worked on Sunday to
make extra money to buy things outside of what his master give them for
his family. Now I can remember that much. My papa was a bright color
like I am but not near as light as mama. He had a shop when I was little
but he wasn't 'lowed to keep it open on Sunday. I heard him tell about
working on Sundays during slavery and how much he made sometimes. He
tanned his own leather.
"I went to Mississippi and married. Folks got grown earlier than they do
now and I married when I was a young girl 'bout seventeen. We come to
Arkansas. I sewed for white and colored. I cooked some. I taught school
in the public schools. I taught opportunity school two years. I had a
class at the church in day and at the schoolhouse at night. I had two
classes.
"John Hays was mama's owner in Tennessee."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Lucretia Alexander
1708 High Street. Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 89
"I been married three times and my last name was Lucretia Alexander. I
was twelve years old when the War began. My mother died at seventy-three
or seventy-five. That was in August 1865--August the ninth. She was
buried August twelfth. The reason they kept her was they had refugeed
her children off to different places to keep them from the Yankees. They
couldn't get them back. My mother and her children were heir property.
Her first master was Toliver. My mother was named Agnes Toliver. She had
a boy and a girl both older than I were. My brother come home in '65. I
never got to see my sister till 1869.
"My father died in 1881 and some say he was one hundred twelve and some
say one hundred six. His name was Beasley, John Beasley, and he went by
John Beasley till he died.
"My mother died and left four living children. I was the youngest.
"I got religion in 1865. I was baptized seventy-three years ago this
August.
"I ain't got nary living child. My oldest child would have been
sixty-four if he were living. They claim my baby boy is living, but I
don't know. I have four children.
"The first overseer I remember was named Kurt Johnson. The next was
named Mack McKenzie. The next one was named Pink Womack. And the next
was named Tom Phipps. Mean! Liked meanness! Mean a man as he could be.
I've seen him take them down and whip them till the blood run out of
them.
"I got ten head of grandchildren. And I been grandmother to eleven head.
I been great-grandmother to twelve head of great-grandchildren. I got
one twenty-three and another nineteen or twenty. Her father's father was
in the army. She is the oldest. Lotas Robinson, my granddaughter, has
four children that are my great-grandchildren. Gayden Jenkins, my
grandson, has two girls. I got a grandson named Dan Jenkins. He is the
father of three boys. He lives in Cleveland. He got a grandson named
Mark Jenkins in Memphis who has one boy. The youngest granddaughter--I
don't remember her husband's name--has one boy. There are four
generations of us.
"I been here. You see I took care of myself when I was young and tried
to do right. The Lord has helped me too. Yes, I am going on now. I been
here a long time but I try to take care of myself. I was out visiting
the sick last time you come here. That's the reason I missed you. I
tries to do the best I can.
"I am stricken now with the rheumatism on one side. This hip.
"My mother was treated well in slavery times. My father was sold five
times. Wouldn't take nothin'. So they sold him. They beat him and
knocked him about. They put him on the block and they sold him 'bout
beatin' up his master. He was a native of Virginia. The last time they
sold him they sold him down in Claiborne County, Mississippi. Just below
where I was born at. I was born in Copiah County near Hazlehurst, about
fifteen miles from Hazlehurst. My mother was born in Washington County.
Virginia. Her first master was Qualls Tolliver. Qualls moved to
Mississippi and married a woman down there and he had one son, Peachy
Toliver. After he died, he willed her to Peachy. Then Peachy went to the
Rebel army and got killed.
"My mother's father was a free Indian named Washington. Her mother was a
slave. I don't know my father's father. He moved about so much and was
sold so many times he never did tell me his father. He got his name from
the white folks. When you're a slave you have to go by your owner's
name.
"My master's mother took me to the house after my mother died. And the
first thing I remember doing was cleaning up. Bringing water, putting up
mosquito-bars, cooking. My master's mother was Susan Reed. I have done
everything but saw. I never sawed in my life. The hardest work I did was
after slavery. I never did no hard work during slavery. I used to pack
water for the plow hands and all such as that. But when my mother died,
my mistress took me to the house.
"But Lawd! I've seen such brutish doin's--runnin' niggers with hounds
and whippin' them till they was bloody. They used to put 'em in stocks.
When they didn't put 'em in stocks, used to be two people would whip
'em--the overseer and the driver. The overseer would be a man named
Elijah at our house. He was just a poor white man. He had a whip they
called the BLACK SNAKE.
"I remember one time they caught a man named George Tinsley. They put
the dogs on him and they bit 'im and tore all his clothes off of 'im.
Then they put 'im in the stocks. The stocks was a big piece of timber
with hinges in it. It had a hole in it for your head. They would lift it
up and put your head in it. There was holes for your head, hands and
feet in it. Then they would shut it up and they would lay that whip on
you and you couldn't do nothin' but wiggle and holler, 'Pray, master,
pray!' But when they'd let that man out, he'd run away again.
"They would make the slaves work till twelve o'clock on Sunday, and then
they would let them go to church. The first time I was sprinkled, a
white preacher did it; I think his name was Williams.
"The preacher would preach to the white folks in the forenoon and to the
colored folks in the evening. The white folks had them hired. One of
them preachers was named Hackett; another, Williams; and another, Gowan.
There was five of them but I just remember them three. One man used to
hold the slaves so late that they had to go to the church dirty from
their work. They would be sweaty and smelly. So the preacher 'buked him
'bout it. That was old man Bill Rose.
"The niggers didn't go to the church building; the preacher came and
preached to them in their quarters. He'd just say, 'Serve your masters.
Don't steal your master's turkey. Don't steal your master's chickens.
Don't steal your master's hawgs. Don't steal your master's meat. Do
whatsomeever your master tells you to do.' Same old thing all the time.
"My father would have church in dwelling houses and they had to whisper.
My mother was dead and I would go with him. Sometimes they would have
church at his house. That would be when they would want a real meetin'
with some real preachin'. It would have to be durin' the week nights.
You couldn't tell the difference between Baptists and Methodists then.
They was all Christians. I never saw them turn nobody down at the
communion, but I have heard of it. I never saw them turn no pots down
neither; but I have heard of that. They used to sing their songs in a
whisper and pray in a whisper. That was a prayer-meeting from house to
house once or twice--once or twice a week.
"Old Phipps whipped me once. He aimed to kill me but I got loose. He
whipped me about a colored girl of his'n that he had by a colored woman.
Phipps went with a colored woman before he married his wife. He had a
girl named Martha Ann Phipps. I beat Martha 'bout a pair of stockings.
My mistress bought me a nice pair of stockings from the store. You see,
they used to knit the stockings. I wore the stockings once; then I
washed them and put them on the fence to dry. Martha stole them and put
them on. I beat her and took them off of her. She ran and told her
father and he ran me home. He couldn't catch me, and he told me he'd get
me. I didn't run to my father. I run to my mistress, and he knew he'd
better not do nothin' then. He said, 'I'll get you, you little old black
some thin'.' Only he didn't say 'somethin'.' He didn't get me then.
"But one day he caught me out by his house. I had gone over that way on
an errand I needn't have done. He had two girls hold me. They was
Angeline and Nancy. They didn't much want to hold me anyhow. Some
niggers would catch you and kill you for the white folks and then there
was some that wouldn't. I got loose from them. He tried to hold me
hisself but he couldn't. I got away and went back to my old mistress and
she wrote him a note never to lay his dirty hands on me again. A little
later her brother, Johnson Chatman, came there and ran him off the
place. My old mistress' name was Susan Chatman before she married. Then
she married Toliver. Then she married Reed. She married Reed last--after
Toliver died.
"One old lady named Emily Moorehead runned in and held my mother once
for Phipps to whip her. And my mother was down with consumption too. I
aimed to git old Phipps for that. But then I got religion and I couldn't
do it. Religion makes you forgit a heap of things.
"Susan Reed, my old mistress, bought my father and paid fifteen hundred
dollars for him and she hadn't never seen 'im. Advertising. He had run
away so much that they had to advertise and sell 'im. He never would run
away from Miss Susan. She was good to him till she got that old nigger
beater Phipps. Her husband, Reed, was called a nigger spoiler. My father
was an old man when Phipps was on overseer and wasn't able to fight much
then.
"Phipps sure was a bad man. He wasn't so bad neither; but the niggers
was scared of him. You know in slave times, sometimes when a master
would git too bad, the niggers would kill him--tote him off out in the
woods somewheres and git rid of him. Two or three of them would git
together and scheme it out, and then two or three of them would git him
way out and kill 'im. But they didn't nobody ever pull nothin' like
that on Phipps. They was scared of him.
"One time I saw the Yankees a long way off. They had on blue uniforms
and was on coal black horses. I hollered out, 'Oh, I see somethin'.' My
mistress said, 'What?' I told her, and she said, 'Them's the Yankees.'
She went on in the house and I went with her. She sacked up all the
valuables in the house. She said, 'Here,' and she threw a sack of silver
on me that was so heavy that I went right on down to the ground. Then
she took hold of it and holp me up and holp me carry it out. I carried
it out and hid it. She had three buckskin sacks--all full of silver.
That wasn't now; that was in slavery times. During the War, Jeff Davis
gave out Confederate money. It died out on the folks' hands. About
twelve hundred dollars of it died out on my father's hands. But there
wasn't nothin' but gold and silver in them sacks.
"I heard them tell the slaves they were free. A man named Captain Barkus
who had his arm off at the elbow called for the three near-by
plantations to meet at our place. Then he got up on a platform with
another man beside him and declared peace and freedom. He p'inted to a
colored man and yelled, 'You're free as I am.' Old colored folks, old as
I am now, that was on sticks, throwed them sticks away and shouted.
"Right after freedom I stayed with that white woman I told you about. I
was with her about four years. I worked for twelve dollars a month and
my food and clothes. Then I figured that twelve dollars wasn't enough
and I went to work in the field. It was a mighty nice woman. Never hit
me in her life. I never have been whipped by a white woman. She was good
to me till she died. She died after I had my second child--a girl child.
"I have been living in this city fifteen years. I come from Chicot
County when I come here. We come to Arkansas in slavery times. They
brought me from Copiah County when I was six or eight years old. When
Mrs. Toliver married she came up here and brought my mother. My mother
belonged to her son and she said, 'Agnes (that was my mother's name),
will you follow me if I buy your husband?' Her husband's name was John
Beasley. She said, 'Yes.' Then her old mistress bought Beasley and paid
fifteen hundred dollars to get my mother to come with her. Then Peachy
went to war and was shot because he come home of a furlough and stayed
too long. So when he went back they killed him. My mother nursed him
when he was a baby. Old man Toliver said he didn't want none of us to be
sold; so they wasn't none of us sold. Maybe there would have been if
slavery had lasted longer; but there wasn't.
"Mother really belonged to Peachy, but when Peachy died, then she fell
to her mistress.
"I have been a widow now for thirty years. I washed and ironed and
plowed and hoed--everything. Now I am gittin' so I ain't able to do
nothin' and the Relief keeps me alive. I worked and took care of myself
and my last husband and he died, and I ain't married since. I used to
take a little boy and make ten bales of cotton. I can't do it now. I
used to be a woman in my day. I am my mother's seventh child.
"I don't buy no hoodoo and I don't believe in none, but a seventh child
can more or less tell you things that are a long way off. If you want to
beat the devil you got to do right. God's got to be in the plan. I tries
to do right. I am not perfect but I do the best I can. I ain't got no
bottom teeth, but my top ones are good. I have a few bottom ones. The
Lawd's keepin' me here for somepin. I been with 'im now seventy-three
years."
Interviewer's Comment
I'll bet the grandest moment in the life of Sister Alexander's mother
was when her mistress said, "Agnes, will you follow me if I buy your
husband?" Fifteen hundred dollars to buy a rebellious slave in order to
unite a slave couple. It's epic.
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Ed Allen, Des Arc, Ark.
Age: ?
"I know that after freedom they took care of my pa and ma and give em a
home long as they lived. Ma died wid young mistress here in Des Arc.
"The present generation is going to the bad. Have dealings wid em, not
good to you. Young folks ain't nice to you like they used to be.
"White boys and colored boys, whole crowd of us used to go in the river
down here all together, one got in danger help him out. They don't do it
no more. We used to play base ball together. All had a good time. We
never had to buy a ball or a bat. Always had em. The white boys bought
them. I don't know as who to blame but young folk changed."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Lucindy Allison, Marked Tree, Arkansas
With children at Biscoe, Arkansas
Age: 61
"Ma was a slave in Arkansas. She said she helped grade a hill and help
pile up a road between Wicksburg and Wynne. They couldn't put the road
over the hill, so they put all the slaves about to grade it down. They
don't use the road but it's still there to show for itself.
"She was a tall rawbony woman. Ma was a Hillis and pa's name was Adam
Hillis. He learned to trap in slavery and after freedom he followed that
for a living. Ma was a sure 'nough field hand. Mama had three sets of
children. I don't know how many she did have in all. I had eleven my own
self. Grandma was named Tempy and I heard them tell about when she was
sold. She and mama went together. They used to whoop the slaves when
they didn't work up peart.
"When the 'Old War' come on and the Yankees come they took everything
and the black men folks too. They come by right often. They would drive
up at mealtime and come in and rake up every blessed thing was cooked.
Have to go work scrape about and find something else to eat. What they
keer 'bout you being white or black? Thing they was after was filling
theirselves up. They done white folks worse than that. They burned their
cribs and fences up and their houses too about if they got mad. Things
didn't suit them. If they wanted a colored man to go in camp with them
and he didn't go, they would shoot you down like a dog. Ma told about
some folks she knowd got shot in the yard of his own quarters.
"Us black folks don't want war. They are not war kind of folks. Slavery
wasn't right and that 'Old War' wasn't right neither.
"When my children was all little I kept Aunt Mandy Buford till she died.
She was a old slave woman. Me and my husband and the biggest children
worked in the field. She would sit about and smoke. My boys made cob
pipes and cut cane j'ints for 'er to draw through. Red cob pipes was the
prettiest. Aunt Mandy said her master would be telling them what to do
in the field and he say to her, 'I talking to you too.' She worked right
among the men at the same kind of work. She was tall but not large. She
carried children on her right hip when she was so young she dragged that
foot when she walked. The reason she had to go with the men to the field
like she did was 'cause she wasn't no multiplying woman. She never had a
chile in all her lifetime. She said her mother nearly got in bad one
time when her sister was carrying a baby. She didn't keep up. Said the
riding boss got down, dug a hole with the hoe to lay her in it 'cause
she was so big in front. Her mother told him if he put her daughter
there in that hole she'd cop him up in pieces wid her hoe. He found he
had two to conquer and he let her be. But he had to leave 'cause he
couldn't whoop the niggers.
"If I could think of all she tole I'd soon have enough to fill up that
book you're getting up. I can't recollect who she belong to, and her old
talk comes back to me now and then. She talked so much we'd get up and
go on off to keep from hearing her tell things over so many times.
"Folks like me what got children think the way they do is all right. I
don't like some of my children's ways but none of us perfect. I tells
'em right far as I knows. Times what makes folks no 'count. Times gets
stiff around Biscoe. Heap of folks has plenty. Some don't have much--not
enough. Some don't have nothing.
"I don't believe in women voting. That ruined the country. We got along
very well till they got to tinkering with the government."
Name of Interviewer: Pernella Anderson
Subject: Early Days in Caledonia--Early days in El Dorado
Name: Josephine Ames
Occupation: Domestic
Resident: Fordville
Age: not given.
[TR: Information moved from bottom of first page.]
Ah wuz bo'n de first year niggers wuz free. Wuz born in Caledonia at de
Primm place. Mah ma belonged tuh George Thompson. After mah ma died ah
stayed wid de Wommacks, a while. Aftuh dat mah pa taken me home. Pa's
name wuz Jesse Flueur. Ah worked lak er slave. Ah cut wood, sawed logs,
picked 400 pounds uv cotton evah day. Ah speck ah married de first time
ah wuz about fo'teen years ole. Ah been mahrid three times. All mah
husband's is daid. Ole man England and ole man Cullens run business
places and ole man Wooley. His name wuz reason Wooley. De Woolies got
cemetery uv dey own right dar near de Cobb place. No body is buried in
dar but de fambly uv Wooleys. Ole man Allen Hale, he run er store dar
too. He is yet livin right dar. He is real ole. De ole Warren Mitchell
place whar ah use tuh live is Guvment land. Warren Mitchell, he
homesteaded the place. We lived dar and made good crops. De purtiest dar
wuz eround, but not hit's growed up. Don lived dar and made good crops.
De purtiest dar wuz eround. Dar is whah all mah chillun wuz bo'n. Ah use
tuh take mah baby an walk tuh El Dorado to sevice. Ah use tuh come tuh
El Dorado wid a oman by de name of Sue Foster. Nothin but woods when dey
laid de railroad heah. Dey built dem widh horses and axes. Ah saw em
when dey whoop de hosses and oxen till dey fall out working dem when dey
laid dat steel. Ah wuz at de first buryin uv de fust pussen buried in
Caledonia graveyard. Huh name wuz Joe Ann Polk. We set up wid huh all
night and sing and pray. An when we got nearly tuh de church de bells
started tolling and de folks started tuh singin. When evah any body died
dey ring bells tuh let yo know some body wuz daid. A wuz born on
Christmas day, an ah had two chilluns born on Christmas Day. Dey wuz
twins and one uv em had two teeth and his hair hung down on her
shoulders when hit wuz born but hit did not live but er wek.
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Charles Anderson. Helena, Arkansas
Age: 77 or 78, not sure
"I was born in Bloomfield, Kentucky. My parents had the same owners.
Mary and Elgin Anderson was their names. They was owned by Isaac Stone.
Davis Stone was their son. They belong to the Stones as far back as they
could remember. Mama was darker than I am. My father was brighter than I
am. He likely had a white father. I never inquired. Mama had colored
parents. Master Stone walked with a big crooked stick. He nor his son
never went to war. Masters in that country never went. Two soldiers were
drafted off our place. I saw the soldiers, plenty of them and plenty
times. There never was no serious happenings.
"The Federal soldiers would come by, sleep in the yard, take our best
horses and leave the broken down ones. Very little money was handled. I
never seen much. Master Stone would give us money like he give money to
Davis. They prized fine stock mostly. They needed money at wheat harvest
time only. When a celebration or circus come through he give us all
twenty-five or thirty cents and told us to go. There wasn't many slaves
up there like down in this country. The owners from all I've heard was
crueler and sold them off oftener here.
"Weaving was a thing the women prided in doing--being a fast weaver or a
fine hand at weaving. They wove pretty coverlets for the beds. I see
colored spreads now makes me think about my baby days in Kentucky.
"Freedom was something mysterious. Colored folks didn't talk it. White
folks didn't talk it. The first I realized something different, Master
Stone was going to whip a older brother. He told mama something I was
too small to know. She said, 'Don't leave this year, son. I'm going to
leave.' Master didn't whip him.
"Master Stone's cousin kept house for him. I remember her well. They
were all very nice to us always. He had a large farm. He had twenty
servants in his yard. We all lived there close together. My sister and
mama cooked. We had plenty to eat. We had beef in spring and summer.
Mutton and kid on special occasions. We had hog in the fall and winter.
We had geese, ducks, and chickens. We had them when we needed them. We
had a field garden. He raised corn, wheat, oats, rye, and tobacco.
"Once a year we got dressed up. We got shirts, a suit, pants and shoes,
and what else we needed to wear. Then he told them to take care of their
clothes. They got plenty to do a year. We didn't have fine clothes no
time. We didn't eat ham and chicken. I never seen biscuit--only
sometimes.
"I seen a woman sold. They had on her a short dress, no sleeves, so they
could see her muscles, I reckon. They would buy them and put them with
good healthy men to raise young slaves. I heard that. I was very small
when I seen that young woman sold and years later I heard that was what
was done.
"I don't know when freedom came on. I never did know. We was five or six
years breaking up. Master Stone never forced any of us to leave. He give
some of them a horse when they left. I cried a year to go back. It was a
dear place to me and the memories linger with me every day.
"There was no secret society or order of Ku Klux in reach of us as I
ever heard.
"I voted Republican ticket. We would go to Jackson to vote. There would
be a crowd. The last I voted was for Theodore Roosevelt. I voted here in
Helena for years. I was on the petit jury for several years here in
Helena.
"I farmed in your state some (Arkansas). I farmed all my young life. I
been in Arkansas sixty years. I come here February 1879 with distant
relatives. They come south. When I come to Helena there was but one set
of mechanics. I started to work. I learned to paint and hang wall paper.
I've worked in nearly every house in Helena.
"The present times are gloomy. I tried to prepare for old age. I had a
apartment house and lost it. I owned a home and lost it. They foreclosed
me out.
"The present generation is not doing as well as I have.
"My health knocked me out. My limbs swell, they are stiff. I have a bad
bladder trouble.
"I asked for help but never have got none. If I could got a little
relief I never would lost my house. They work my wife to death keeping
us from starving. She sewed till they cut off all but white ladies. When
she got sixty-five they let her go and she got a little job cooking.
They never give us no relief."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Nancy Anderson
Street H, West Memphis, Arkansas
Age: 66
"I was born at Sanitobia, Mississippi. Mother died when I was a child. I
was three months old, they said, when I lost her. Father lived to be
very old. My mother was Ella Geeter and my stepmother was Lucy Evans. My
father's name was Si Hubbard. My parents married after the War. I
remembers Grandma Harriett Hubbard. She said she was sold. She was a
cook and she raised my papa up with white folks. Her children was sold
with her. Papa was sold too at the same time. Papa fired a steam gin.
They ground corn and ginned cotton.
"I stayed with Sam Hall's family. She was good to me. I had a small bed
by the fireplace. She kept me with two of her own children. Some of the
girls and boys I was raised up with live at Sanitobia now and have fine
homes. When we would be playing they would take all the toys from me.
Miss Fannie would say, 'Poor Nancy ain't got no toys.' Then they would
put them on the floor and we would all play. They had a little table. We
all eat at it. We had our own plates. We all eat out of tin plates and
had tin cups.
"They couldn't keep me at home when papa married. I slipped off across
the pasture. There was cows and hogs in there all the time. I wasn't
afraid of them. I would get behind Miss Fannie and hide in her dress
tail when they come after me. They let me stay most of the time for
about five years. Sam Hall was good to my father and Miss Fannie about
raised me after my mother died. She made me mind but she was good to me.
"Grandma lived with papa. She was part Indian. As long as papa lived he
share cropped and ginned. He worked as long as he was able to hit a
lick. He died four miles east out from Sanitobia on Mr. Hayshaws place.
What I told you is what I know. He said he was sold that one time.
Hubbards had plenty to eat and wear. He was a boy and they didn't want
to stunt the children. Papa was a water boy and filed the hoes for the
chopping hands. He carried a file along with them hoeing and would
sharpen their hoes and fetch 'em water in their jugs. Aunt Sallie, his
sister, took keer of the children.
"Papa went to the War. He could blow his bugle and give all the war
signals. He got the military training. Him and his friend Charlie Grim
used to step around and show us how they had to march to orders. His
bugle had four joints. I don't know what went with it. From what they
said they didn't like the War and was so glad to get home.
"Between the big farms they had worm fences (rail fences) and gates. You
had to get a pass from your master to go visiting. The gates had big
chains and locks on them. Some places was tollgates where they traveled
over some man's land to town. On them roads the man owned the place
charged. He kept some boy to open and shut the gate. They said the gates
was tall.
"Some of the slaves that had hard masters run off and stay in the woods.
They had nigger dogs and would run them--catch 'em. He said one man
(Negro) was hollowing down back of the worm fence close to where they
was working. They all run to him. A great long coachwhip snake was
wrapped 'round him, his arms and all, and whooping him with its tail. It
cut gashes like a knife and the blood poured. The overseer cut the
snake's head off with his big knife and they carried him home bleeding.
His master didn't whoop him, said he had no business off in the woods.
He had run off. His master rubbed salt in the gashes. It nearly killed
him. It burnt him so bad. That stopped the blood. They said sut (soot)
would stopped the blood but it would left black mark. The salt left
white marks on him. The salt helped kill the pison (poison). Some
masters and overseers was cruel. When they was so bad marked they didn't
bring a good price. They thought they was hard to handle.
"Aunt Jane Peterson, old friend of mine, come to visit me nearly every
year after she got so old. She told me things took place in slavery
times. She was in Virginia till after freedom. She had two girls and a
boy with a white daddy. She told me all about how that come. She said no
chance to run off or ever get off, you had to stay and take what come.
She never got to marry till after freedom. Then she had three more black
children by her husband. She said she was the cook. Old master say,
'Jane, go to the lot and get the eggs.' She was scared to go and scared
not to go. He'd beat her out there, put her head between the slip gap
where they let the hogs into the pasture from the lot down back of the
barn. She say, 'Old missis whip me. This ain't right.' He'd laugh. Said
she bore three of his children in a room in the same house his family
lived in. She lived in the same house. She had a room so as she could
build fires and cook breakfast by four o'clock sometimes, she said. She
was so glad freedom come on and soon as she heard it she took her
children and was gone, she said. She had no use for him. She was scared
to death of him. She learned to pray and prayed for freedom. She died in
Cold Water, Mississippi. She was so glad freedom come on before her
children come on old enough to sell. Part white children sold for more
than black children. They used them for house girls.
"I don't know Ku Klux stories enough to tell one. These old tales leave
my mind. I'm 66 and all that was before my time.
"Times is strange--hard, too. But the way I have heard they had to work
and do and go I hardly ever do grumble. I've heard so much. I got
children and I do the best I can by them. That is all I can do or say."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: R.B. Anderson
Route 4, Box 68 (near Granite)
Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 75
[HW: The Brooks-Baxter War]
"I was born in Little Rock along about Seventeenth and Arch Streets.
There was a big plantation there then. Dr. Wright owned the plantation.
He owned my mother and father. My father and mother told me that I was
born in 1862. They didn't know the date exactly, so I put it the last
day in the year and call it December 30, 1862.
"My father's name was William Anderson. He didn't go to the War because
he was blind. He was ignorant too. He was colored. He was a pretty good
old man when he died.
"My mother's name was Minerva Anderson. She was three-fourths Indian,
hair way down to her waist. I was in Hot Springs blacking boots when my
mother died. I was only about eight or ten years old then. I always
regretted I wasn't able to do anything for my mother before she died. I
don't know to what tribe her people belonged.
"Dr. Wright was awful good to his slaves.
"I don't know just how freedom came to my folks. I never heard my father
say. They were set free, I know. They were set free when the War ended.
They never bought their freedom.
"We lived on Tenth and near to Center in a one-room log house. That is
the earliest thing I remember. When they moved from there, my father had
accumulated enough to buy a home. He bought it at Seventh and Broadway.
He paid cash for it--five hundred and fifty dollars. That is where we
all lived until it was sold. I couldn't name the date of the sale but it
was sold for good money--about three thousand eight hundred dollars, or
maybe around four thousand. I was a young man then.
"I remember the Brooks-Baxter War.
"I remember the King White fooled a lot of niggers and armed them and
brought them up here. The niggers and Republicans here fought them and
run them back where they come from.
"I know Hot Springs when the main street was a creek. I can't remember
when I first went there. The government bath-house was called 'Ral
Hole', because it was mostly people with bad diseases that went there.
"After the War, my father worked for a rich man named Hunter. He was
yardman and took care of the horse. My mother was living then.
"Scipio Jones and I were boys together. We slept on pool tables many a
time when we didn't have no other place to sleep. He was poor when he
was a boy and glad to get hold of a dime, or a nickel. He and I don't
speak today because he robbed me. I had a third interest in my place. I
gave him money to buy my place in for me. It was up for sale and I
wanted to get possession. He gave me some papers to sign and when I
found out what was happening, he had all my property. My wife kept me
from killing him."
Interviewer's Comment
Occupation: Grocer, bartender, porter, general work
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Sarah Anderson
3815 W. Second Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 78?
"I don't know when I was born. When the Civil War ended, I was bout four
or five years old.
"I jes' remember when the people come back--the soldiers--when the War
ended. We chillun run under the house. That was the Yankees.
"I was born in Bibb County, Georgia. That's where I was bred and born.
"I been in Arkansas ever since I was fourteen. That was shortly after
the Civil War, I reckon. We come here when they was emigratin' to
Arkansas. I'm tellin' you the truth, I been here a long time.
"I member when the soldiers went by and we chillun run under the house.
It was the Yankee cavalry, and they made so much noise. Dat's what the
old folks told us. I member dat we run under the house and called our
self hidin'.
"My master was Madison Newsome and my missis was Sarah Newsome. Named
after her? Must a done it. Ma and her chillun was out wallowin' in the
dirt when the Yankees come by. Sometimes I stayed in the house with my
white folks all night.
"My mother and father say they was well treated. That's what they say.
"Old folks didn't low us chillun round when they was talkin' bout their
business, no ma'am.
"We stayed with old master a good while after freedom--till they
commenced emigratin' from Georgia to Arkansas. Yes ma'am!
"I'm the mother of fourteen chillun--two pairs of twins. I married
young--bout fifteen or sixteen, I reckon. I married a young fellow. I
say we was just chaps. After he died, I married a old settled man and
now he's dead.
"I been livin' a pretty good life. Seems like the white folks just
didn't want me to get away from their chillun.
"All my chillun dead cept one son. He was a twin."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Selie Anderson, Holly Grove, Arkansas
Age: 78
"I was born near Decatur, Alabama and lived there till I was fifteen
years old. Course I members hearin' em talk bout Mars Newt. I named fur
my ma's old mistress--Miss Selie Thompson and Mars Newt Thompson. Pa
died when I was three years old. He was a soldier. Ma had seven
children. They have bigger families then than they have now. Ma name
Emmaline Thompson. Pa name Sam Adair. I can't tell you about him. I
heard em say his pa was a white man. He was light skinned. Old folks
didn't talk much foe children so I don't know well nough to tell you
bout him. Ma was a cook and a licensed midwife in Alabama. She waited on
both black and white. Ma never staid at home much. She worked out. I
come to Mississippi after I married and had one child. Ma and all come.
Ma went to Tom McGehee's to cook after freedom. She married old man
named Lewis Chase and they worked on where he had been raised. His name
was Lewis Sprangle. He looked after the stock and drove the carriage.
Daniel Sprangle had a store and a big farm. He had three girls and three
boys, I was their house girl. Mama lived on the place and give me to em
cause they could do better part by me than she could. I was six years
old when she give me to em. They lernt me to sweep, knit, crochet, piece
quilts. She lernt her children thater way sometimes. Miss Nancy Sprangle
didn't treat me no different from her own girls. Miss Dora married Mr.
Pitt Loney and I was dressed up and held up her train (long dress and
veil). I stayed with Miss Dora after she married. One of the girls
married Mr. John Galbreth. I married and went home then come to
Mississippi. Mrs. Gables, Mr. Gables was old people but they had two
adopted boys. I took them boys to the field to work wid my children. She
sewed for me and my children. Her girls cooked all we et in busy times.
They done work at the house but they didn't work in the field.
"I been married five times. Every time I married I married at home.
Mighty little marryin' goin' on now--mighty little. Mama stayed wid Mr.
Sprangle till we all got grown. Miss Nancy's girls married so that all
the way I knowd how to do. I had a good time. I danced every chance I
got. I been well blessed all my life till I'm gettin' feeble now.
"Papa run the gin on Mr. Sprangle's place, then he went to war, come
back foe he died. I recken he come home sick cause he died pretty soon.
"I jess can member this Ku Klux broke down our door wid hatchets. It
scared us all to death. They didn't do nuthin' to us. They was huntin'
Uncle Jeff. He wasn't bout our house. He was ox driver fer Mr. Sprangle.
Him and a family of pore white folks got to fussin' bout a bridle. Some
of em was dressed up when they come to our house ma said. After that Mr.
Kirby killed him close to his home startin' out one mornin' to work. His
name was Uncle Jeff Saxon. Ma knowd it was some of the men right on Mr.
Sprangle's place whut come to our house.
"I live wid my daughter. I get $8 from the Welfare.
"If they vote for better it be all right. I never seen no poles. I don't
know how they vote. I'm too old to start up votin'.
"Lawd you got me now. The times changed and got so fast. It all beyond
me. I jes' listens. I don't know whut goner happen to this young
generation."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: W.A. Anderson (dark brown)
3200 W. 18th Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 78
Occupation: House and yard man
[HW: Serves the "Lawd"]
"I don't know nothin' about slavery. You know I wouldn't know nothin'
bout it cause I was only four years old when the war ended. All I know
is I was born in slavery; but I don't know nothin' bout it.
"I don't remember nothin' of my parents. Times was all confused and old
folks didn't talk before chilun. They didn't have time. Besides, my
mother and father were separated.
"I was born in Arkansas and have lived here all my life. But I don't
gossip and entertain. I just moved in this house last week. Took a
wheelbarrow and brought all these things here myself.
"Those boys out there jus' threw a stone against the house. I thought
the house was falling. I work all day and when night comes, I'm tired.
"I don't have no wife, no children, nothin'; nobody to help me out. I
don't ask the neighbors nothin' cept to clear out this junk they left
here.
"I ain't goin' to talk about the Ku Klux. I got other things to think
about. It takes all my time and strength to do my work and live a
Christian. Folks got so nowadays they don't care bout nothin'. I just
live here and serve the Lawd."
Interviewer's Comments
Anderson is separated from his wife who left him. He lost his home a
short time ago. A few months ago, he was so sick he was expected to die.
He supports himself through the friendliness of a few white people who
give him odds and ends of work to do.
I made three calls on him, helped him set up his stoves and his beds and
clear up his house a little bit since he had just moved into it and had
a good deal of work to do. His misfortunes have made him unwilling to
talk just now, but he will give a good interview later I am certain.
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Henry Anthony; R.F.D. #1 Biscoe, Arkansas
Age: 84
"I was born at Jackson, North Carolina. My master and mistress named
Betsy and Jason Williams but my pa's name was Anthony. My young master
was a orderly seargent. He took me wid him to return some mules and
wagons. He showed me what he want done an I followed him round wid
wagons. The wagons hauled ammunition and provisions. Pa worked for the
master and ma cooked. They got sold to Lausen Capert. When freedom come
they went back and stayed a month or two at Williams then we all went
back to John Odom. We stayed round close and farmed and worked till they
died. I married and when I had four or five children I heard ob dis
country. I come on immigration ticket to Mr. Aydelott here at Biscoe.
Train full of us got together and come. One white man got us all up and
brought us here to Biscoe. I farmed for Mr. Aydelott four or five years,
then for Mr. Bland, Mr. Scroggin.
"I never went to school a day in my life. I used to vote here in Biseoe
right smart. I let the young folks do my votin. They can tell more about
it. I sho do not think it is the woman's place to vote an hold all the
jobs from the men. Iffen you don't in the Primary cause you don't know
nuf to pick out a man, you sho don't know nuthin er tall bout votin in
the General lection. In fact it ain't no good to our race nohow.
"The whole world gone past my judgment long ago. I jess sets round to
see what they say an do next. It is bad when you caint get work you able
to do on that's hard on the old folks. I could saved. I did save right
smart. Sickness come on. Sometimes you have a bad crop year, make
nuthin, but you have to live on. Young folks don't see no hard times if
they keep well an able to work.
"I get commodities and $6 a month. I do a little if I can.
"One time my son bought a place fo me and him. He paid all cept $70. I
don't know whut it cost now. It was 47 acres. I worked on it three
years. He sold it and went to the sawmill. He say he come out square on
it. I didn't wanter sell it but he did."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Katie Arbery
815 W. Thirteenth, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 80
"I am eighty years old. My name 'fore I was a Arbery was Baxter. My
mother was a Baxter. Born in Union County.
"My mother's first people was Baxter and my grandmother was a Baxter and
they just went by that name; she never did change her name.
"The boss man--that was what they called our master--his name was Paul
McCall. He was married twice. His oldest son was Jim McCall. He was in
the War. Yes ma'am, the Civil War.
"Paul McCall raised me up with his chillun and I never did call him
master, just called him pappy, and Jim McCall, I called him brother Jim.
Just raised us all up there in the yard. My grandmother was the cook.
"There wasn't no fightin' in Union County but I 'member when the Yankees
was goin' through and singin'
'The Union forever, hurrah, boys, hurrah
We'll rally 'round the flag, boys,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom.'
(She sang this--ed.)
And I 'member this one good:
'Old buckwheat cakes and good strong butter
To make your lips go flip, flip, flutter.
Look away, look away, look away, Dixie land.'
"Pappy used to play that on his fiddle and have us chillun tryin' to
dance. Used to call us chillun and say, 'You little devils, come up here
and dance' and have us marchin'.
"My cousin used to be a quill blower. Brother Jim would cut fishin'
canes and plat 'em together--they called 'em a pack--five in a row, just
like my fingers. Anybody that knowed how could sure make music on 'em.
Tom Rollins, that was my baby uncle, he was a banjo picker.
"I can remember a heap a things that happened, but 'bout slavery, I
didn't know one day from another. They treated us so nice that when they
said freedom come, I thought I was always free.
"I heered my grandmother talk about sellin' 'em, but I was just a little
kid and I didn't know what they was talkin' about. I heered 'em say,
'Did you know they sold Aunt Sally away from her baby?' I heered 'em
talkin', I know that much.
"After freedom, our folks stayed right on Paul McCall's place. My
grandmother cooked for the McCalls till I was eight or nine years old,
then she cooked for the McCrays--they was all relatives--till I was
twenty-one. Then I married.
"Paul McCall first married in the Baxter family and then he married into
the McCray family. I lived on the McCall place till I was grown. They
all come from Alabama. Yes'm, they come befo' the war was.
"Chillun in dem days paid attention. People _raised_ chillun in dem
days. Folks just feeds 'em now and lets 'em grow up.
"I looks at the young race now and they is as wise as rabbits.
"I never went to school but three months, but I never will forget that
old blue back McGuffey's. Sam Porter was our teacher and I was scared of
him. I was so scared I couldn't learn nothin'.
"As far as I can remember I have been treated nice everywhere I been.
Ain't none of the white folks ever mistreated me.
"Lord, we had plenty to eat in slavery days--and freedom days too.
"One time when my mother was cookin' for Colonel Morgan and my oldest
brother was workin' some land, my mother always sent me over with a
bucket of milk for him. So one day she say. 'Snooky, come carry your
brother's milk and hurry so he can have it for dinner.' I was goin'
across a field; that was a awful deer country. I had on a red dress and
was goin' on with my milk when I saw a old buck lookin' at me. All at
once he went 'whu-u-u', and then the whole drove come up. There was
mosely trees (I think she must have meant mimosa--ed.) in the field and
I run and climbed up in one of 'em. A mosely tree grows crooked; I don't
care how straight you put it in the ground, it's goin' to grow crooked.
So I climb up in the mosely tree and begin to yell. My brother heard me
and come 'cause he knowed what was up. He used to say, 'Now, Snipe, when
you come 'cross that mosely field, don't you wear that old red dress
'cause they'll get you down and tear that dress off you.' I liked the
dress 'cause he had give it to me. I had set the milk down at the foot
of the tree and it's a wonder they didn't knock it over, but when my
brother heard me yell he come a runnin', with a gun and shot one of the
deer. I got some of the venison and he give some to Colonel Morgan, his
boss man. Colonel Morgan had fought in the war.
"The reason I can't tell you no more is, since I got old my mind goes
this and that a way.
"But I can tell you all the doctors that doctored on me. They give me up
to die once. I had the chills from the first of one January to the next
We had Dr. Chester and Dr. McCray and Dr. Lewis--his name was Perry--and
Dr. Green and Dr. Smead. Took quinine till I couldn't hear, and finally
Dr. Green said, 'We'll just quit givin' her medicine, looks like she's
goin' to die anyway.' And then Dr. Lewis fed me for three weeks steady
on okra soup cooked with chicken. Just give me the broth. Then I
commenced gettin' better and here I am.
"But I can't work like I used to. When I was young I could work right
along with the men but I can't do it now. I wish I could 'cause they's a
heap a things I'd like that my chillun and grandchillun can't get for
me.
"Well, good-bye, come back again sometime."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Campbell Armstrong
802 Schiller Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 86
[HW: Boys liked corn shuckings]
"I couldn't tell you when I was born. I was born a good while before
freedom. I was a boy about ten years old in the time of the Civil War.
That would make me about eighty-five or six years old.
"My father's name was Cy Armstrong. My mother's name was Gracie
Armstrong. I don't know the names of my grandparents. They was gone when
I got here. My sister died right there in the corner of the next room.
House and Furniture
"I used to live in an old log house. Take dirt and dob the cracks. The
floors were these here planks. We had two windows and one door. That was
in Georgia, in Houston County, on old Dempsey Brown's place. I know
him--know who dug his grave.
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