SLAVE NAR RATIVES 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 4 Prepared by / the Federal Writersf Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of Arkansas INFORMANTS 1,3 Jackson, Clarice Jackson, Israel 5 Jackson, Lula 9,18 Jackson, Mary 20 22 Jackson, Taylor Jackson, Virginia 26 Jackson, William 28 Jamar, Lawson 30 32 James, Nellie James, Hobert 34 36 Jefferson, Ellis 38 Jeffries, Moses Jefson, Rev. Ellis 43 47 Jenkins, Absolom Jerman, Dora 50 52 Johnson, Adaline Johnson, Alice 59 63 Johnson, Allen Johnson, Annie 67 70,72 Johnson, Ben 73 Johnson, Betty 76 Johnson, Cinda 77 Johnson, Ella 84 Johnson, Fanny 91 Johnson, George Johnson, John 94 98 Johnson, Letha Johnson, Lewis 100 102 Johnson, Lizzie 104 Johnson, Louis Johnson, Mag 107 Johnson, Mandy no Johnson, Marion 112,115,120 122 Johnson, Martha Johnson, Millie (Old Bill) 124 Johnson, Rosie 126 Johnson, Saint 128 Johnson, Willie 130 134 Jones, Angeline 136 Jones, Charlie 138 Jones, Cynthia 141 Jones, Edmund 143 Jones, Eliza 145 Jones, Evelyn 148 Jones, John 149 Jones, John Jones, Lidia (Lydia) 151,153 Jones, Liza (Cookie) 155 Jones, Lucy Jones, Mary Jones, Mary Jones, Nannie Jones, Reuben Jones, Vergil Jones, Walter Junell, Oscar Felix 158 159 163 164 166 169 171 173 Keaton, Sam Kendricks, Tines Kennedy, Frank Kerns, Adreanna W. Key, George Key, Lucy King, Anna King, Mose King, Susie Kirk, William Krump, Betty Kyles, Rev. Preston 175 177,186 189 191 196 198 201,205 207 210 214 216 220,222 Lagrone, Susa 223 Laird, Barney A. 225 Lamar, Arey 228 Lambert, Solomon 229 Larkin, Frank 235,236,239 Lattimore, William 242 Lawsom, Bessie 244 Lee, Henry 247 Lee, Mandy 250 Lee, Mary 251 252 Lewis, Talitha Lindsay, Abbie 255 Lindsey, Rosa 260 Little, William 262 Lofton, Minerva 264 Lofton, Robert. 267 Logan, John H. 274 Lomack, El vie 281 Long, Henry 284 Love, Annie 290 Love, Needham 292 Lucas, Louis 297 Luckado, Lizzie 304 Luckett, John 306 Lynch, John 307 Lynch, Josephine Scott 310 #668r Interviewer Person Interviewed Age Mrs* Bernice Bowden Clarice Jackson Eighteenth and Virginia, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 82 *I was six or seven when they begin goinf to the Civil War* We had a big old pasture opposite and I know they would bring the soldiers there and drill f em* *0h my God, donft talk about slavery* They kept us in so you know we couldn*t go around* "But if they kept tam a little closer now, the world would be a better place Ifm so glad I raised my children when they was raisinf children* If I told fem to do a thing, they did it 1 cause I would always know what was best* I got here first you know* "People now*days is just shortening their lives* The Lord is pressin' us now tryinf to press us back* But thank God Ifm saved* "Did you ever see things like they is now? "I looks at the young folks and it seems like they is all in a hurry looks like they is on the last round* "These here seabirds, (a music machine called seaburg--ed.) is ruinin1 the young folks* "I feels my age now, but I thank the Lord I got a home and got a little income* "My children canft help me ainft got nothinf to help with but a little washing My daughter been bustin1 the suds for a livin1 fbout thirty-two years now* "I never vent to school* I y dad pat me to work after freedom and f then when schools got so numerous, I got too big* Ain9t but one thing I want to learn this side of the River, is to read the Bible* I wants to confirm Jesus9 words* "The fusf place we went after we left the home place durin9 of the war, we went to Wolf Creek* And then they pressed fem so close we went to Bed River* And they pressed fem so close agftin we went to Texas and that9 s where we was when freedom come* _ "That was in July and they closed the crap (crop) and then six weeks 9 fore Christmas they loaded the wagons and started back to Arkansas* We come back to the Johnson place and stayed there three years, then my father rented the Alexander place on the Tamo* "I stayed right there till I married* I married quite young, but I had a good husband* I ain9t sayin9 this just 9cause he9s sleepin9 but ever9body will tell you he was good to me* Made a good livin1 and I wore what I wanted to* "He come from South Carolina way before the war* Come from Abbeville* They was emigratin1 the folks* ~ "I tell you all I can, but I won9t tell you nothin9 but the truth*" Interviewed s Comment Owns her home and lives on the income from rental property* Interviewer Person Interviewed Age lira* Bernice Bowden Clarioe Jackson 1738 Virginia Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 84 "las I here in slavery days? Veil, I remember when the soldiers went to war# Oh, I9m old I ainft no baby* Bat I been well taken oare of I been treated well* "I was bred and born right here in Arkansas and been livin1 here all the tine fcept when they said the Yankees was eonin9* I know we was just closin9 up a crop* They put us in wagons and carried us to Volf Creek in Texas and then they earried us to Bed Biver* That was because it would be longer 9 fore we found out we was free and they would get more work out a us* "Old mastervs name was Bobert Johnson and they called him Bob* "After freedom they brought us back to Arkansas and put the colored folks to workin9 on the shares* Yes9m they said they got their share* They looked like they was well contented* They stayed three or four years* Ve was treated more kinder and them that was not big enough to work was let go to school* I went to sehool awhile and then I had a hard spell of sickness it was this slow fever* I was siok five or six weeks and it was a long time ffore I could get my health so I didn9t try to go to school no more* Seemed like I forgot everything I knowed* "When I was fifteen I got tired of workin9 so hard so I got married, but I found out things was wusser* But my husband was good to me* s. Yea ma'm, he was a good man and alee to me* & was a good worker* Ha vas deputy assessor under Mr. Zriplett and ha waa a deputy sheriff and then ha was a magistrate* Oh, ha was a up-to-date man. He vent to aehool after we was married and wanted me to go bat I thought too maeh of ay childun* Ihen he died, 'bout two years ago, he left me this house and two rent houses* Yea ma'm, he was a good man* "They ain*t nothin' to this here younger generation* Sid you ever see 'em goin' so fast? They von't take time to let you tell 'em anything* They is in a hurry* The world is too fast for me, hut thank the Lord my ohildun ia all settled* I got some nleoes and nephews though that ia goin* too fast* Yes'm, I'm get tin' along all right* I ain't got nothin' to plain of." cobh 5 Interviewer Person interviewed Agfi Mrs* Bernlcc Bowdan Israel Jackson 3509 abort Second, Pisa ELuff, Arkansas 78 "Hy name'a Israel Jackson* So ma'am, I wasn't born in Arkansaa born in Taller Bush County, Mississippi -August da third, I860* " j old master? Called him General General Bradford* I don't know Hr where ha was but he was gone soaawhere* Don't know her naae-wjuat called her missis. "Yas'a, I waa big enough to work* Dey had as to lead out my young aster's horse on da grass* I had a halter on it and one tlaa I laid down and want to sleep* I had da rope tiad to ay leg and when it cons twelve o'clock de horae drag me clear to da house* Ho aa'aa, I didn't wake up till I got to da house* It was ay young master* s saddle horae* "Yas'a, I knowed day was a war 'cause da men come past just as thick* Ho'm, I wasn't afraid* I kept out of de way* Old missis wouldn't let ua get in de way* I 'neaber dey stopped dere and told us we was free* Lota of de folks went off but ay mother kept workin' in de field, and ay father didn't leave* "Old master had ua go by his name* Dat's what dey called 'ea all de hands cm de place* "I thought from boyhood he was awful eruel* Didn't 'low ua ehillun in de white folks' house at all* Had one woman dat cooked* Dey was fifty or a hundred ehillun on de place and dey had a big long trougi dog oat of a log and each chile had a spoon and he'd eat out of dat trough* Tas*at I *aaaber dat* Xat greens and milk* As for meat, we didn't know what dat was* ft*. My wother would go huntin* at night and get a 'possum to feed us and sometimes old master would ketch her and take it away from her and give her a pieoe of salt neat* Bat scrotimes she'd hury a 9po68um till ahe had a ehance to cook it* And deyfd take saekin9 like you make cotton sacks andl dye it and make us clothes* "When de conch would blow at four o9 clock every mornin9 everybody got up and got ready for de field* Dey9d take dere chillun up to dat big long house* Vhen mother went to de field I9d go along and lead de horse till I got to where dey was workin9, then Ifd sit down and let the horse eat* I was young and itfs been so long* "No ma'am, I never went to school* Mo ma'am, canvt read or write* Hever had no schools as I remember* "Dey stayed on de place after freedom* Ho ma'am, dey did not pay 9en* I9ee old but I ain't forgot dat* Bey fed theirselves by steal in9 and gettin9 things in de woods* "After dem Blue Jackets come in dere General Bradford never did come back and our folks stayed dere and when dey did leave dey went to Sunflower County* After dat we got along better* "How many brothers and sisters? I bflieve I had five* "I stayed with my parents till I was grown* No ma9amf dey didn9t 9low us to marry* Vhen we was twenty we was neither man nor boy; we was considered a hobble~de~hoy* And when we got to be twenty-one we was considered a man and your parents turned you loose, a man* So I left home and went to Louisiana* I stayed dare a year, then I want back to Mississippi and worked* I ccme here to Arkansas twenty-six years ago* Is die Jefferson? Well, I come here to de west end* "Since I been here I been workin9 at de foundry--Dilley9 s foundry* 6 " *Bout two yeara ago I got sick and broke up and not able to work and Mr* Dilley give me a pension ten dollars a month* But de wages and hour got here now and I don't know what hefs gwine do* When de next pay-day comes he might give me somethinf and he might not* *Missf de white folks has done so bad here dat I donft know what deyfs gwine a do* Mr* Ed and his father been takin9 care of me for twenty years* Dey sure has been takin9 care of me* Miss, I can9t find no fault of Mr* 3d Dilley at all* "I can do a little light work but when I work half a day I get nervous and can9t do nothin9. "No ma'am, I never did vote* Dey didnft 9low us to vote* Well, if dey did I didn9t know it and I didn9t vote* "Well, Miss, I think de young folks is near to de dogs and de dogs ought to have 9em and bury 9em* Miss, I don9t 9cept none of 9em* I wouldn9t want to go on and tell you how dey has treated me* Dey ain9t no use to ask 9 cause I ain9t gwine tell you* The people is more wicked and more wuss and ever9thing* I don9t think nothin9 of 'em* "Miss, let me tell you de only folks dat showed me any friendly is Mr* Sd Dilley* I worked out dere night and day, Sunday and Monday any time he called* "Miss, I ain't never seen any jail house; I ainft never been to police headquarters; I ain9t never been called a witness in my life* I try te live right, all I know, end if I do wrong it9s somethin9 I don9t know* I ain9t had dat much trouble in my life* "I went up here to Judge Brewster to see about de pension and he said, 9 Got a home?9 I said, 9Yes.9 f Got it paid for?9 f Yes.f 9 Got a deed?9 9 Yes*9 f Got a abstract?9 9 Yes*9 9 Well, bring it up here and sign it and go get de pension*9 "But I wouldn't do it* Miss, I would starve till I was as stiff as a peckerwood peckin9 at a hole 9fore I9d sign anything on my deed* Miss, I wouldn't put a scratch on my deed* I wouldn't trust 'em9 wouldn't trust 'em if dey was behind a Winchester*" Interviewer Person Interviewed Age Samuel S* Taylor Lula Jackson 1808 Valentine Street, Little Rock, Arkansas 79 ? "I was bom in Alabama, Russell County, on a place called Sand Ridge, about seven miles out from Columbus, Georgia* Bred and born in Alabama* Come out here a young gal* Wasnft married when I come out here* Harried when a boy from Alabama met me though* Got his picture* Lola Williamst That was my name before I married* How many sisters do you have? Thatfe another question they ask all the time; I suppose you want to know, too* Two* Where are they? Thatfs another one of them questions they always askinf me* You want to know it, too? I got one in Clarksdale, Mississippi * And the other one is in Philadelphia; no, I mean in Fhilipp city, Tallahatchie (county)* Her name is Bertha Owens and she lives in Fhilipp city* What state is Fhilipp city in? That9ll be the next question* It is in Mississippi, sir* Now is thar anything else youfd like to know? "My mother9 s name was Bertha Williams and my father9 s name was Fred Williams* I don9t know nothing fbout mama9 s mother* Yes, her name was Crecie* My father9 s mother was named Sarah* She got killed by lightning* Crecie9s husband was named John Oliver* Sarah9 s husband was named William Daniel* Sarly Hurt was mama9 s master* He had an awful name and he was an awful man* He whipped you till he9d bloodied you and blistered you* Then he would cut open the blisters and drop sealing-wax in them and in the open wounds made by the whips* 2 "When the Yankees come in, hie wife run in and got in the bed between the mattresses* I don't see why it didn't kill her* I don't know how she stood it* Sarly died when the Yankees come in* He was already sick* The Yankees come in and said, 'Did you know you are on the Yankee line?1 "He saidt 9Not by God, when did that happen?1 "They said, 'It happened tonight, G y o u * 1 "And he turned right on over and done everything on hisself and died* He had a eatin' cancer on his shoulder* Schooling, Ste* "My mother had so many children that I didn't get to go to school much* She had nineteen children, and I had to stay home and work to help take care of them* I can't write at all* "I went to school in Alabama, 'round on a colored man's place Mr* Winters* That was near a little town called Fort Mitchell and Silver Blm where they put the men in jail* I was a child* Mrs* Staith, a white woman from the North, was the second teacher that I had* The first was Mr* Groler* My third teacher was a man named Mr* Nelson* All of these was white* They wasn't colored teachers* After the War, that was* I have the book I used when I went to school* Here is the little Arithmetic I used* Here is the Blue Back Speller* I have a McOuffy's Primer too* I didn't use that* I got that out of the trash basket at the white people's house where I work* One day they throwed it out* That is what they use now, ain't it? "Here is a book my husband give me* He bought it for me because I told him I wanted a second reader* He said, 'Well, I'll go up to the store and git you one*' Plantation store, you know* He had that charged to his account* "I used to study my lesson* I turned the whole class down onee* It was a class in spelling* I turned the class down on 'Publication*--p-u-b1-i^-a-t-i-o-n* They couldn't spell that* But I'll tell the world they could spell it the next day* "My teacher had a great big crocus sack, and when she got tired of whipping them9 she would put than in the sack* She never did put me in that sack one time* I got a whipping mosv every day* I used to fight, and when I wasn't fight in' for myself, I'd be fighting for other children that would be scared to fight for theirselves, and I'd do their fighting for them* "That whippin' in your hand is the worst thing you ever got* Brother, it hurts* I put a teacher in jail that'd whip one of my children in the hand* Occupational History and family "My mama said I was six years old when the War ended and that I was bora on the first day of October* During the War, I run up and down the yard and played, and run up and down the street and played; and when I would make too much noise, they'd whip me and send me back to my mother and tell her not to whip me no more, because they had already done it* I would help look after my mother's children* There were five children younger than I was* Everywhere she went, the white people would want me to nurse their children, because they said, 9That little rawboneded one is goin' to be the smartest one you got* I want her*' And my ma would say: " 'You ain't goin' to git 'er ' She had two other girls Martha and Sarah* They was older than me, and she would hire them out to do nursing* They worked for their master during slave time, and they worked for money after slavery* 4 "My mama's first husband was killed in a rassliaf (wrestling) match* It used to be that one man would walk up to another and say, 'You ain't no good*' And the other one would say, fAll right, le'a see*' And they would rassle* "My mother's first husband was pretty old* His name was Myers* A young man come up to him one Sunday morning when they were gettin' commodities* They got sorghum, meat, meal, and flour; if what they got wasn't enough, then they would go out and steal a hog* Sometime they'd steal it anyhow; they got tired of eatin' the same thing all the time* Hurt would whip them for it* Wouldn't let the overseer whip them* Whip them hisself* 'Fraid the overseer wouldn't give them enough* They never could find my grandfather's meat* That was Grandfather William Down* They couldn't find his meat because he kept it hidden in a hole in the ground* It was under the floor of the cabin* "Old Myers made this young man raasle with him* The young fellow didn't want to rassle with him; he said Myers was too old* Myers wasn't my father; he was my mother's first husband* The young man threw him* My*ra wasn't satisfied with that* He wanted to rassle again* The young man didn't want to rassle again* But Myers made him* And the second time, the young man threw him so hard that he broke his collar-bone* My mother was in a family way at the time* He lived about a week after that, and died before the baby was born* "My mother's second husband waa named Fred Williams, and ha was my father* All this was in slavery time* I am his oldest child* He raised all his children and all his stepchildren too* He end my mother lived together for over forty years, until she waa more than seventy* He was much younger than she waa just eighteen years old when he married her* 12 And she was a woman with five children* Bat she was a real wife to him* Him and her would fight, too* She was jealous of him* Wouldn't be none of that with me* Honey, when you hit me once, I'm gone* Ain't no beatin' on me and then sleepin' in the same bed with you* But they fit and then they lived together right on* No matter what happened, his dean clothes were ready whenever he got ready to go out of the house--even if it was just to go to work* His meals were ready whenever he got ready to eat* They were happy together till she died* "But when she died, he killed hisself courtin' . He was a young preacher* He died of pneumonia* He was visiting his daughter and got exposed to the weather and didn't take care of hisself* "Bight after the War, I was hired as a half-a-hand* After that I got larger and was hired as a whole hand, me and the oldest girl* I worked on one faim and then another for yeara* I married the first time when I was fifteen years old* That was almost right after slave time* Four couples of us were married at the same time* They lived close to ae* I didn't want my husband to git in the bed with me when I married the first time* I didn't have no sense* I was a Christian girl* "Frank Sampson was his name* It rained the day we married* I got my feet wet* My husband brought me home and then he turned 'round and went back to where the wedding was* They had a reception, and they danced and had a good time* Sampson could danee, too, but I didn't* A little before day, he come back and said to me I was layin' in the middle of the bed Oit over*' I called to mother and told her he wanted to git in the bed with me* She said, 'Well, let him git in* He's yo'r husband now*' Frank Sampson and me lived together about twenty years before he got killed, and then I married Andrew Jackson* He had children and grandchildren* I don't know what was the matter with old man Jackson* He mas head deacon of the church* Ve only stayed together a year or more* "I have been single ever since 1923, jus' booming 'round white folks and tryin' to work for them and makin' them give ma some thin' to eat* I ain't been tryin' to fin' no man* When I can't fin' no cookin' and washin' and ironin' to do, I used to farm* I can't farm now, and ' course I can't git no work to do to amount to nothin'* They say I'm too old to work* "The Welfare helpa ma* Don't know what I'd do if it wasn't for them* I git seme commodities too, but I don't git any wood* Some people saya they pay house rant, but they never paid none of mine* I had to go to Marianne and git my application straight before I could git any help* They charged me half a dollar to fix out the application* The Welfare wanted to know how I got the money to pay for the application if I didn't have money to live on* I had to git it, and I had to git the money to go to Marianne, too* If I hadn't, I never would have got no help* Husband's Dsath "I told you my first huaband got killed* The mule run away with his plow and throwed him a summerset* His head was where his heels should have been, he said, and the mule dragged him* His chest was crushed, and mashed* His face was cut and dirtied* He lived nine days and a half after he was hurt and couldn't eat one grain of rice* I never left hia bedside 'cept to cook a little broth for him* That's all he would eat just a little broth* "He said to his friend, 'See thla little woman of mine? I hate to leave her* She's just such a good little woman* She ain't got no business in this world without a husband*1 "And his friend said to him, 'Well, yon jaight as well sake up your mind you got to leave her, 9cause you goinY to do it*' "He got hurt on Thursday and I couldn't git a doctor till Friday* Br* Harper, the plantation doctor, had got his house burned and his hands hnrt# So he couldn't come out to help us* Finallyfir*Hodges come* He come from Sunnyside, Mississippi, and he charge me fourteen dollars* H e just made two i trips and he didn't do nothin'* "Bowls and pitchers were in style then* And I always kept a pitcher of clean water in the house* I looked up and there was a bunch of men ccmin' in the house* It was near dark than* They brought Sampson in and carried him to the bed and put him down* I said, 'Vhat's the matter with Frank?' And they said, 'The mule drug him*' And they put him on the bed and went on out* I dipped a handkerchief in the water and wet it and put it in his mouth and took out great gobs of dust where the mule had drug him in the dirt* They didn't nobody help me with him then; I was there alone with him* "I started to go for the doctor but he called me back and said it wasn't no use for me to go* Couldn't git the doctor then, and if I could, he'd charge too much and wouldn't be able to help him none nohow* So we wasn't able to git the doctor till the next day, and then it wasn't the plantation doctor* We had planted fifteen acres in cotton, and we had ordered five hundred pounds of meat for our winter supply and laid it up* But Frank never got to eat none of it* They sent three or four hands over to git their meals with me, and they et up all the meat and all the other supplies we had* I didn't want it* It wasn't no use to me when Frank was gone* After they paid the doctor's bill and took out for the supplies we waa supposed to git, they handed me thirty-three dollars and thirty-five cents* That waa all I got out of fifteen acres of cotton* 19 8o Havelings "I sew with rav'lin9s* Here is some ravflin's I use* I pull that out of tobacco sacks, flour sacks, anything, when I don't have the money to buy a spool of thread* I sew right on just as good with the ravflinfs as if it was thread* Tobacco sacks make the best ravflinfs* I got two bags full of tobacco sacks that I ainft unraveled yet* There is a man down town who saves them for me* When a man pulls out a sack he says, 'Save that sack for me, I got an old colored lady that makes thread out of tobacco sacks*' These is what he has give me* (She showed the Interviewer a sack which had fully a gallon of little tobacco sacks in it~ed*) "They didn't use rav'lin's in slave time* They spun the thread* Then they balled it* Then they twisted it, and then they sew with it* They didn't use ravflinvs then, but they used them right after the War* "My mama used to say, 'Corns here, Lugenia.9 She and me would work together* She wanted me to reel for her* Ain't you never seen these reels? They turn like a spinning-wheel, but it is made indifferent* You turn till the thing pops, then you tie it; then it's ready to go to the loom* It is in hanks after it leaves the reel and it is pretty, too* Present Condition "I used to live in a four-room house* They charged me seven dollars and a half a month for it* They fixed it all up and then they wanted to charge ten dollars; and it wouldn't have been long before they went up to fifteen* So I moved* This place ain't so much* I pays five dollars and a half for it* When it rains, I have to go outside to keep from gittin' too wet* But I cut down the weeds all around the place* I planted some flowers in the front yard, and some vegetables in the back* That all helps me out* Vhen I go to git commodities, I walk to the place* I can't stand the way these people act on the cars* Of course, when I have a bundle, I have to use the car to cone back* I just put it on my head and walk down to the car line and git on* Lord, my mother used to carry some bundles on her head*19 Interviewer's Comment According to the marriage license issued at the time of her last marriage in 1922, Andrew Jackson was sixty years old, and sister Jaokson was fifty-two* But Andrew Jackson was eighty when slater Jackson married him, she says* Who can blame him for saying sixty to the clerk? Sister Jackson admits that she was six years old during the War and states freely and accurately details of those times, but what wife whose huaband puts only sixty in writing would be willing to write down more than fifty-two for herself? Bight now at more than seventy-nine, she is spry and jaunty and witty and good humored* Her house ia as clean as a pin, and her yard is the same* The McGuffy's Primer which she thinks is used now is a modernized Mefluffy printed in 1908* The book bought for her by her first husband is an original HcOuffy's Second Reader* 80507 #682 Interviewer Samel S+ Taylor Person interviewed Age 79 1808 Valentine Street, Little Rock, Arkansas Gccupat ion Field hand Whippings "Early Hart had an overseer named Sanders. He tied my sister Crecie to a stump to whip her* Crecie was stout and heavy. She was a grown young woman and big and strong* Sanders had two dogs with him in case he would have trouble with anyone. When he started layinf that lash on Creciefs back, she pulled up that stump and whipped him and the doga both. "Old Early Hart came up and whipped her hisself* Said, 'Oh, you're too bad for the overseer to whip, huh?1 "Wasn't no such things as lamps in them days* Jus' used pine knots* When we quilted, we jus' got a good knot and lighted it* And when that one was nearly burnt out, we would light another one from it* "We had a old lady named 'Aunt' Charlotte; she wasn't my aunt, we jus' called her that* She used to keep the children when the hands were working* If she liked you she would treat your children well* If she didn't like you, she wouldn't treat them so good* Her name was Charlotte Harley* She was too old to do any good in the field; and she had to take care of the babies* If she didn't like the people, she would leave the babies1 napkins on all day long, wet and filthy* "My papa's mama, Sarah, was killed by lightning* She was ironing and was in a hurry to get through and get the supper on for her master, Early Hurt* I was the oldest child, and I always was scared of lightning* A dreadful storm was goinf on* I was under the bed and I heard the thunder bolt and the crash and the fall* I heard mama scream* I crawled out from under the bed and they had grandma laid out in the middle of the floor* Mama said, 'Child, all the friend you got in the world is dead*1 Barly Hurt was standin' over her and pouring buckets of water on her* When the doctor come, he said, fYou done killed her now* If you had jus* laid her out on the ground and let the rain fall on her, she would have come to, but you done drownded her now*1 She wouldn't have died if it hadn't been for them buckets of water that Early Hurt throwed in her face* "Honey, they ain't nothin' as sweet to drink out of as a gourd* Take the seeds out* Boil the gourd* Scrape it and sun it* There ain't no taste left* They don't use gourds now " Interviewer's Comment Violent death followed Lula Jackson's family like an implacable avenger* Her father's mother was struck and killed by lightning* Her mother's first husband was thrown to his death in a wrestling match* Her own husband was dragged and kicked to death by a mule* Her brother-inlaw, Jerry Jackson, was killed by a horse* But Sister Jackson is bright and cheery and full of faith in God and man, and utterly without bitternesso 80350 Interviewer Person interviewed Age Thomas Slaore Lacy Mary Jackson. Bussellvllle, Arkansas 75? " f name is Mary Jackson, and I was bom in Miller Grove, Hunt Iy County, Texas daring the War* No sir, I do not know the year* Oar master9 s name was Dixon, and he was a wealthy plantation owner, had lots of property in Hunt Comity* "The days after the War called the Beconstruction days, I believe were sure exciting, and I can 9mind1 a lot of things the people did, one of them a big barbecue celebration coamemoratin' the return of peace* ^ They had speeches, and music by the band and there were a lot of soldiers carrying guns and wearing some kind of big breastplates* The white child* ren tried to scare us by telling us the soldiers were coming to kill us little colored children* The band played 9Dixie9 and other familiar tunes that the people played and sang in those days* "Yes sir, I remember the ELu dux KLan* They sure kept us frightened and we would always run and hide when we heard they were comin9* I don't know of any special harm they done but we were afraid of em* "I have been a member of the A* M Church for forty years, and my children belong to the same church* "No sir, I don't know if the government ever promised our folks anything money, or land, or anything else* "Don't ask me anything about this 9new generation' business* They're simply too much for me; I cannot understand em at all* 2. Son91 know whether they are earning or going* la our day the parent a ware not near so lenient as they are today* I think ouch of the waywardness of the youth today should be blamed on the parents for being too slack in their training*" HOIK: Mrs. Jackson and her son live in a lovely cottage, and her taste in dress and general deportment are a credit to the race* # 3072G , j"v> # Interviewer Person interviewed Age Miss Irene Robertson Tfrylor Jackson. Bdmondson Arkansas 88? "I was bom two miles from Baltimore, Maryland* I was a good size boy* My father carried me to see the war flag go up* There was an awful crowd, one thousand people, there* I had two masters in this country besides in Virginia* Vhen war was declared there was ten boats of niggers loaded at Washington and shipped to New Orleans* Ve stayed in the 1 Nigger Traders Yard9 there about three months* But we was not to be sold* Master Cupps i fbulps?) owned father, mother and all of us. If they gained the victory he was to take us back to Virginia* I never knowed my grandparents* The yard had a tall brick wall around it* Ve had a bunk room, good cotton pads to sleep on and blankets* On one side they had a wall fixed to go up on from the inside and twelve platforms* You could see them being sold on the inside and the crowd on the outside* Vhen they auctioned them off they would come, pick out what they wanted to sell next and fill them blocks again* They sold niggers all day long* They come in another drove they had, had men out buying over the country* They come in thick wood doors with iron nails bradded through, fastened on big hinges, fastened it with chains and iron bars* The house was a big red brick house* Ve didn9t get none too much to eat at that place* I reckon one side was three hundred yard long of the wall and the house was that long* Some of them in there cut their hands off with a knife or ax* Veil, they couldn't sell them* Nobody would buy them* I don't know what they ever done with them* Plenty of them would cut their hand off if they could get something to cut with to keep from being sold* "We stayed in that place till Wyley Lions {Lyons?J come and got us in wagons. He kept us for Master Cupps* Mother was a house girl in Virginia*N She was one more good cook* I started hoeing and picking cotton in ' Virginia for master* When I was fourteen years old I done the same in Mississippi with Wiley Lyons in Mississippi close to Canton. In Canton, Mississippi Wiley Lyons had the biggest finest brick house in that country. He had two farms* In Bolivar County was the biggest* I could hear big shooting from Canton fifteen miles away* He wasn't mean and he didn't allow the overseers to be mean* Milliard Christmas a neighbor] was mean to his folks* My father hired his own time. He raised several ten acre gardens and watermelons* He paid Mr. Cupp in Virginia. He cane to see our folks how they was getting along* "A Negro on a joining farm run off* They hunted him with the dogs and they found him at a log. Heap his legs froze, so the white doctor had to cut them off* He was on Solomon's farms. After that he got to be a cooper* He made barrels and baskets things he could do sittin' in his chair* They picked him up and made stumps for him* Some folks was mean* "My mother was Rachel and my father was Andrew Jackson* I had three brothers fought in the War* I was too young* They talked of taking me in a drummer boy the year it ceased. My nephew give me this uniform* It is warm and it is good. My breeches needs some repairs reason I ain't got them on. |ke has worn a blue uniform for years and years ed^J "There was nixie of us children* I got one girl very low now. Shefs in Memphis. I been in Arkansas 45 years* I come here jesf drifting look* ing out a good location* I never had no dealings with the Kn KLUJC. I been farming all my life. Yes, I did like it. I never owned a home nor no land. I never voted in my life* I had nine children of my own but only my girl living now* "Nine or ten years ago I could work every minute. Times was goodl good! Could get plenty work wood to cut and ditching* It is not that way now. I can't do a day's work now^ I'm failing fast. I feel it* "Young folks can make a living if they work and try. Some works too hard and some don't hardly work. Work is scarcer than it ever was to my knowledge* Times changed and changed the young folks* Mother died two or three years after the War. My father died first year we come to Mississippi* {We went by and took the old Negro to West Memphis. Prom there he could take a jitney to Memphis to see his daughter edJJ "I ain't never been 'rested. I ain't been to jail. Nearly well be as so confined with the mud* JWe assured him it was nicer to ride in the car than be in jail edQ "I couldn't tell how many;I ever seen sold. I seen some sold in Virginia, I reckon, or Maryland one off the boats* They kept them tied* They was so scared they might do anything, jump in the big waters* They couldn't talk but to some and he would tell white folks what he said* (Zhey used an interpreter^ Some couldn't understand one another if they come from far apart in the foreign country. Slavery wasn't never bad on me* I never was sold off from my folks and I had warmer, better clothes 4. 'an I have now* I had plenty to eat, morefan I has nov generally* I had better In slavery than I have now* That Is the truth* Ifm telling the truth, I did* Some didn't* One neighbor got mad and give each hand one ear of corn nine or ten o'clock* They take it to the cook house and get it a. made up in hominy. Some would be so hungry they would prfrch the corn rather 'an wait* He'd give 'em meal to make a big kettle of mush* When he was good he done better* Give 'em more for supper* "Freedom Soldiers come by two miles long look like* We followed them* There was a crowd following* Wiley Lyons had no children; he adopted a boy and a girl* Me and the boy was growing up together* Me and the white boy (fifteen or sixteen years old, I reckon we was) followed them* They said that was Grant's army. I don't know. 'That made us free' they told us* The white boy was free, he just went to see what was happening* We sure did see! We went by Canton to Vicksburg when fighting quit* Folks rejoiced, and then went back wild* Staart ones soon got work* Soms got furnished a little provisions to help keep them from starving* Mr. Wiley Lyons come got us after five months* We hung around my brother that had been in the War* I don't know if he was a soldier or a waiter* We worked around Master Lyons' house at Canton till he died* I started farming again with him* "I get $8 a month pension and high as things is that is a powerful blessing but it ain't enough to feed me good* It cost more to go after the commodities up at Marion than they come to (amount to in valuej*" 25 30753 ... Interviewer Person interviewed Miss Irene Robertson Virginia Jackson. Helena. Arkansas Aae. 74 "Mother said I was born the same year peace was declared* I was born before the Civil Var close, I reckon* I was bom in Tunica, Mississippi* Mother belong to Mistress Cornelia and Master John Hood. He come from Alabama in wagons and brought mother and whole lot of 9 em, she said, to Tunica, Miasisaippi* My mother and father never sold* They told me that* She said she was with tha master and he give her to father* He ask her did she want him and aak him if ha want her* They lived on joint places* They slept together on Wednesday and Saturday nigits* He stayed at Hood's place on Sunday* They was owned by different mastera* They didn't never say 'bout stepping over no broom* He was a Prince* Vhen he died she married a man named Russell* I never heard her say what his name was* I y father was f Mathew Prince* They was both field hands* I never knowed my father* I called my stepfather popper* I always did say mother* "Mother said her maater didn't tall them it was freedceu Other folks got told in August* They passed it 'round secretly* Some Yankees corns asked if they was getting paid for picking cotton in September* They told their master* They told the Yankees 'yea9 'eauaa they was afraid they would be run off and no place to go* They said Master Hood paid them well for their work at cotton aelling time* He never premised them nothing* She said he never told one of tham to leave or to atay* He let 9am be* I reckon they got fed* I wore cotton sack dresses* It wasnft bagging* It was heavy stiff cloth* 2. "Mother and her second husband case to Torrest City* They hoped they could do better* I ocoe too* Z worked in the field all ny whole life * cepting six years I worked in a laundry, I washed and ironed* I aa a fine ironer* If I was younger I could get all the sens' shirts I oould do now* I do a few but I got neuralgia in ay axms and shoulders* "I don't believe in talking 'bout ay race* They always been lazy folks and smart folks, and they still is* The present tines is good for as* I*a so thankful. I get ten dollars and sane help, not much* I don't go after it* I lot some that don't get much as X get have it* I told 'em to do that way** 27 Interviewer Person interviewed Age Mrs* Bernlce Bowden William Jackson Route 69 Box 81, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 84 "Me? Well, I was born July 18, 1853* Now you can figure that up* "I was sold four times in slavery times* I was sold through the nigger traders and you know they didn't keep you long* "I was bom in Tennessee, raised in Mississippi, and been here in Arkansas up and down the Arkansas River ever since I was fifteen* A fellow, bought me in Tennessee and sold me to a fellow named Abe Collins in Mississippi* He sold me to Or* Maloney and then Winn and Trimble in Hempstead County bought me* They run a tanyard* "I went to school one day in my life* My third master's children learned me my ABC's in slavery times* I'm not educated but I can read* Read the Bible and something like that* "The Ku KLux run me one night* They come to the door and I went out the window* They went to my master's tanyard in broad open day and took leather* Oh, I been all through the roughness* But the Lord has blessed me ever since I been in this world. I can see good and hear good and get about* "I come here to Arkansas with some refugees, and I been up and down the river ever since* "In slavery times I had plenty to eat, such as ftwas* Had biscuits on Sunday made out of shorts* z. I lived with one man, Br* Moloney, who was pretty cruel* I run away from him once, but he caught ma fore night* Bit me in a little house on bread and water for three or four days and then he sold ma* Said he wouldn't have a nigger that would run away* Otherwise I been treated pretty well* "I come to Pine Bluff in 9 82* Last place I farmed was at what they call the Nichol place* "I used to vote Bepublican~wouldn' t let us vote nothin' else* In this country they won't let niggers vote in the primary 'cause they can vote in the presidential election* I held one office just ice of the peace* "If the younger generation don't change, the Lord go in' to put curses on em* That's just what's goin' to come of am* More you do for em the worse they is* Don't think about the future Just today*" 30727 Interviewer Person Interviewed Age Miss Irene Robertson Lawson Jamar, Bdmondson. Arkansas 66 "Papa had twelve children and when he died he leff two and now I am all the big family left* "Mama was born in Huntsville, Alabama. I was born there too. She was Liza, b'long to Tom and Unis Martin. Papa bflong to Mistress Sarah and Jack Jamar. They had to work hard. They had to do good work. They had to not slight their work. Papa's main job was to carry water to the hands. He said it kept him on the go. They had more than one water boy. They had to go to the wash hole before they went to bed and wash clean. The men had a place and the women had their place* They didn't have to get in if it was cold but they had to wash off. "They hauled a wagon load of axes or hoes and lef' 'em in the field so they could get 'em. Then they would haul plows, hoes or axes to the shop to be fixed up. They had two or three sets* They worked from early till late. They had a cook house* They cooked at their own houses when the work wasn't pushing* When they got behind they would work in the moonlight* If they got through they all went and help some neighbor two or three nights and have a big supper sometimes* They done that on Saturday nights, go home and sleep all day Sunday* "If they didn't have time to wash and clean the houses and the beds some older women would do that and tend to the babies* They had a hard time during the War. It was hard after the War. Papa brought me to this country to farm. He fanned till he started sawmilling for Chappman Dewy at Marked Tree* Then he swept out and was in the office to help about# He never owned nothing* He come and I farmed* He helped a little* He was so old* He talked more about the War and slavery* I always have farmed. Farmed all my life* "I don't farm now. I got asthma and cripple with rheumatism. What my wife and children can't do ainft done now. jThrea children^} I don't get no help but I applied for it. "Present times is all right where a man can work. The present genera** tion rather do on heap less and do less work. They ain't got manners and raisin' like I had. They don't know how to be polite. We tri*es to learn NOTE: The woman was black and so was the cripple Negro m a n j t h e i r house was clean, floors, bed, tables, chairs* Very good warm house. They couldn't remember the old tales the father told to tell them to me* Interviewer Person interviewed Age Thomas Elmore Lucy Nellie James, Russellville, Arkansas 72 "Nellie James is my name* Yes, Mr* D. B. James was my husband, and he remembered you very kindly. They call me fAnnt Nellie.f I was born in Starkville, Ouachita County, Mississippi the twentynainth of Marchf in 1866, just a year after the War closed* My parents were both owned by a plantation farmer in Ouachita County, Mississippif but we came to Arkansas a good many years ago* "My husband was principal of the colored school here at Russellville for thirty-five years, and peoplef both white and black, thought a great deal of him* We raised a family of six children, five boys and a girl, and they now live in different states, soms of them in California. One of my sons is a doctor in Chicago and is doing well* They were all well educated* Mr. James saw to that of course* "So far as I remember from what my parents said, the master was reasonably kind to all his slaves, and my husband said the same thing about his own master although he was quite young at the time they were freed* (Yes sir, you see he was born in slavery.) "I was too young to remember much about the Ku HLux Klan, but I remember we used to be afraid of them and we children wculd run and hide when we heard they were coming* "No sir, I have never voted, because we always had to pay a dollar for the privilege and I never seemed to have the dollar (laughingly) to spare at election time* Mr* James voted the Republican ticket regularly though* "All our family were Missionary Baptists* I united with the Baptist church when ^thirteen years old* "I think the young people of both races are growing wilder and wilder* The parents today are too slack in raising them too lenient* I don't know where they are headed, what they mean, what they want to do, or what to expect of them* And I'm too busy and have too heard a time trying to make ends meet to keep up with their carryings-on*" NOTE: Mrs* Nellie James, widow of Prof* D. B* James, one of the most successful Negro teachers who ever served in Russellville, is a quiet, refined woman, a good housekeeper, and has reared a large and successful family* She speaks with good, clear diction, and has none of the brogue that is characteristic of the colored race of the South* 30838 Interviewer Samuel S* Tieylor Robert James 4325 V. Eighth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas Gccupat ion Cook 66. or older Person interviewed Age *I was born in Lexington, Mississippi, in the year 1872* My mother's name was Florida Hawkins* Florida James was her slavery name* David Jamas was her old master. That was in Mississippi--the good old country! People hate it because they don't like the name but it was a mighty good country when I was there* The white people there ware better to the colored people when I was there than they are here* But there is a whole lots of places that is worse than Arkansas* "I have been here forty-eight years and I haven't had any trouble with nobody, and I havj owned three homes in my time* My nephew and my brother happened to meet up with each other in France* They thougit about ma and wrote and told me about it* And I writ to my sister in Chicago following up their information and got in touch with my people* Didn't find them out till the great war started* Had to go to Europe to find my relatives* My sister's people and mine too were born in Illinois, but my mother and two sisters and another brother were bora in Miasissippi* Their kin born in Illinois were half-brothers and so on* Refugeeing Ghosts *I heard ay mother say that her master and them had to refugee them to keep them from the Yankees* She told a ghost tale on that* I guess it must have bean true* z. "She said they all hitched up and put thsm in the wagon and went to driving down the road* Night fell and they came to a big two-story house* They went to bed* The house was empty, and they couldn't raise nobody; so they just camped there for the night* After they went to bed, big balls of fire came rolling down the stairs* They all got scared and run out of the house and camped outside for the night* There wasn't no more sleeping in that house* "Some people believe in ghosts and some don't* Vhat do you believe? This is what I have seen myself* Mules and horses were running 'round screaming and hollering every night* One day, I was walking along when I saw a mule big as an elephant with ears at least three feet long and eyes as big as auto lamps. He was standing right in the middle of the road looking at me and making no motion to move* I was scared to death, but I stooped down to pick up a stone* It wasn't but a second* But when I raised up, he had vanished* He didn't make a sound* He just disappeared In a second* That was in the broad open daylight* That was what had been causing all the confusion with the mules and horses* "When I first married I used to room with an old lady named Johnson* Time we went to bed and put the light out, something would open the doors* Finally I got scared and used to tell my wife to get up end close the doors* Finally she got skittish about it* There used to be the biggest storms around there and yet you couldn't see no thin'. There wasn't no rain nor nothin'* Just sounds and noises like storms* My wife comes to visit me sometimes now* " y mother says there wasn't any such thing as marriage in slave times* ty Old master jus' said, 'There's your husband, Florida*' " Little Rock District 3G5t FOLKLORE SUBJECTS Name of Interviewer Irene Robertson Subject HISTORY OF ELLIS JEFFERSON Story - Information (mGRO) (if not onough space on this page add page) He has his second eyesight and his hair is short and white* He is a black skin, briglvt>eyed old man* "Uncle Jeff* said he remembered / V when the Civil Yfar had ended they passed by where he lived with teams, wagons filled, and especially the artillery wagon* They were carrying them back to Yfashington* His mother was freed from Mrs* Nancy Marshall (% of Ronoke, Va* She moved and brought his mother, he and his sister, Ann, b to Holly Springs, Miss* The county was named for his ^stress* Marshall County Mississippi* In 1868 they moved to 4 miles of DeY/itt and 10 miles of Arkansas A Post* Later they moved to Kansas and near Wichita then back to Marshall, OL Texas* His sister has four sons down there* He thinks she is still living* His Mistress went back to Ronoke, Va*j and his mother died at Marshall* Tom Marshall was his Master's name, but he seems to have died in the Civil V ar* This old Uncle Jeff lived in Alab ama arl has preached rf there and in northern Mississippi and near Helena, Arkansas* He helped cook at Helena in a hotel* He preaches some but the WPA supports him now. Uncle Jeff can't remember his dreams he said "The Bible says, young men dream dreams and old men see visions*" This Information given by Ellis Jefferson (Uncle Jeff) Place of Residence Hazen, Arkansas Occupation Superanuated Minister of the M* E* Church AGE 77 -2- He had a real vision once, he was going late one afternoon to get his mules up and he heard a voice tfI have a voice I want you to complete. Carry my word." H was a member of the churoh but he made a profession and a year later was ordained into the ministry. He believes in dreams. Says they are warnings. Uncle Jeff says he has written some poetry but it has all been lost* Y{hen anyone dies the sexton goes to the church and tolls the bell as many times as the dead person is old* They take the body to the churoh for the night and they gather there and watch* He believes the soul rises from the ground on the Resurrection Day. He believes some people can put a "spell11 on other people. He said that was witchery* 37 38 30637 FOLKLORE SUMSCIS Hot WwfllMi .ab^ s> S. Taylor M^se^ Je-ffvfe^ Story Iaftera ** _ (If not nou i tpwo onttilapeg* "I was born in 1856. page*) My age was kept with the cattle. 1 As a j5 rule, you know, slaves were chattels. There was a fire and the Bible in which the ages were kept was lost* The man who owned me coul ( Little Rock, Arkansas Age s 2 FOLKLORE SUBJECTS Name of Interviewer S- 5. Taylor Subject Story - Information ( If not enough space on this page add page.) Part of the state, Batesville, a Southern man who took sides with the North in the war. North somewheres. Brooks was a Methodist preacher from the When Grant recognized the Baxter faction whom the old ex-slaveholders supported because he was a Southerner and sided with Baxter against Brooks, it put the present Democratic party in power, and they passed the Grandfather law barring Negroes from voting. Negroes were intimidated By the Ku Klux. They were counted out. Ballot boxes were burned and ballots were destroyed. ally Uegroes got discouraged and quit trying to vote. " * P.6.S.PCncUWk^W^d ^ , , , ** MWav^ fcveiu^et+ej Uev/teviavct-Governor , fe . ij wv^pired o-' U . .~ Well ~ ^ Je-kev us* It was the most beautifulest place I ever see* All the cabins was whitewashed good. The trees was big and the whole place was just lovely. It waa old man Jeff Davis' place* They fed us good, gave us lots to eat* They sent up north, the Yankees did, and g d c p young white of lady to come down and teach us. I didn't learn nothing* They had our school near what was the grave yard. I didn't learn tombstones. folks to me* cause I was too busy looking around at the They was beautiful. They looked just like Looks like I ought have learned. They was mighty good to send somebody down to learn us that wa I ought have learned, it looks ungrateful, but I didn't* 4 Hudgins Mrs. Fanny Johnson My mother died on that place* It was a mighty nice place* We farmed* do* Later on we come to Arkansas* Looked like it was all we knowed how to We worked at lots of places* for a man named Thomas II. Allen* One time we worked Ee was at Rob Roy on tiie Arkansas near Pine Bluff. Then we worked for a man named Kimbroo. Jefferson county. He had a big plantation in For forty years we worked first one place, then another* After that I went out to Oklahoma* as a cook. I went Then I got the idea of following the resort * towns about. In the s .mmer I'd to to Eureka, m the * winter I'd come down to Eot springs* to make the best money. like that. That was the way Folks what had money moved about I done cooking at other resprts too. cooked at the hotel at Winslow *. I I done that several summers* Somehow I always come back to Hot Springs. Good people in Eureka. Finest man I ever worked for a rich man was Mr. Rigley, you know. made chewing gum* for He was the man who We didn't have no gas in Eureka* Ead *Eureka Springs, Ark* *Hot Springs National Park rustic hotel on mountain near village of Winslow, Ark* 7 Fanny Johnson Hudgins to^ cook by wood* I remember lots cf times Mr. 7/rigley would come out in the yard where I was splitting kindling He'd laugh and he'd take the ax away from me and split it hisself. Finest man for a rich man I ever see* Cooking at the hotel at Winslov. was nice. There was lots of fine ladies what wanted to take me home with them when they went home* Hot Springs is my home, But I told them, 'No thank you I'm going there this winter.' I 'a getting sort of old now. My feet ain't so sure as they ured to be. But I can get about! I can get around to cook and I can still see to thread a needle. My daughter has a good home for me " ( I was conducted into a large living room, comfortably furnished and with a degree of taste caught glimpses of a well furnished dining room and a kitchen equipment which appeared thoroughly modern Interviewer) "People in Hot springs is gocd people. They seem sort of friendly. Folks in Eureka did toot even more so. But maybe it wrs cause I w&s younger then and got to see more of them* But the Lord has blessed me with a good daughter, I got nothing to complain about, I don't hold grudges against nobody* The good Lord knows what he is doing*" 30841 Interviewer Person interviewed Age Samuel S# Taylor George Johnson 814 V* Ninth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas 75 "I was born in Richmond, Virginia, September 28, 1862, and came to this country in 1869 My father was named Benjamin Johnson and my mother was named Phoebe Johnson* I don't know the names of my grandmother and grandfather* My father's master was named Johnson; I forget his first name* He was a doctor and lived on Charleston and Morgan Streets* I don't know what my mother's name was before she married my father* And I don't know what her master's name was* She died when I was just three years old* L 1 "The way my father happened to bring me out here was, Barton Tyrus came out here in Richmond stump speaking and telling the people that money grew like apples on a tree in Arkansas* They got five or six boat loads of Negroes to come out here with them* Father went to share cropping on the Red River Bottom on the Ghickaninny Farm* He put in his crop| but by the i time he got ready to gather it, he taken sick and died* He couldn't stand this climate* "Then me and my sisters was supposed to be bound out to Henry Moore and his wife* I stayed with them about six years and then I ran off* And I been scouting 'round for myself ever since* "My occupation has been chiefly public work* My first work was rail roading and steam boating* I was on the Iron Mountain when she was burning wood* That was about fifty some years ago* After that I worked on the steamboats Natchez and Jim Lee# I worked on them as roustabout* 6* After that I would just commence working everywhere I could get it* I came here about forty-five years ago because I liked the city* I was in and out of the city but made this place my headquarters* "I'm not able to do any work now* I put in for the Old Age Pension two years ago* They told me I would have to prove my age but I couldnft do it any way except to produce my marriage license* I produced them* I got the license right out of this county courthouse here* I was married the last time in 1907 and was forty-five years old then* That will make we seventy-six years old this year the twenty-eighth day of this coming September* My wife died nine years ago* "I have heard my father talking a little but old folks then didn't allow the young ones to hear much* My daddy sent me to bed at night* Vhen night came you went to bed; you didnvt hang around waiting to hear what the old folks would say* "My daddy got his leg shot in the Civil War* He said he was in that battle there in Richmond* I donft know which side he was on9 but I know he got his leg shot off* He was one-legged* He never did get any pension* I donft know even whether he was really enlisted or not* All I know is that he got his leg shot off in the war* "When the war ended in 1865f the slaves around Richmond were freed* I never heard my father give the details of how he got his freedom* I was too young to remember them myself* *1 donft know how many slaves Dr. Johnson had but I know it was a good many, for he was a tobacco raiser* I don't remember what kind of houses his slaves lived in* j^And I never heard the kind of food we et* "I never heered tell of pateroles till I came to Arkansas* I never heered much of the Ku KLux either* I guess that was all the same, wasn't it? Peace wasn't declared here till 1866* I never heered of any of my acquaintances being bothered but I heered the colored people was scared* All I know was that you had to come in early* Didn't, they get you* "What little schooling I got, I got it by going to night school.here* That is been a good many years back forty years back* I forgot now who was teaching night school* It was some kin of Ishes out here I know* Opinions "I think times is tight now* Tighter than I ever knowed 'em to be before* Quite a change in this world now* There is not enough work now for the people and from what I can see, electricity has knocked the laboring man out* It has cut the mules and the men out* \ "My opinion of these young people is that they got all the education in the world and no business qualifications* They are too fast for any use** Interviewer Person interviewed Age Miss Irene Robertson John Johnson R*F*D.f Clarendon, Arkansas 73 "I was born sixteen miles on the other side of Jackson, Tennessee* The old mistress was Miss Sally, and old master was lir. Steve Johnson, seme name as mine* Ny papa's name was Louis Johnson but my mama belonged to the Conleys and befof she married papa her name was Martha Conley* My folks fur as I knowed was field hands* They stayed on at Johnsons and worked a long time after freedom* I was bora just befof freedom* from what I heard all of my folks talkin9 the Ku Klux 'fected the colored folks right smart, more than the war* Seemed fbout like two wars and both of 'am tried their best to draw in the black race* The black race wanted peace all the time* It wae Abraham Lincoln whut wanted to free the black race* He was the President* The first war was fbout freedom and the war right after it was equalization* The Ku Klux muster won it cause they didn't want the colored folks have as much as they have* I heard my folks say they knowed some of the Ku Klux* They would get killed sometimes and then you hear 9bout it* They would be nice as pie in day time and then dress up at night and be mean as they could be* They wanted the colored folks think they was hants and monsters from the bad place* All the Yankees whut wanted to stay after they quit fighting, they run fem out wid hounds at night* 2 * The Ku Klux was awful mean I heard 9 em say* Mr. Steve Johnson looked after all his hands* 111 that stayed on to work for him* He told 9em long as they stayed home at night and behave 9 em selves they needn9t be soared* They wanter go out at night they had to have him write 9em a pass* Jess like slavery an9 they were free* "The master dida9t give 9em nuthin9* He let 9em live in his houses log houses, and he had 9em fed from the store stead of the smoke house* He give 9 em a little money in the fall to pay 9em* fBout all the difference they didn9t get beat up* If they didn't work he would make 9em leave his place* "That period after the Civil War, it sure was hard* It was a depression I'll tell you* I never seed a dollar till I was 9bout grown* They called 9em 9wagon wheels.9 They was mighty scarce* Great big heavy pieces of silver* I ain't seed one fer years* But they used to be some money. "Lady, whut you wanter know was fo my days, fo I was born* My folks could answered all dem questions* There was 4 girls and 6 boys in my family* "Course I did vote* I ueed to have a heap a fun on election day* They give you a drink* It was plentiful I tell you* I never did drink much* I voted Republican ticket* I know it would sho be too bad if the white folks didn9t hunt good canidates* The colored race got too fur behind to be able to run our govmint* Course I mean education* Vhen they git educated they ain9t study in' nuthin9 but spendin9 all they make and havin9 a spree in' time* Lady, that is yo job* The young generation ain9t carin' 'bout no govinment* 95 "The present conditions that's whut I been tell in1 you 'bout* It is hard to get work heap of the time* When the white man got money he sure give the colored man and woman work to do* The white man whut live 'mong us is our best friend* He stand by our color the best* It is a heap my age I reckon,I can't keep in work* Young folks can pick up work nearly all time* "I started to pay fer my home when I worked at the mill* I used to work at a shoe and shettle mill* I got holt of a little cash* I still try in' to pay fer my home* I will make 'bout two bales cotton this year* Yes maam they is my own* I got a hog* I got a garden* I ain't got no cow* "No maam I don't get no 'sistanoe from the govmint* No commodities no nuthin'* I signed up but they ain't give me nuthin'* I think I am due it* I am gettin' so no account I needs it* Lady, I never do waste no money* I went to the show ground and I seed 'em buyin' goobers and popcorn* I seed a whole drove of colored folks pushin' and scrcuging in there so e*d they wouldn't get the best seat an' miss somepin* Heap of poor white people scrouging in there too all together* They need their money to live on fo cold weather come* Ain't I tell in' you right? I sho never moved outer my tracks* I never been to a show in my life* Them folks come in here wid music and big tent every year* I never been to a show in my life* That what they come here fur, to get the cotton pickin' money* Lady, they get a pile of money fore they leave* Course folks needs it now* "When I had my males end rented I made most and next to that when I farmed for a fourth* Vhen I was young I made plenty* I know how cotton an9 corn le made now but I ain9t able to do much work, much hard work* The Bible say twice a child and once a man* My manhood is gone fur as work concerned* I like mighty well if you govmint folks could give me a little sistance* I need it pretty bad at times and can9t get a bit*19 Interviewer Person interviewed Age Mrs* Bernice Bowden Letha Johnson 2203 W* TwellHrii Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 77 "I heered the people say I was bora in time of slavery* I was born durin' of the "War* "And when we went back home they said we had been freed four years* father1 s last owner was named Crawford* He was a awful large man* That was in Monroe County, Mississippi* "I laiow they was good to us 'cause we stayed right there after freedom till my father died in 1889* And mama stayed a year or two, then she come to Arkansas* "Af^er ny husband died in 1919, I went to Memphis* Them this girl I raised her mother willed her to me~I came here to Arkansas to live with her after I got down with the rheumatism so I oouldn t wash and iron* "In j y husband s lifetime I didn't do nothin' but farm* And afber I a went to Memphis I cooked* Then I worked for a Italian lady, but she did her own cookin** And oh, I thought she could make the best spaghetti* "I used to spin and make soap* My last husband and I was married fifteen years and eight months and v e never did buy a bar of soap* I used / to be a good soap maker* And knit all my own socks and stockin's* "I used to go to a school-teacher named Thomas Jordan* I remember he used to have us sing a song * I am a happy bluebird Sober as you see; Pure cold water Is the drink for me* I'll take a drink here And take a drink there* Make the woods ring With my temperance prayer** We*d all sing itj that was our school song* I believe that's the onliest one I can remember* M *Bout this younger generation- well* I tell you* it*s hard for me to say* lb just puts me to a wonder* They gone a way back there* Seem like they don*t have any igard for anything* ff I heard 9eim 9fore I left Mississippi singin9 1 M 9 Everybody1 s doin* it, doin9 it*9 Co9 se when I was young they was a few that was wild, but seem like now they is all wild* But I feels sorry for 9em*,f 100 Interviewer Person interviewed Age lira* Beralce Bowden Lewis Johnson 713 Missouri Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 87 "1*11 be eighty-seven the eighteenth of this month if I live* "They* a a heap of things the human family calls luck* I count myself lucky to be livin9 as old as I is* "Some says it is a good deed Ifve done but I says itfs the power of God* "I never had but two spells of sickness when I was spectin' to die* Once was in Mississippi* I had a congest is chill* I lay speechless twentyfour hours and when I come to myself they had five doctors in the house with me* "But my time hadn't come and I'm yet livin' by the help of the good Master* "I stole off when I was eighteen and got my first marriage license* They was a white fellow was a justice of the peace and he took advantage of my father and he stood for me 'cause he wanted me to work on his place* In them days theyfd do most anything to gain labor* "When they was amigratin* 'em from Qeorgia to these countries, they told 9 am they was hogs runnin' around already barbecued with a knife and fork in their back* Told 9em the cotton growed so tall you had to put little chaps up the stalk to get the top bolls* "But they tola some things was true* Said in Mississippi the cotton growed so tall and spread so it took two to pick a row, and I found that true* #105 Old master always fed his hands good so they could meet the demands when he called on 9 em* He worked 9 em close but he fed 9 em* "He raised wheat, corn, peas, rye, and oats,and all such like that* 0h9 he was a round faxmer all right* And he raised feed for his stock too* "Hy old boss used to raise sweet potatoes enough to last three years* "The people of the South was carried through that sweat of freedom* They was compelled to raise cotton and not raise ouch to eat* They told 9em they could buy it cheaper *han raise it, but it was a mistake* I used to have a wood yard on the Mississippi and when the stearners come down the river, I used to go aboard and quiz the people from the North* Heap of 9 Q I would get chips of different woods end put it away to carry home O to show* And theyfd take cotton bolls and some limbs to show the people at home how cotton grows* "To my idea, the North is wiser than the South* My idea of the North is they is more semissive to higher trades buildin9 wagons and buggies, etc* "Years ago they wasn9t even a factory here to make cloth* Had to send the cotton to the North and then order the cloth from the North, and time they got it the North had all the money* In the old days they was only two countries they could depend on to raise tobacco and that was Virginia and South Carolina* "I can remember a right smart before the War started* Now I can set down and think of every horse9 s name my old boss had* He had four he kept for Sunday business* Had Prince, Bill, Snap, and Fuss* And every Saturday evening he had the boys take 9 am in the mill pond and wash 9 em off fix 9 em up for Sunday** 30691 Interviewer Person interviewed Age n 102 Miss Irene Robertson Lizzie Johnson, Biscoe Arkansas 65 I was born at Holly Springs, Mississippi* My mother was fifteen years old when the surrender come on. Her name was Alice Airs. Mama said she and grandma was sold in the neighborhood and never seen none of her folks after they was sold. The surrender come on. They quit and went on with some other folks that come by. Mama got away from them and married the second year of the surrender. She said she really got married; she didn't jump the broom. Mama was a cook in war times* Grandma churned and worked in the field. Grandma lived in to herself but mama slept on the kitchen floor. They had a big pantry built inside the kitchen and in both doors was a sawed-out place so the cats could cone and go. "My father was sold during of the War too but he never said much about it. He said some of the slaves would go in the woods and the masters would be afraid to go hunt them out without dogs* They made bows and arrows in the woods. "I heard my parents tell about the Ku Klux come and made them cook them something to eat. They drunk water while she was cooking. I heard them say they would get whooped if they sot around with a book in their hand* When company would come they would turn the pot down and close the shutters and doors. They had preaching and prayed that way. The pot was to drown out the sound* 8- "They said one man would sell off his scrawny niggers He wanted fine looking stock on his place* He couldnft sell real old folks* They kept them taking care of the children and raising chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, and made some of them chum and milk* "My stepfather said he knowed a man married a woman after freedom and found out she was his mother* He had been sold from her when he was a baby* They quit and he married ag'in* He had a scar on his thigh she recollected* The scar was right there when he was grown. That brought up more talk and they traced him up to be her own boy* "Hester Swafford died here in Biscoe about seven years ago* Said she run away from her owners and walked to Memphis* They took her up over there* Her master sent one of the overseers for her* She rode astraddle behind him back* They got back about daylight* They whooped her awful and rubbed salt and pepper in the gashes, and another man stood by handed her a hoe* She had to chop cotton all day long* The women on the place would doctor her sores* "Grandma said she remembered the stars falling* She said it turned dark and seem like two hours sparkles fell* They said stars fell* She said it was bad times* People was scared half to death* Mules and horses just raced. She said it took place up in the day. They didn't have timepieces to know the time it come o * n* "Young folks will be young the way I see it* They ain't much different* Times is sure 'nough hard for old no 'count folks* Young folks makes their money and spends it* T e old folks sets back needing* i Times is lots different now* It didnft used to be that way*" 103 104 >j " Interviewer Person interviewed Age Mrs* Bernlce Bowden Ionia Johnson 721 Missouri Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 86 "My father said I was fifteen when peace was declared* In slavery days they didn't low colored folks to keep their agps and didn't low em to he educated* I was bom in Georgia* I went to a little night school but I never learned to read* I never learned to write my own name* "I never did see no fightin1 a tall but I saw em refugeein' goin1 through our country night and day* Said they was goin' to the Blue Ridge Mountains to pitch battle* They was Rebels gettin' out of the way of the Yankees* "Old master was a pretty tough old fellow* He had work done aplenty* He had a right smart of servants* I wasn't old enough to take a record of things and they didn't low grown folks to ask too many questions* "I can sit and study how the rich used to do* They had poor white folks planted off in the field to raise hounds to run the colored folks* Colored folks used to run off and stay in the woods* They'd kill old master's hogs and eat em* I've known em to stay six months at a time* I've seen the hounds goin' behind niggers in the woods* "We had as good a time as we expected* My old master fed and clothed very well but we had to keep on the go* Some masters was good to em* Yes, madam, I'd ruther be in times like now than slavery* I like it better now I like my liberty* 105 "In slavery days they made you pray that old master and mistress would hold their range forever* "My old master was Bob Johnson* He lived in Muskoge County where I was born* Then he moved to Harris County and that's where the war ketched him* He become to be a widower there* "I member when the Yankees come and took old master9 s horses and mules* "I had a young boss that went to the war and come home with the rheumatism* He was walkin9 on crutches and I know they sent him to a refugee camp to see to things and when he come back he didn9t have no crutches* I guess the Yankees got em* "Ghildern travels now from one seaport to another but in them days they kept the young folks confined* I got along all right 'cept I didn't have no liberty* "I believe it was in June when they read the freedom papers* They told us we was free but we could stay if we wanted to* My father left Bob Johnson9 s and went to work for his son-in-law* I was subject to him cause I was a minor, so I went with him* Before freedom, I chopped cotton, hoed corn and drapped peas, but now I was big enough to follow the plows* I was a cowboy too* I tended to the cows* Since I've been grown I been a farmer always was a farmer* I never would live in town till I got disabled for farming* "After we was free we was treated better* They didn't lash us then* Ve was turned loose with the white folks to work on the shares* Ve always got our share* They was more liberal along that line than they is now* "After I came to this country of Arkansas I bought several places but I failed to pay for them and lost them* Now my wife and me are livinf on my daughter* 5. "I been married three times* I married 'fore I left Georgia but me and her couldn't get along* Then I married in Mississippi and I brought her to Arkansas* She died and now I been married to this woman fifty-three years* "I been belongin1 to the church over forty years* I have to belong to the church to give thanks for my chance here now* I think the people is gettin1 weaker and wiser*" 100 , x ,' > #674 Interviewer Person interviewed^ Age Miss Irene Robertson Mag Johnson, Clarendon, Arkansas 65 or 70 ? "Pa was born in North Ca'lina* Ma was born in Virginia. Their names George and Liza Fowler. "Ma's fust owner what I heard her tell 'bout was Master Ed McGehee in Virginia. He's the one what brung her in a crowd of nigger traders to Somerville, Tennessee. The way it was, a cavalry of Yankees got in back of them* The nigger trader gang drive up. They got separated. My ma and her gang hid in a cave two weeks an' not much to eat* The Yankees overtook 'am hid in the cave and passed on. Ma say one day the nigger traders drive up in front McGehee's yard and they main heads and Master Ed had a chat. They hung around till he got ready and took off a gang of his own slaves wid him. They knowed he was after selling them off when he left wid 'em* "Ben Trotter in Tennessee bought ma and three more nigger girls* The Yankees took and took from 'em* They freed a long time b'fore she knowed of* She said they would git biscuits on Sunday around* Whoop 'em if one be gone* "Ole miss went out to the cow pen an' ma jus' a gal like stole outen a piece er pie and a biscuit and et it* TbB cook out the cow pen too but the three gals was doing about in the house and yard. Ma shut polly up in the shed room* Then she let it out when she et up the pie and biscuit* Ole miss come in* Polly say, 'Liza shut me up, Liza shut me up.' She missed the pie* Called all four the girls and ma said, 'I done et it* 107 2* I was so hungry*' Ole miss said that what polly talking 'bout, but she didn't understand the bird so very well* Ole miss say, 'I'm goiner teU Ben and have him whoop you.' That scared all four the girls case he did whoop her which he seldom done* She say when Master Ben come they stood by the door in a 'joining room* Ma say 'fore God ole miss tole him* Master Ben sont 'em out to pick up apples* He had a pie a piece cooked next day and a pan of hot biscuits and brown gravy, tole 'em to fill up* He tole 9 em he knowed they got tired of com batter cakes, milk and molasses but it was best he had to give them till the War was done* "Ma said her job got to be milking, raising and feeding the fowls, chickens, ducks, geese, guineas, and turkeys all* The Yankees discouraged her* They come so many times till they cleaned 'em out she said* / "lhat they done to shut up polly's mouf was sure funny* He kept on next morning saying, 'Liza shut me up, Liza shut me up.' Liza pulled up her dress and underskirt and walked back'ards, bent down at him* He got scared* He screamed and then he hollered 'Ball-head and no eyes' all that day* "Ma said they had corn shuckings and com shellings and brush burnings* Had music and square dancing plenty times* "When they got free they didn't know what it was nor what in the world to do with it* What they said 'minds me of folks now what got education* Seems like they don't know what to do nor where to put it* "Pa said the nigger men run off to get a rest* They'd take to the woods and canebrakes* Once four of the best nigger fellars on their master's place took to the woods for to git a little rest* The master and paddyrolls took after 'em* They'd been down in there long 'nough they'd spotted a hollow cypress with a long snag of a limb up on it* It was in the water* They got them some vines and fixed up on the snag* 108 109 They heard the dogs and the horn* They started down in the hollow cypress* One went down, the others coming on* He started hollering* But he thought a big snake in there* He brought up a cub on his nearly bare foot* They clem out and went from limb to limb till they got so away the dogs would loose trail* They seen the mama bear come and nap four her cubs to another place* His foot swole up so* They had to tote my pa about* Next day the dogs bayed them up in the trees* Master took them home, doctored his foot* Ast ?em why they runed off and so much to be doing* They tole fem they taking a little rest* He whooped them every one* "Pretty soon the Yankees come along and broke the white folks up. Pa went wid the Yankees* He said he got grown in the War* He fed horses for his general three years* He got arm and shoulder wounded, scalped his head* They mustered him out and he got his bounty* He got sixty dollars every three months* "He died at Holly Grove, Arkansas about fifty years ago* Them was his favorite stories*" telerrlewei's C j n i r hmni" Mot o t gftli*t% t 110 00 Itriwr n e ve e Person interviewed Age M s B r l e B we r * e no o d n Mandy Johnson 607 Cypress Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 92 "This is me* Ifse old and ainft no 'count* I was done grown when the war started* You know I was grown when I was washin' and ironin1 * I stood right there and watched the soldiers goinf to war* I heered the big bell go b-o-n-g, b-o-n-g and everybody sayinf 1 There's goin9 to be a war, there's goin1 to be a war I1 They was gattin' up the force to go bless your heart 1 Said they'd be back by nine tomorrow and seme said 'I'm goin' to bring you a Yankee scalp*' And then they come again and want so many* You could hear the old drums go boom boom* They was drums on this side and drums on that side and them drums was a talkin'I Yes'm, I'se here when it started milkin9 cows, washin' and cookin'* Oh, that was a time* Oh my Lord them Yankees come in just like blackbirds* They said the war was to free the folks* Lots of 'em got killed on the first battle* "I was bom in Bastrop, Louisiana in February I was a February colt* "My old master was John Lovett and he was good to us* If anybody put their hands on any of his folks they'd have him to whip tomorrow* They called us old John's free niggers* Yes ma'm I had a good master* I ain't got a scratch on me* I stayed right in the house and sussed till I9se grown* Ve had a good time but some of 'em seed sights* I stayed there a year after we was free* 2. " I married durinf the war and my husband went to war with my uncle* He didn't come back and I waited three years and then I married again* "You know they used to give the soldiers furloughs* One time one young man come home and he wouldn't go baek9 just hid out in the cane brake* Then the men come that was lookin' for them that 'exerted' durin' the war and they waited till he come out for some thin1 to eat and they caught him and took him out in the bayou and shot him* That was the onliest dead man I ever seen* I seen a heap of live ones* "The war was get tin' hot then and old master was in debt* Old mistress had a brother named Big Marse Lewis* He wanted to take all us folks and sell us In New Orleans and said he'd get 'em out of debt* But old master wouldn't do it* I know Marse Lewis got us in the jail house in Bastrop and Mare John come to get us out and Marse Lewis shot him down* I went to my master's burial yes'm, I did! Old mistress didn't let us go to New Orleans either* Oh Lordy, I was young them days and I wasn't afraid of nothin'* "Oh ho! What you talkin' 'bout? Kh ELux? They come out here just like blackbirds* They tried to scare the people and some of 'em they killed* "Yes Lord, I seen a heap* I been through a lot and I seen a heap, but I'm here yet* But I hope I never live to see another war* "When peace was declared, old mistress say 'You goin' to miss me' and I sho did* They's good to us* I ain't got nothin' to do now but sit here and praise the Lord cause I gwine to go home some day*" 11 1 : Of}*}Interviewer Parson interviewed lira* Carol Graham Marion Johnson Age "Howdy, Missy, glad to see you again* As you sees Ifm 9bout wound up on my eotton baskets and now I got these chairs to put bottoms in but I can talk while I does this work cause it's not saeting like making baskets* " 'Pears like you got a cold* Mow let me tell you what to do for it* Make a tea out of pine straw and mullein leaves an9 when you gets ready for bed tonight take a big drink of it an9 take some tallow and mix snuff with it an' grease the bottom of your feets and under your arms an' behind your ears and you'll be well in the mornin'* "Yes'm hits right in the middle of cotton picking time now* Always makes ms think of when I was a boy* I picked cotton some but I got lots of whippins 'cause I played too meh* They was some chinquapin trees in the fiel' and I jest natohally couldn' help stopping to pick up some 'chenks' now an' then* I likes the fall time* It brings back the old times on the plantation* After frost had done fell we would go possum huntin' on bright moonlight nights and we would mostly find Mr* Possum settin9 in the 'simson tree just helpin9 hisself to them good old ripe juicy 'simmona* Ve9d catch the possum an9 then we9d help ourselves to the 'simoons* Msntionin' 'slmmons, my mammy sure could make good pies with them* I can most taste them yet and 'slmmon bread too* 2* He2 he! he! jes9 look at that boy goin9 by with that stockin9 on hie head* Niggers used to wear stoekiags on they legs tut now they wear them on they heads to make they hair lay down* "Since this rain we had lately my rheumatism been botherin9 m some* I is gone to cutting my fingernails on Wednesday now sofs I 9 U have health; an9 I got me a brand new remedy too an9 it9s a good one* Take live earth worms an9 drop them in hot grease an9 let them cook till there9 s no 9 semblance of a worm then let the grease cool an9 grease the rheumatic parts* Tou know that rheumatism done come back cause I got out of herbs* I just got to git some High John the Conqueror root en9 fix a red flannel sack an9 put it in the sack along with five finger grass, van van oil, controll in9 powder, magnetic loadstone an9 drawin9 powder* Now, missy, the way I fixes that sure will ward off evil an9 bring heaps of good luek* And I just got to fix myself that* Tou better let me fix you one too* If you and me had one of them wouldn9t neither one of us be ailing* Toa needs some lucky hand root too to carry round with you all the time* Better let Uncle Marion fix you up* "Did I ever tell you I used to tell fortunes with cards? But I stopped that cause I got my jack now and it9 s so such truthfuler than cards* Tou 9members when I answered that question for you and missy last year and how what I told you come true* Tes9m I never misses now* Uncle Marion can sure help you* "There goes sister Melissy late with her washin9 ergin* Tou know, Missy, niggers is always slow and late* They911 be wantin9 God %o wait on them when they start to heaven* White folke is always on time and they siags 9When The Boll Is Called Up Tonder I 9 U Be There9, and niggers sing 113 2* Don't Can She Boll Till I Get There.1 Tou know I hates for it to get so cool* I111 have to move in off the gallery to work* Vhen I sits on the gallery I sees everybody pass an9 changes the time of day with then* Howdy, Sister Melissy* Late ergin I see.9 Yes, I sees everything that goes on from ay gallery* I hates for cool weather to come so9s I have to move in* Ainft that a cute little feller in long pants? Lawey m l chillun surely dresses diffunt now from when I was a chap* I didn9 know nothin9 9 bout no britches; I went in my shirt tail didn9 wear nothin9 but a big old long shirt till I was 9bout twelve* Tou know that little fellow9s maxna had me treat him for worms* I made him a medicine of jimson weed an9 lasses for his mama to give him every morning before breakfast an9 that sure will kill 9 em* Yes9m, that little fellow is all dressed up* 9 Hinds me of when I used to dress up to go oourtin9 my gal* I felt 9bout as dressed up as that little fellow does* I9d take soot out of the chimney and black my shoes then take a biscuit and rub over them to shine 9em* You know biscuits have grease in them and my shoes looked just like they done been shined by the bootblaok* "Law, missy, I don9 know nothin9 to tell you this time* Maybe if you come back I can think of something 9 bout when niggers was in politios after the war but now I just can9t 'member nothin9*11 114 115 Carol Graham Interviewer Parson Interviewed Age n ? (Add.) Marion Johnson ?T El Dorado, Ark. Dar ! s golden streets and a pearly gate Darfs golden streets and a pearly gate I gwian ter keep on searchin1 till I Dar's golden streets and a pearly gate somewhars, somewhars, finds hit, somewhars. t f D i f perfect peace somewhars, a*e Darfs perfect peace somewhars, I gwian ter keep on searchinT till I finds hit, Dar's perfect peace somewhars. "Good morning Missie I Glad to see you again. on chairs again. I is workinT Got these five to bottom for Mr. Brown and I sho can talk while I does this work. "Ai^t the sunshine pretty this mornin1? night that the Lord would let today be sunny* I prayed last I 1clare, Missie, hits rained so much lately till I bout decided me and all my things was goinf to mildew* Yesfm, me and all-1-1 my things* And I done told you I likes to set on my gallery to work. , I likes to watch the folks go by. It seems so natchel like to set here and howdy with em. "I been in this old world a long time, but just can recollect bein1 a slave. Since Christmas ain!t long past it sets me to thinkin1 bout the last time old Sandy Glaus come to see us. He brought us each one a stick of candy, a apple and a orange, and he never did come to see us no more after that time cause we peeped. That was the last time he ever filt our stockin1. how chaps is. We just had to peep. But you knows "You knows I was "born and raised in Louisiana. you that many times. I done told And I just wish you could see the vituals on old marster's table.at Christmas time, jes groaned with good things. Lawdy, "but his table Old Mistress had the cook cookin' * for weeks before time it seemed to me* There was HEBns and tur- keys and chickens and cakes of all kinds. eat* They sho was plenty to And they was a present for all the niggers on the place be- sides the heaps of pretty things that Marster's family got off the tree in the parlor* "When I first began to work on the farm old master put me to cuttin1 sprouts, then when I got big enough to make a field hand, I went to the field then. I done lots of kinds of work - worked in the field, split rails, built fences, cleared new ground and just anything old marster wanted me to do. I members one time I got a long old splinter in my foot and couldn't get it out, so my mammy bound a piece of fat meat round my foot and let it stay bout a couple days, then the splinter come out real easy like* And I was always cutting myself too when I was a chap* You know how careless chaps is* cuts. An soot was our main standby for It would close the gash and heal it* is extra good to stop bleeding* And soot and sugar Sometime, if I would be in the field too far away from the house or anyplace where we could get soot, we would get cobwebbs from the cotton house and different places to stop the bleeding* One time we wasn!t close to neither and one the men scraped some felt off from a old black hat and put it on to stop the bleedin1* "My feets was tough* Didn't wear shoes much till I was grown. Went barefooted. stickers and not feel em. My feets was so tough I could step on Just to show how tough I was I used to take a blackberry limb and take my toes and skin the briers off and it wouldn't hurt my feets* "Did I ever tell you bout my first pair of breeches? I was bout twelve then and before that I went in my shirt tail. I thought I was goinr to be so proud of my first breeches but I didn't like them. ets. They was too tight and didn!t have no pock- They come just below my knees and I felt so uncomfortable- like that I tore em off rne. And did I get a lickin? I got such a lickin1 that when my next ones was made I was glad to put em on and wear em. n I stayed round with marster's boys a lot, and them'white boys was as good to me as if I had been their brother. And I stayed up to the big house lots of nights so as to be handy for runnin1 for old master and mistress. The big house was fine but the log cabin where my marany lived had so many cracks in it that when I would sleep dovrn there I could lie in bed and count the stars through the cracks. Mammy!s beds was ticks stuffed with dried grass and put on bunks built on the wall, but they did sleep so good. I can most smell that clean dry grass now. Mammy made her brooms from broom sage, and she cooked on a fireplace* They used a oven and a fireplace up at the big house too. I nev- er saw no cookstove till I was grown. "I members one time when I was a little shaver I et too many green apples. And did I have the bellie ache, whoo-ee I And mommy poured cold water over hot ashes and let it cool and made me drink 2* 118 It and it sure cured me too* I members seein' her make holly bush tea, and parched corn tea too for sickness Nother time I had the toothache and mammy put some axle grease In the hollow of the tooth and let it stay there. The pain stopped and the tooth rotted out and we didn't have to pull it* "Wheel Did you see how that car whizzed round the corner? There warn!t no cars in my young days. They had mostly two- wheeled carts with shafts for the horse to be hitched In, and lots of us drove oxen to them carts. and rode em to and from the field. I plowed oxen many-a-day Let me tell you, Missy, if you don't know nothin' bout oxen - they surely does sull on yon you beat t em and the more you beat the more they sulls. . Yes'm, they sure sulls in hot weather, but it never gets too cold for em. "Howdy, Parson. That sho was good preachin' Sunday. Yes suh, it was fine. "That's the pastor of our church, an he sho preached two good sermons last Sunday. Sunday mornln' he preached 'Every kind of fish Is caught in a net' and that night he preached 'Marvel not you must be born again.1 the climax. But that mornin' sermon, it capped Parson sho told em bout it. He say, 'First, they catch the crawfish, and that fish ain't worth much; anybody that gets back from duty or one which says I will and then won't is a crawfish Christian*T Then he say, 'The next is a mudcat; this kind of a fish likes dark trashy places, ' / e you catch em you .hn won't do it in front water; it likes back water and wants to stay in mud* That's the way with some people in church. You can't never get them to the front for nothin1. for them. The next one is the jellyfish. bone to face the right thing. today. You has to fish deep That the trouble with our churches Too many jellyfishes in em.1 Next, he say is the gold fish - good for nothin' but to look at. the way folks is. It ain't got no back- They is pretty. That Some of them go to church just to sit up and look pretty to everybody. Too pretty to sing; too pretty to say Amen I That what the parson preached Sunday. Well, I f m a full- grown man and a full-grown Christian, praise the Lord. parson is a real preacher." Yes,?m, OCT 1936 VOODOO MAW 120 UNCLE MARION JOHNS ( 1 EX-SIAVE. 3, "Yes young missey ah'11 sho tell yo-all whut yo wants ter know. Yes'm ole Uncle Marion sho kin. Mah price is fo* "bits fer one question. No'm, not fo' bits fo thf two uv yo but fo* bits each. Yo say yo all ain't got much money and yo all both wants ter knew th' same thing. V/ell ah reckon since yo all is been comin' roun' and tawkin' to ole Uncle L a ion ah cud ir make hit answer thf one question fuh both uv yo fuh fo1 bits 'tween yo* No'm ah caint bring hit out he ah. Yo all will haft tuh come inside thf house." n 7ie went inside the house and Uncle Marion unwrapped his voodoo instrus^ ment which proved to be a small glass bottle about 2 - inches tall wrapped | to the neck in pink washable adhesive tape and suspended from a dirty twine about six inches long. At the top of the twine was a slip knot and in a sly way Uncle Marion would twist the cord before asking the question. If the cord was twisted in one direction the bottle would swing in a certain direction and if the cord was twisted in the other direction the bottle would swing in the opposite direction. Uncle Marion thought that we did not observe this and of course we played dumb. By twisting the cord and slyly working the muscles of his arm Uncle Marion made his instrument answer his questions in the way that he wished them answered*) "Now ifn the answer to huh question is yais swing towards huh and ifn taint be still. (The bottle slowly swung toward me.) Now missy see hit have done answered yo question and yo done seed hit say yes. Yes'm hit sho am yes and yof jes wait and see ifn ole Uncle l&rion aint right. Now yo jes answer the same question fuh to the r young missy he ah. Now ifn the answer is yais yo turn toward huh which am the opposite to which yo jes turn* and ifh the answer is no sta still. (The bottle then slowly turned around and went in Mrs. Thompson's direction*) 121 "Yo say w v f do ah call dis heah? Ah calls hit a "jacl:". Yas'n hits htc w a jack an1 hit sho will answer any question yo wants ter ask hit. Hofm yo cud en ask hit yo-self Ah would haft ter ask hit fer yo. An1 let me tell yo1 ole Uncle Marion sho kin help youall chillun.' Ah kin help yo all ward off evil and jinxj ah kin help yo all git a job; ah kin help yo all ovah come the ruination uv yo home. Uncle Marion sho cain give yo a helpin good luck hand. Ah cain help 70 ovah come yo enemies* "Nov/ since ah knows yo young misses am inferested an ah knows yo will sen1 othah fokes tuh me whut am in trouble ah am go inter tell yo all whut some uv mah magic rem idles is so yo all kin toll fokes thr.t ah have them yarbs (herbs) fuh sale. Yes1 i ah has them yarbs right he a full sale and hit n sho will work too* "Mow thar is High John the Conquerer Root* Iffn yo totes one of them roots in yo pocket yo will nevah be vridout money. No mam. And you'll always conquer yo troubles an yo enemies* An fokes can sho g i t them yarbs thru ne* Efh uncle Marion don1 have non on hanf he sho kin git em for e r iu 1 1 Den dar is five finger grass, ah kin git dat fuh yo too* Ifn dat is hung up ovah thf bedstid hit brings restful sleep and keeps off evil* Each one uv dein five fingahs stsns for sump in too* One stans full good luck, two fUh money, thee fuh wisdom, fo* fuh paver an f i v e fuh love* fl Yas!m an ah kin bail1 a unseen wall aroun* yo so as ter keep evil, jinx and enemies way fum yo and hit'll bring heaps uv good luck too* The way ah does h i t is this nvray: Ah. takes High John the Conqueror Root and fixes apiece of red flannel so as ter make a sack and puts hit in the sack along wid magnetic loadstone, five finger grass, van van oil, cartrollin1 powdsh and drawin powdah a d the s e a l uv powaii. This he all mus be warn aroun the neck and sprinkle hit ever morn in fuh seven mornins wid three drops uv holy oil* "Then theah is lucky han* root. Hit looks jes like a human han * If yo carries hit on yo person hit will shalee yo jinx and make yo a winnah in all kinds o games and hit111 help yo choose w inn in numbers0 122 - > \ 1\ O t y Interviewer Miss Irene Robert son Person interviewed Martha Johnson, West Memphis Age 71 "I was born at Lake Providence, Louisiana second year after the ar. Mother's mother was left in Jackson, Tennessee. Mother was sold at Vicksburg, Mississippi* Father's mother was left at Pittsburg, Virginia* Father was brought to Lake Providence and sold to Master Ross and Mr. Coleman was A his overseer* He was stripped stai# naked and put up on the block* That was Nigger Traders Rule, he said* He was black as men get to be* Mother was three-fourths white* Her master was her father* He had two families* They was raised up in the same house with his white family* Master's white wife raised her and kept her till her death* He was dead I think* "Then her young white master sold her. He sold his half-sister* She met my father at Vicksburg, Mississippi where he mustered out* She was chambermaid when the surrender came on, on the Gray Eagle boat from Vicksburg to Memphis* Mother died 'when I was nine years old* Papa had no boys, only three girls. I was his 'Tom Boy.' I did the milking and out-of-door turns. Papa was a small roan. He weighed 150 pounds. He carpentered, made and mended shoes, and was a blacksmith. de farmed and farmed. I was chambermaid in Ilaynes, Arkansas hotel three years. I washed and ironed* I'm not much cook. I never was fond of cooking* "I never voted* I'm not starting now. I'm too old. "Times is hard. You can't get ahead no way. It keeps you hustling all the time to live. Times is going pretty fast* 2 123 . In some ways times is better for some people and harder for other people* "These young folks don't want to be advised and I don't advise them except my own children. I tell them all they listen to. They listen now better than they did when they was younger. They are all grown. n I don't get no help from nowhere but my children a little. I own my home.* 30952 3-091.1 Interviewer Person interviewed Age Pernella M. Anderson Millie Johnson (Old Bill) SI Dorado, Arkansas ? * I was born in Caledonia , Arkansas but I don't know when. I just canft tell you nothing hardly about when I was a child because my mind goes and comes* I was a slave and my white folks were good to me. They let me play and have a good time just like their children did* "After I got grown I run around terrible. My husband quit me a long time ago* The white folks let me have my way. They said I was mean and if my husband fooled with me, told me to shoot him* I am going back home to Caledonia when I get a chance* My sister's boy brought me up here; Mack Ford is his name. *A long time ago I don't know how long itfs been I came out of the back door something hung their teeth in my ankle. I hollered and looked down and it was a big old rattlesnake* I cried to my sister to get him off of me* She was scared, so all I knew to do was run, jump and holler* I ran about oh, I don't know how far with the snake hanging to my ankle* The snake would not let me go, and it wasn't but one thing for me to do and that was stop and pull the snake off of me. I stopped and began pulling* I pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled* The snake would not let me go* I began pulling again* After awhilo I got it off* Vhen I pulled the snake away the snake brought his mouth full of my meat* Tou talk about hurtingf that like to have killed me* That place stayed sore for twenty years before it healed up* After it had been healed a couple years I then scratched the place on a boh wire that inflamed it* That has been about 25 or 30 years ago and itfs been sore ever since* Lord, I sure have been suffering too* As soon as it gets well I am going back to Caledonia. I am praying for God to let me live to get back home. Mack Ford is the cause of me being up here* *I was born in slavery time way before the War. My name is Millie Johnson but they call me Bill*19 : ' ^ ' 12(3 Interviewer Person interviewed Age Miss Irene Robertson Rosie Johnson, Holly Grove Arkansas 76 "I was born and raised on Mr. Dial's place. Mama belong to them. My papa belong to Frank Kerr. His old mistress1 name Jane Roberts in Alabama. His folks come from Alabama. He say Jane Roberts wouldn't sell her slaves* They was aired (heired) down mong the children. David Dial had sebral children and mama was his house girl and nurse* They was married in Dial's yard. My papa name Jacob Kerr. They took me to Texas when I warn't but two years old. He rode in the covered wagon where they hauled the provisions. They muster stayed a pretty good time. I heard em talkin' what all they raised out there and what a difference they found in the country* They wanted to go* They didn't wanter be in the war they said. It was too close to suit them. "I recken I was too small to recollect the Ku Klux. I heard em talk bout how mean the Jayhaws was* "I never voted. What business I got votin1 I would jes' lak you tell rae? I donft believe in it no more'n nuthin'. "I been farmin' all my lifeo I had fourteen children. Eight livin' now. They scattered bout up North. It took meat and bread to put in their mouths and somebody workin' to get it there I tell you. There ain't a lazy bone in me. I jes' give out purty nigh. I wash and iron some when I ken get it. "I got a hog and a garden* I ainft got nuthin1 else. I donft own no house, no place* I got a few chickens hout the place what eat up the scraps what the pig don't get* * I signed up three years ago* I don't get nuthin' now. What I scrape round and make is all I has* "I was born in June 1861. I don't recollect what day they said* Pear lack it been so long* Ihen it come to work I recken I is had a hard time all my life* I never minded nuthin' till I got so slow and no count*" #664 Interviewer Person interviewed Age Samuel S. Taylor Saint Johnson Izard Street, Little Hock, Arkansas Oc cupat i on Drayman "As far as slavery is concerned I know nothing about it except as the white people told me. My mother would ask me what they told me and I would t * tell her that Miss Annie said I didn't have to call her father Master any more. And she would say, 'No, you don't.1 "My father's name was Wiley Johnson. He was ninety years old when he died. He was born in Cave Spring^ Georgia, in Floyd County. My mother was born in the same place. Both of them were Johnsons. They were married during slavery times. I don't know what her name was before she married* "Anyway, I've told you enough. I've told yo\i too much. How come they want all this stuff from the colored people anyway? Do you take any stories from the white people? They know all about it. They know more about it than I do. They don't need me to tell it to them. "I don't tell my age. I just say I was born after slavery. Then I can't be bothered about all this stuff about records. Colored people didn't keep any records. How they goinf to know when they were born or anything? I don't believe in all that stuff. "Tou know these young people as well as I do. They ain't nothin1* "I ain't got nothin' to say about politics. You know what the truth is. Why don't you say it? You don't need to hide behind my words. You're educated and I'm not; you don't need to get anything from me. "Yes, I had some schoolin'. But you know more about these things than I do." 128 129 Interviewer's Comment At first, I thought I wouldn't write this interview up; but afterwards I thought: Maybe this interview will be of interest to those who want the work done* It represents the attitude of a very small, but definite, minority* About five persons out of a hundred and fifty contacted and more than eighty written up have taken this attitude. Johnson is reputed to have been born in slavery, but he says not# He had a high school education. He is a good man, wholesome in all his contacts, despite the apparent intolerance of his private remarks to the interviewer. 30839 130 Interviewer Samuel 8, Taylor Person Interviewed Age Willie Johnson (female) 1007 Izard, Little Rock, Arkansas 71 "My father said he had a real good master. When he got ap large enough to work, his master learned him a trade* He learned the mechanic's trade, such as blaeksmi thing and working in shops* He learned him all of that* And ' I then he learned him to be a shoemaker * You see, he learned him iron work and woodworking too* And he never whipped him during slavery time* Positively didn't allow that* "My father's name was Jordan Kirkpatrick* His master was named KirkPatrick also* Uy father was born in Tennessee in Sumner County* "My father married in slave time* You know9 they married in slave time* I have heard people talking about it* I have heard some people say they married over 'gain when freedom came* Uy father had a marriage certificate, and I didn't hear him say anything about being married after freedom* I have seen the certificate lots of times* I don't know the date of it* The certificate was Issued in Sumner Countyt Tennessee* "My father and mother belonged to different masters* My mother's master was a Murray* She had a good many people* Her name before she married was Mary Murray* I don't know just how my mother and father met* The two places weren't far apart* They lived a good distance from each other though, and I remember hearing him tell how he had to go across the fields to get to her house after he was through with the day's work* The pateroles got after him once* They didn't eatch him, so they didn't do anything to him* He skipped them some way or another* 2. 131 "I have heard them say that before the slaves were set free the soldiers were going fround doing away with everything that they could get their hands on* Just a while before they were set free, my father took my mother and the children one night and slipped off* He went to Nashville* That was during the War* It wasn't long after that till everybody was set free* They never did capture him and get him back* "IXxring the War they went around pressing men into service* Finally once, they caught him but they let him go* I don't know how he got away* "I can remember he said once they got after him and there was a white man and his family living in the house* He rented a room from the white man* That was in Nashville* These pateroles or whatever they was got after him and claimed they were coming to get him, and the old man and the old woman he stayed with took him upstairs and said they would protect him if the pateroles came back* I don't know whether they came back or not9 but they never got him* "My father supported himself and his family in Nashville by following his trade* He seems to have gotten along all right* He never seemed to have any trouble that I heard him speak of* "I was bom in 1867 in Nashville, Tennessee, about half a block from the old Central Tennessee College* I think it became Walden University later on9 and I think that it's out now* Thatvs an old school* My oldest sister was graduated from it* I could have been if I hadn't taken up the married notion* "I got part of my schooling in Nashville and part here* When I left Nash* villa, I was only a child nine years old* I only went to school four sessions after we came out here* I didn91 like out here* I wanted to stay back home* 132 I y father oame out here because he had heard that he could make more money f with his trade here than he could In Nashville, which he did* He was shoeing horses and building wagons and so on* Just in this blacksmithing and carpenter work* "I wanted to learn that* I would stay 9round the shop and help him shoe horses* But they wouldn9t let me take it up* I got so I could do carpenter work pretty good* First I learned how to make a box square--that is a hard job when a person doesn9t know much* "I never heard my father say anything about the food the slaves ate* I have heard him talk about the good times they had around hog killing* His master raised sweet potatoes and corn and wheat and things like that* I guess they ate just about what they raised* "My father never was a share-cropper* He knew nothing of rural work exoept the mechanical side of it* He could make or do anything that was needed in fixing up something to do farm work with* I have seen him make and sharpen plows* The first cotton stalk cutter that was made within ten miles of here was made by my father* The people 9round here were knocking off cotton stalks with stieks until my father began making the cutter* Then everybody began using his cutter* That is, the different fazmers and sharecroppers around here began using them* I was scared of the first one he made* He made six saws or knives and sharpened them and put them on a section of a log so that it could be hitched to a mule and pulled through the fields and out the cotton stalks down* "My mother9 s old master was her father* I think my fatherfs father was a Negro and his mother was an Indian* My mother9 s mother was an imeriean woman, that ls9 a slavery woman* My mother and father were lucky in having good people* My mother was treated just like one of her master9s other children* My father9 8 master had an overseer bat he never was allowed to toueh ay father* Of course my mother never was under an overseer*" 30762 ^ 134 Interviewer Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed Age Angeline Jones Hear Biscoe and Brinkley, Arkansas 79 "I was born in Memphis, Tennessee. Mother was cooking. Her name was Marilla Harris and she took my pa's name, Brown. He was Francis Brown. I was three years old when the surrender come on. Then grandma, my mama and pa and me and my brother come with a family to Biscoe. There wasn't no Biscoe but that's where we come to anyhow. Mama and grandma cooked for a woman. They bought a big farm and started clearing. Some of it was cleared. Mama's been dead forty years. I farmed all my whole life* I don't know nothing else. "Grandma had a right smart to say during slavery times. She was cooking for her mistress and had a family. She'd hide good things to take to her children. The mistress kept a polly parrot about in the kitchen* Polly would tell on grandma. Caused grandma to get whoopings* She talked like a good many of 'em* She got sick. The woman what married grandma9s brother was to take her place. She wasn't going to be getting no whoopings. 3ha sewed the parrot up. He got to dwindling. They doctored him. She clipped his tongue at the same time so he never could do no good talking* l e died* They never found out his trouble. Grandma said they worried about i the parrot but she never did; she knowed what been done. Grandma come from Paris, Tennessee but I think the same folks fetched 'er. I don't think she said she was sold* She said slavery times was hard* Mama didn't see as hard times as grandma had* Grandma shielded her in the work part a whole heap to get to live where she did. They loved to be together. She's been dead ana left me forty odd years. I works and support myself, and my kin folks help all they can." 186 Interviewer Person interviewed Age Mr a* Bernice Bowden Charlie Jones 1303 Ohio Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 76 "I was horned in f61 in the State of Mississippi August the 15th* W I member just a little bout the War., Yesfm, I member seein9 the soldiers* They was walkin1- just a long row of em* Had guns across their shoulders and had them canteens* I member we chilluns run out to the road and got upon the bars and watched em go by* I think it was after they had fought in Vicksburg and was comin9 back towards Memphis* "My mother belonged to the Harrises and we stayed with her and my father belonged to the Joneses* "I member how they used to feed us ehillun* They had a big cook kitchen at the big house and we ehillun would be out in the yard playin9* Cook had a big wooden tray and sheYd come out and say vWhoopee!9 and set the tray on the ground* Sometimes it was milk and sometimes it would be potlicker* Wefd fall down and start satin1* Get out heads in and crowd just like a lot of pigs* "After freedom we went to old Colonel Jones and worked on the shares* I wasnft big enough to work but I member when we left the Harris place* I know they wasn't so cruel to em* Dldnft have no overseer* Some of the people had cruel overseers* "I went to school after the War a right smart* I got as far as the third grade* Studied McGuffyfs Reader and the old Blue Back Speller* Yes9m, sure did* 137 "I come here to Arkansas wid my parents in '78* C x e right here to oa Jefferson County, down at Fairfield on the Lambert place* All my life I've farmed* I worked on the shares and rented too* Could make the most money rentin1* I got everywhere from 44 to 50 a pound for cotton* had cows and hogs and chickens and raised some com* *I made a garden and made a little cotton and com last year on government land on the old river bank* "I heered of the Klu KLux but they never did bother me* "I voted the Publican ticket and never had no trouble* "I been right around this town fifteen years and I own this heme* I worked about six months at the shops but the rest of the time I farmed* "Heap of things Ifd do when I was young the young folks won't do now." o 138 Interviewer Person Interviewed Age Mrs* Bemlce Bowden Cyntha Jones 3006 W. Tenth Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 88 "Well, here's one of em* Born donna in Brew County* "Simpson Dabney was old master and his wife named Miss Adeline* "I reckon I do remember bout the War* Yes ma'am, the Yankees come and they had me scared. I wouldn't know when they got in the yard till they was all around me* Had ma holdin9 the bridles* "My young missis1 husband was in the War and when they fought the last battle at Princeton, she had me drive the carriage* When I heard them guns I said we better go back, so I turned round and made them horses step so fast my dress tail stood out straight* I thought they was goin1 to kill us all* And when we got home all the windows was broke* Miss Nancy say, 1 Cyntha, somebody come and broke all my windows,1 but it was them guns broke em* "Old master was a doctor but my young missis1 husband wasn't nothin' but a hunter till they carried him to war* Be was so skeered they had to most drag him* "I seen two wars and heered tell of another* "I member when the Yankees come and took things I just fussed at em* I thought what was my white folks' things was mine too* But when they got my old master's horse my daddy went amongst em and got it back cause he had charge of the stock* I don't know whether he got em at night or not but I know he went in the daytime and come back in the daytime* 139 "Old master* s children and my father1 s children worked in the field just alike. He wouldn't low a overseer on the place, or a patroller either* "Dr. Dabney and his sister raised my mother. They brought her from some furrin1 country to Arkansas. And when he married, my mother suckled every one of his children* "I just worked in the house and nussed. Never worked in the field till I was grown and married* I was nineteen when I married the fust time. I stayed right there in that settlement till the second year of surrender* "When I was twenty-one they had me fixed up for a midwife* Old Dr* Clark was the one started me* I never went to school a minute in my life but the doctors would read to me out of their doctor books till I could get a license* I got so I could read print till my eyes got so bad* Old Dr* Clark was the one learned me most and since he died I ain't never had a doctor mess with me* "In fifteen years I had 299 babies on record right there in Rison* Thatfs where I was fixed up at under five doctors* And anybody donft believe it, they can go down there and look up the record* "We had plenty to eat in slave times* Didn't have to go to the store and buy it by the dribble like they does now. Just go to the smokehouse and get it* "I got such a big mind and will I wants to get about and raise something to eat now so we wouldn't have to buy everything, but I ain't able now* I've had twenty-one children but if I had em now they'd starve to death* "I been married four times tut they all dead every one of em* 3. "When freedom come my old master give my mother #500 cause she saved his money for him when the Yankees come. She put it in the bed and slept on it. He had four farms and he told her she could have ary one of em and any of the stock, but my father had done spoke for a place in Cleveland County hethad done bought him a place* "And old master on his dying bed, he asked my mother to take his two youngest children and raise em cause their mother was sickly, but she didn't do it* "I don't know hardly what to think of this younger generation* Used to be they'd go to Sunday school barefooted but now'days, time they is bom they got shoes and stockin's on em* "I used to spin, knit and weave. I even spun thread to make these ropes they use to plow. I could spin a thread you could sew withf and weave cloth with stripes and flowers* Have to know how to dye the thread* That's all done in the warp* Call the other the filler* "Now let me tell you, when that was goin' on and you raised your meat and corn and potatoes, that was livin'I" 140 ill 30053 Interviewer Person interviewed Age Mrs. Berate* Bowden Idaond Jones 1884 W* Second, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 75 "I growed up in the war* I remember see in* the soldiers hundreds and thousands of em* Oh, yes'a, I growed up in the war* I was horn under Abraham Lincoln's administration and then Grant* "I remember when that old drum beat everbody had to be in bed at nine o'clock. That was vhen they had martial law* Hays knocked that out you know* That was vhen they had the Civil Rights Bill* I growed up in that* "Abraham Lincoln issued the Proclamation of Freedom in January and I was born in May so you might say I was born right into freedom* "I always say I was born so close to slavery I could aaell it, Just like you cookin* somethin' for dinner and I smelled it* I tell these young people I can look back to my boy days quick as they can* "Yes'm, I don't know anything bout slavery* l y people say they come i from North Carolina, but I been right here on this spot of ground for fortyfour years* I come here when they waa movin* the cemetery. "My mother was a cook here for Mrs* Reynolds* After I growed up here I went out to my father where he was workin' on the shares and stayed there a year* I married quite young and bought a place out there* I said I was twenty-one when I got the license but I wasn't but twenty. "In old times everbody thought of the future and had all kinds of things to eat* Tirst prayer I was taught was the Lord's Prayer 142 Lve us this day our daily bread.' I said sure was a long tias bein* answered cause now we're get tin* it just our daily bread* "I never had no luck faimin' ever' tins I famed river over* flowed. I raised everthing I needed or I didn't have it* Bad as high a* thirty head of oows at one tias* *I went to work as janitor at Merril School to take the regular janitor's place for just two months and how long you reckon I stayed there? Twenty years* Then I cone here and sit down and haven't done anything since* "The first school Z went to was in the First Baptist Church on Pollen Street* They had it there till they could put up a building* "I went to nine different teachers and all of em was white* They was sent here from the North. Ve studied HcOuffy's reader end you stayed with it till you learned it* I got it till today in my head you understand* "Sure, Lord, I used to vote and hold ever' kind of office* Used to be justice of the peace six years* I said I been in everthing but a bull fight* "I've traveled ever* place Niagara Falls, Toronto, Canada* I been in two World's Fairs and in several inaugurations* Professor Cheney says I know more history than any the teachers at the college*" #670 Interviewer Person Interviewed Age Mrs* Bernice Bowden Eliza Jones 610 E* Eighteenth, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 89 n Yes ma'am, this is Eliza* I was born in slave times and I knowed how to work good* n You know I was grown in time of the War 'cause I married the first year of freedom* "Belonged to a widow named Edna Mitchell* That was in Tennessee near Jackson* Oh Lawdf my missis was good to all her niggers--if you should call 'em that* "She had two men and three women* My mother was the cook* Let's seeSarah was one, Jane was two, and Eliza was three* (I was Eliza*) Then there was Doc and Uncle Alf* I reckon he was our uncle* Anyway we all called him Uncle Alf * He managed the business he was the head man and Doc was next* And Miss Edna raised us all to grown* "Now I'm tellin' you right straight along* I try to tell the truth* I forgits and I can't remember ever'thing like it ought to be but I hit at it* "Things is hard this year and I don't know how come* I guess it's 'cause folks is so wicked* They is livin' fast black and white* "How many ehillun? Now, you'd be s'prised* I hardly ever tell folks how many* I had fifteen; I was a good breeder* But they is all dead but one, and they ain't doin' me no good* Never raised but two* Most of 'em just died when they was born* s. "I'd a been better off if I had stayed single a while longer and went to school and learned how to read and write and figger* But I went to another kind of a school* "But I sure has been blest* I been here a long time, got a chile to cook me a little bread donft have to worry fbout dat* "I had to send clean back to where I j'ined the Metropolitan to get my age* That was in Cairo, Illinois 'cause I'd lived there fifteen years* But when my daughter and her husband come here and got settled, why I come to finish it out* "Yes ma'am, I sure have worked hard* I've plowed, split wood, and done a little bit of ever'thing* But it was all done since freedom* In slavery times I was a house girl* I tell you I was a heap better off a slave than I was free* "After freedom we had to go and get what we could get to do and work hard* "They used to talk 'bout ha'nts and squinch owls. Say it was a sign of somebody dead* But I don't believe in that. ' Course what I don't believe in somebody else does*" 144 #779 Interviewer Samuel S. Taylor Person interviewed Age Evelyn Jones 815 Arch Streetf Little Rock, Arkansas Between 68 and 78 ? "I was born in Lonoke County right here in Arkansas* My father's name I don't know it* I don't know nothin' 'bout my father* My mother's name was Mary Davis* "My daddy died when I was five weeks old. I don't know nothin' 'bout 'im. Just did manage to git here before he left. I don't know the date of my birth * I don't know nothin' 'bout it and I ain't goinf to tell no lie. "I have nineteen children. My youngest living child is twenty-eight years old. My oldest living is fifty-three. I have four dead. I don't know how old the oldest one is* That one's dead. n I have a cousin named Harry Jordan. He lives 'round here soraewheres. You'll find him. I don't know where he lives. He says he knows just how old I am, and he says that I r sixty-eight. My daughter here says I'm 'a seventy. And my son thinks I'm older. Don't nobody know. My daddy never told me. My mama was near dead when I was born; what could she tell me? 3o how am I to know? "My mother was born in slavery. She was a slave. I don't know nothin' 'bout it. My mother came from Tennessee. That's what she told me. I was born in a log cabin right here in Arkansas. I was bora in a log cabin right ia front of the white folks' big house. It was not far from the white folks' graveyard. You know they had a graveyard of their own. Old Bill rsmberton, that Jas the name of the man owned the place I \ a born on. But ,s he wasn't my mother's owner. 115 I don't know where my father come from* My mother said she had a good time in slavery. She spoke of lots of things but I don't remember them. "My grandma told r e about when she went to church she used to carry her o good clothes in a bundle* When she got near there, she would put them on, and hide her old clothes under a rock. When she come out from the meeting, she would have to put on her old clothes again to go home in. She didn't dare let the white folks see her in good clothes. "I think my mother's white people were named Jordans. My mother and them all belonged to the young mistress. I think her name was Jordan. Yes, that's what it was Jordan. "Grandmaxomy had so many children. She had nineteen children just like me4 My grandmaicmy was a great big old red woman. She had red hair too. I never heard her say nothin' 'bout nobody whippin1 her and my granddaddy. They whipped all them children though* My mama just had six children* "Mama said her master tried to keep her in slavery after freedom. My mama worked at the spinning-wheel* When she heard the folks say they was through with the War, she was at the spinning-wheel* The white folks ought a tol' them they was free but they didn't. Old Jordan carried them down in De Vails Bluff* He carried them down there called hisself gittin' away from the Yankees* But the Yankees told mama to quit workin'* They tol' her that she was free. My mama said she was in there at the wheel spinning and the house was full of white men sett in' there lookin' at her. You don't see that sort of thing now. "They had a man I don't know what his name was* He stalled them steers, stalled 'em twice a day* They used to pick cotton* I dreamed about cotton the other night* n My father farmed after slavery. I never heard them say they were cheated out of nothin1 I don't know whether they was or not. Ifll tell you the truth. I didn't pay them no 'tention. Mighty little I can remember. j v.- / 148 \ Interviewer Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed John Jones Brlnkley, Arkansas Age 71 "I was raised an orph'ant but I was born in Tennessee* I lived over there and fanned till fbout fifty year ago* I come out here wid Mr* Woodson to pick cotton* He dead now and I still tryin' to work all I can. "I haben voted in thirty-five year* Because I couldn't vote in the Primary, then I say I wouldn't vote 'tall* I don't care if the women want to vote. Don't do no good nohow* "I farmed all my life 'ceptin' 'bout ten years I worked on the section. I got so I couldn't stand up to it every day and had to farm again. tt I never considered times hard till I got disabled to work. It mighty bad when you can't get no jobs to do. My hardest tin is in the winter. I has a garden and chickens but I ain't able to buy a cow. Man give me a little pig the other day. He won't be big enough to eat till late next spring. Every winter times is hard for me. It's been thater wafs ever since I begin not to be able to get about. Helped by the PWA.M 30916 Mrs* Bemice Bowden Interviewer Person interviewed Age 149 John Jones 3109 W. 10th Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 82 I come here in 1856 you can figure it out for yourself* I was born in Arkansas, fifty miles below here* "I remember the soldiers* I know I was a little boy drivin' the gin* Had to put me upon the lever* You see, all us little fellows had to work* "I remember seeinf the Indians goinf by to fight at Arkansas Post* They fought on the southern side* When I heard the cannons, I asked my mama what it was and she said 'twas war* "John Dye that was my young master went to the War but Ruben had a kind of afflicted hand and he didn't go* "Our plantation was on the river and I used to see the Yankee boats go down the river* "My papa belonged to the Douglases and mama belonged to the Dyes* I was born on the Douglas place and I ain't been down there in over fifty years* They said I was born in March but I don't know any more bout it than a rabbit* "Papa said he was raised up in the house* Said he didn't do much work just tended to the gin* "I remember one night the Ku KLux come to our house* I was so scared I run under the house and stayed till ma called me out* I was so scared I didn't know what they had on* "I remember when some of the folks come back from Texas and they said peace was declared* "I think my brother run off and jined the Yankees and come here when they took Pine Bluff* War is a bad thing* I think they goin1 keep on till they hatch up another one* "I didn't go to school much* I was the oldest boy at home and I had to plow* I went seven days all told and since then I learned ketch as ketch can* I can read and write pretty well* It's a consolation to be able to read* If you can't get all of it, you can get some of it* "Been here in Jefferson County ever since 1867* I come here from Lincoln County* "After freedom my papa moved my mama down on the Douglas place where he was and stayed one year, then moved on the Simpson place in Lincoln County, and then come up here in Jefferson County* I remember all the moves* "I remember down here where Kientz Bros* place is was the gallows where they hung folks in slavery times* You know when they had committed some crime* "Yes'm, I voted tut I never held any office* \ "I know I don't look my age but I can tell you a heap of things happened before emancipation* "I think the people are better off free they got liberty*" #667 Interviewer Person interviewed Age 94 Mrs* Bernice Bowden Lidla Jones 228 N* Oak Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas Occupation Hone blind "I was born in Mississippi and emigrated to Arkansas* Born on the Peacock place* Old John Patterson was my old master* "My first goinf out was to the cow pen, then to the kitchen, and then they moved me to Mrs* Patterson1 s dining-room. "I helped weave cloth* Dyed it? I wish youfd hush! I y missis went to f the woods and got it* All I know is, she said it was indigo* She had a great big kittle and she put her thread in that* No Lord, she never bought her indigo she raised it* "Oh, Miss Fannie could do most anything* Made the prettiest counterpanes I ever saw. Yes ma'am, she could do it and did do it* "She had a loom half as big as this house* Lord a mercy, a many a time I went dancin' from that old spinninv-wheel* "They made all the clothes for the colored folks* They'd be sewin* for weeks and months* "Miss Fannie and Miss Francesr~that was her daughter they wove such pretty cloth for the colored* You know, they went and made themselves dresses and the white and colored had the same kind of dresses* "Yes Lord, they had some folks* "Miss Frances wore hoops but Miss Ffrnnie didn't* "During of the War them Yankees come down the river; but to tell the truth, we run and hid and never seen fem no more* 151 152 "They took Mars John's fine saddle horse named Silver Heels* Yes ma'am, took saddle and bridle and the horse on top of 'em* And he had a mare named Buchanan and they took her too* He had done moved out of the big house down into the woods* Called hisself hidin' I reckon* And he had his horses tied down by the river and the Yankees slipped up on him and took the horses* "Yankees burned his house and gin house too and set fire to the cotton* Oh Lord, I don't like to talk about it* Them Yankees was rough* "Right after freedom our white folks left this country and went to Missouri and the last account I heard of 'em they was all dead* "After freedom, folks scattered out just like sheep* "I'm tryin' to study 'bout some songs but I can't think of nothin9 but Dixie." sZUtU. / m W Interviewer Mrs* Beralce Bowden rnmmmmm^mmm^m^mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmM^MMMmmhh^ Person interviewed Iffdia Jones 228 North Oak Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas Age 95 My name's Lydia Lydia Jones* Oh my God I9se born in Mississippi* I wish youfd hush I know all about slavery. "I never had but one master. That was old John Patterson* No he want good to me* I wish youfd hush! I had two young masters Marse John and Marse Edward. Marse John go off to war and say he gwine whip them Yankees with his pocket knife, but he didn't do it. They said the war was to keep the colored folks slaves*, I tell you I've heard them bull whips a ringin9 from sun to sun. After the war when they told us we is free, they said to hire ourselves out. They didn9t give us a nickel when we left. "I heered talk of the Ku Klux and they come close enough for us to be skeered but I never seen none of 'em* We never had no slave uprisin's on our plantation old John Patterson would a shot 'em down* I tell you he was a rabid man. "I used to pick cotton and chop cotton and help weave the cloth. My old mistress Miss Fannie used to go to the woods and get things to dye the cloth* She would dye some blue and some red* "Only song I 'member is Dixie* I heered talk of some others but God knows I never fooled with 'em. 153 "Yesfm I believes in hants* Let me tell you something* My mama seen my daddy after he been dead a long time* He come right up through the crack by the fireplace and he said fDon't you be afraid Emmaline* but she was agoin'* They had to sing and pray in the house 'fore my mama would go back but she never seen him again* "I9se been blind now for three years and I lives with my granddaughter but lady, I'll tell you the truth I been around* Yes, madam. I is." Mrs* Bernice Bowden Interviewer Person interviewed Age Liza Jones (Cookie) 610 E* Eighteenth Street, Pine Bluff, Ark* 88 "Come in, this is Cookie* Well, I do know a heap about slavery, cause I worked* I stayed in the house; I was house girl* They called me Cookie cause I used to cook so much* "That was in Madison County, near Jackson, Tennessee* W y misf tress was good to me* Yesfm, I got along all right but a heap of others got along all wrong* "Mistress took care of us in the cold and all kinds of weather* She sho did* "She had four women and four men* We had plenty to eat* She had hogs and sheep and geese and always cooked enough for all of us* Whatever she had to eat we had* "We clothed our darkies in slavery times* I was a weaver for four years and never done nothin1 else* Yes ma*m, I was a house woman and I am now* "Yes niafm, I member seein1 different kinds of soldiers* I member once some Rebels come to old mistress to get somethin1 to eat but before it was ready the Yankees come and run em off* They didn't have time to eat it all so us colored folks got the rest of it* "Old mistress had a son Mac and he was in the war* The Yankees captured him and carried him to Chicago and put him in a warehouse over the water* "Old mistress was a good old Christian woman* All the darkies had to come to her room to prayermeetin* every night* She didn't skip no nights* And her help didn't mind workin'* They'd go the length for her, Miss* "After I was grown I went most anywhere, bit when I was little I sho set on old mistress' dress tail* I used to go to church with her* She'd say, "Open your mouf and sing" and Ifd just holler and sing# I can member now how loud I used to holler* "Aint no use in talkin*, I had a good mistress* I never was sold* Old mistress wouldn't sell* There was a speculator come there and wanted to buy us* When we was free, old mistress say, "Now I could a sold you and had the money, and now you is go in' to leave." But they didn't, they stayed* Some stayed with old mistress till she died, but I didnft. I married the first year of freedom* "My mistress and me spin a many a cut of cotton together* She couldn't beat me neither* If that old soul was livin1 today, I'd be right with her* I was gettln1 along. I didn't know nothin' but freedom* "I had freedom then and I ain't been free since, didn't have no sponsibility* But when they turned you loose, you had your doctor bill and your grub bill ~ now wasn't you a slave then? "My mammy was a cook and her name was Katy* "After I was married we went to live at Black Ankle* I learned to cook and I sho did cook for the nehite folks twenty-one years* I used to go back and see old mistress* If I stay away too long, she send for me* 161 "How many childen I had? You want the truth? Well, fifteen, but never had but three to live any length of time* "Well, I told you the beat I know and the straightest I know* If I can't tell you the truth, Ifm not goin* to tell you nothin1 "Yes, honey, I saw the Ku Klux*" 80720 \ 4^ v 1;>8 Interviewer ___ __ Person interviewed Age Miss Irene Robertson Lucy Jones, Marlanna Arkansas Born 1866 "I was raised second year after the surrender. I donft know a father or mother. They was dead when I was five years old* I had no sisters nor brothers. Mrs. Cynthia Hall raised me* She raised my mother. Master Hall was her husband. They was old people and they was so good to me. They had no children and I lived in the house with them. I never went to school a day in my life* I canft read. I can count money* "My mother was dark. I married when I was fifteen years old* I have four children living. They are all dark* They are about the same color but darker than I am. "No ma'am, I don't believe one could be voodooed. I lived nearly all my life with white folks and they don't heed no foolishness like that, do they? I cooked, worked in the field, washed and ironed* "I married three times* The first time at Raymond, Mississippi* I never had no big weddings* "Seems like some folks have lost their grip and ain't willing to start over. I don't know much to say for the young people* They are not smart* They got more schooling* They try to shirk all the work they can. I never seen no Kh Klux in my life* People used to raise nearly all their living at home and now they depend on buying nearly everything* Well, I think it is bad*" 30688 Interviewer Person interviewed Age 159 Samel S, Taylor Mary Jones 1017 Dennison, Little Rock, Arkansas 72 "I was born on the twenty-second of March, 1866, in Van Buren, Arkansas* I had six children* All of them were bred and born at the same place* "I was born in a frame house* My father used to live in the country, but I was born in the town* He bought it just as soon as he come out of the army and married right away and bought this home* I donft know where he got his money from* I guess he saved it* He served in the Union aimy; he wasn't a servant* He was a soldier, and drawed his pay* He never run through his money like most people do* I don't know whether he made any money in slavery or not but he was a carpenter during slave times and they say he always had plenty of money* I guess he had saved some of that too* "My mother was married twice* Her name was Louisa Buchanan* My father was named Abraham Riley* My stepfather was named Moses Buchanan* My father was a soldier in the old original war (the Civil War) the war they ended in 1865* "I disremember who my motherf s master was but I think it wap a man yarned Johnson* I didnft know my father's people* She married him from White County up here* Her and him, they corresponded mostly in letters because he traveled lots* He looked like an Indian* He had straight hair and was tall and rawboned and wore a Texas hat* I had his picture but the pictures fade away* My father was a sergeant* He died sometime after the war* I don't remember when because I wasn't old enough* I can just remember looking at the corpse* I was too small to do any grieving* "My mother was a nurse in slavery times* She nursed the white folks and their children* She did the housework and such like* She was a good cook too* After freedom, when the old folks died out, she cooked for Zeb Ward--you know him, head of the penitentiary* She used to cook for the Jews and gentiles* That her kind of work* That was her occupation good cook* She could make all kinds of provisions* She could make preserves and they had a big orchard everywhere she worked* "I have heard my mother talk about pateroles, jayhawkers, and Ku Klux, but I never knew of them myself* I have heard say they were awful bad the Ku Klux or somethinf* "My mother's white folks sold her* or from* They sold her from her mother* I don't know who they sold her to I don't know how she got free* I think she got free after the war ceased* But she had a good time all her life* She had a good time because she was a good cook, and a good nurse, and she had good white folks* My grandma, she had good folks too* They was free before they were free, my ma and grandma* They was just as free before freedom as they were afterwards* My mother had seven children and two sets of twins among them* But I am the only one living* Occupation "They say that I'm too old to work now; so I can't make nothin' to keep my home goin' * I have five children living* Two are away from here one in Michigan, and another in Illinois* I have three others but they don't make enough to help me much* I used to work 'round the laundries* Then I used to work 'round with these colored restaurants* I worked with a colored woman down by the station for twelve or fifteen years. I first helped her wash and iron. She ironed and hired other girls to wait table and wash dishes and so on. Them times wasnft like they are now* They'd hire you and keep you. Then I worked at a white boarding house on Second and Cross. I quit working at the laundries because of the steady work in the restaurants. After the restaurants I went to work in private families and worked with them till I got so I couldn't work no more* Maybe I could do plenty of things, but they won't give me a chance* "I have been married twice* My second husband was John Jones* He always went by the name of his white folks. They were named Ivory. He came from up in Searcy. I got acquainted with him and we started going together* He'd been married before and had children up in Searcy. He got his leg cut off in a accident* He was working over to the shop lifting ties with another helper and this man helping him gave way on his side and let his end fall. It fell across my husband's foot and blood poison set in and caused him to lose his foot and leg. He had his foot cut off at the county hospital and made himself a peg-leg. He cut it out hisself while he was at the hospital* He lived a long while after that* He died on Tenth and Victory* My first husband was Henry White* He was a shop worker too the Iron Mountain* "We went to school together. I lost my health before I married, and I had to stop going to school* The doctor was a German and lived on Cross between Fifth and Sixth. He said that he ought to have written the history ofraylife to show what I was cured of because I was paralyzed two years* My head was drawed 'way back between my shoulders* I lived with my first husband about six years* He died with T.B. in Memphis, Tennessee* He had married again when he died* We got so we couldn't agree, so I thought it was best for him to live with his mother and me to live with mine* We quit under good conditions* I had a boy after he was separated from me. "I don't know what to say about the people now* I don't get 'round much* They aren't like they used to be. The young people don't like to have you 'round them* I never did object to any of my children gettin' married because my mother didn't object to me* "I know Mr. Gillespie* (He passed at the time ed.) He comes to see me now and then. All my people are dead now 'cept my children." Interviewer's Comment Brother Gillespie has a story turned in previously. Evidently he is making eyes at the old lady; but the romance is not likely to bud. She has lost the sight of one eye apparently through a cataract which has spread over the larger part of the iris. Nevertheless, she is more active than he is, and apparently moire competent, and she isn't figuring on making her lot any harder than it is* 1(3 .5 Interviewer Person interviewed Age Mrs. Bernice Bowden Mary Jones 509 E* 23rd Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 78 "I was born three weeks 9 fore Christmas in South Carolina* "I 'member one time the Yankees corns along and I run to the door* I know ma made me go back but I peeped out the window* You know how children is* They wore great big old hats and blue coats* " 'Nother time we saw them a ccmin9 and said, 'Yonder come the Yankees9 and we run* Ma said, 'Don't run, themfs the Yankees what freed you.1 "Old mis' was named Joanna Long and old master was Joe Long* I can't remember much, I just went by what ma said* *I went to school now and then on account we had to work* "Ve had done sold out in South Carolina and was down at the station when some of the old folks said if we was goin' to the Mississippi bottoms where the panthers and wolves was we would never come back. Ve thought we was comin' to Arkansas but when we found out we was in the Mississippi bottoms* Ve stayed there and made two crops, then we come to Arkansas* "The way the younger generation is livin' now, the Lord can't bless 'em* They know how to do right but they won't do it* Yes ma'am." 161 3081OA Interviewer Mrs* Bernice Bowden Person interviewed Age Nannie Jones 1601 Saracen Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 81 "Good morning* Come in* I sure is proud to see you. Yes mafam, I sure is* "I was born in Chicot County. I heerd Dr* Gaines say I was four years old in slavery times. I know I ain't no baby. I feels my age, too in my limbs. tt I heerd fem talk about a war but I wasn't big enough to knovx about it. My father went to war on one side but he didn't stay very long. I don't know which side he was on. Them folks all dead now I just can remember fem. "Br. Gaines had a pi%etty big crew on the place. I'm gwine tall you what I know. I can't tell you nothin' else. "Now I want to tell it liko nama said. She said she was sold from Kentucky. She died when I was small. "I remember when they said the people v/as free. I know they jumped up mid down and carried on. "Dr. Gaines was so n\ce to his people. I stayed in the house most o ? the time. I was the little pet around the house. They said I was so ; cute. "Dr. Gaines give me my age but I lost it movin'. But I know I ain f t no baby. birls. I never had but two children and they both livin' two 2 * "Honey, I worked in the field and anywhere* I worked like a man* I think that's what got me bowed down now* I keeps with a misery right across my back* Sometimes I can hardly get along* "Honey, I just don't know 'bout this younger generation* I just donft have no thoughts for 'em, they so wild* I never was a rattlin' kind of a girl. I always was civilized* Old people in them days didn't flow their children to do things. I know when mama called us, we'd better go* They is a heap wusser now. So many of 'em gettin' into trouble** 165 166 .v . y Interviewer Person Interviewed Age Mrs* Bernice Bowden Reuben Jones Ezell Quarters, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 85 "Well, I'm one of em* I can tell you bout it from now till sundown* "I was born at Senatobia, Mississippi, this side of Jackson* Born in 1 52 on April tbe 16th* That's when I was born* Old man Stephen Williams was my master in time of the war and before the war, too* He was pretty good to me* Give me plenty of something to eat, but he whipped me* Oh, I specked I needed it* Put me in the field when I was five years old* Put a tar cap on my head* I was so young the sun made my hair come out so they put that tar cap on my head* "I member when they put the folks on blocks as high as that house and sell em to the highest bidder. No mafm, I wasn't sold cause my mother had three or four ehillun and boss man wouldn't sell dem what had ehillun cause dem ehillun was hands for him* "They made me hide ever'thing they had from the Yankees* Yes'm, I seen em come out after the fodder and the corn* We hid the meat and the males and the money* Drove the mules in the cave* Kept em der till the Yankees left* We dug the hole for the meat but old marse dug the hole for the money* "I used to help put timbers on the bridge to keep the Yankees out but dey come right on through just the same* Took the ox wagon but dey sent it back* "Couldn't go nowhere without a pass* Had a whippin' block right at the horse trough. Yes ma'm, they'd eat you up. I mean they'd whip you, but they give you plenty of somethin' to eat* "My mother was the weaver and they had a tanyard on the place* "In slavery days couldn't go see none of your neighbors without a pass* People had meetin' right at the house. Dey'd have prayer and singin'. I went to em. I could sing Lord yes* I used to know a lot of old songs 'Am I A Soldier of the Cross?1. "Lord yes, ma'm, don't talk! When the soldiers come out where we was I could hear the guns. Had a battle right in town* Rebels just as scared of the Yankees as if twas a bear* I seed one or two of em come to town and scare the whole business. "I never knowed but oneroanrun off and jined the Yankees* Carried his master's finest ridin' hoss and a mile* He always had a fine hoss and Yankees come and took it. When the Yankees come out the last time, my owners cleaned out the smoke house and buried the meat* "I helped gin cotton when I wasn't big enough to stand up to the breast. Stood upon a bench and had a lantern hung up so I could see fore daylight. Yes ma'm, great big gin house* Yes ma'm, I sho has worked all kindsjand plowin'. "Now my old boss called me Tony that's what he called me* "When peace came, we had done gathered our crop and we left there a week later* You know people usually hunts their kinfolks and we went to Hernando. Come to Arkansas in '77* Got of fin de boat right der at de cotehouse* Pine Bluff wasn't nothin' when I come here* "I used to vote. I aimed to vote the Republican ticket I don't know. "Oh yes ma'm, I seed the Ku Klux, yes ma'm* They're bad, too* Lord I seed a many of them* They come to my house* I went to the door and that's as far as I went* That was in Hernando* I went back to my old home in Hernando bout three months ago* Went where I was bred and born but I didn't know the place it was tore up so "This younger generation whole lot different from when I was comin' up* Yes'm, it's a whole lot different* They ain't doin' so well. I have always .tended to my own business* Cose I been arrested for drivin' mules with sore shoulders* Didn't put me in jail, but the officers come up* That was when I was workin' on the Lambert place. I told em they wasn't my mules so they let me go* "I can't tell you bout the times now* I hope it'll get better can't get no wusser** 30471 Interviewer Person interviewed las 169 Miss Irene Robertson Vergil Jones. Brinkley. Arlcansaa 70 "My parents was Jane Jones end Vergil Jones* Their oner was Colonel Jones in Alabama* Papa vent to the war end served four years* He got a $30 a month Union pension long as be lived* He mas in a number of places* He fought as a field man* He had a long msket he brought home frm the war* He told us a heap of things long time ago* Seam lack folks set down and talked wid their children morefn they do nowdays* "Papa Gone to this State after the surrender* He married here* I am the oldest of seven children* Kama was in this State before the war* She was bought when she was a girl and brought here* I don't know if Colonel Jonea owned her or if papa had seen her somewhere else* He cone to her end they married* My mama was a house girl soma and she washed and ironed for ICiss Tannie Lambert* They had a big family and a big fan* Their farm was seven miles this side of Indian Bay, eight miles to Clarendon* They had thirteen in family and mama had seven children made nine in her family* She had a bed piled fall of starched clothes white as snow* Lamberts had three sets of twins* Oar family lived with the Lamberts 88 or 24 years* Ve started working for Mr* B* J* Lambert and Miss Tannie (his wife)* Mama nursed me and B* T* from the same breast* Ve was raised up grown together and I worked for R* T. till he died* Ve played with J. L. Black too till he was grown* He was county judge and sheriff of this county (Monroe)* "Folks that helped me out is about all dead* I pick cotton but I can't pick very much* How I don't have no work till chopping cotton times eoaes on* a. It la hard now. I would do jobs but I don't hoar of no Jobs to be dons* I asked around but didn't find a thing to do *I heard about the Ku Kluxes* My papa used to dodge the Ku Kluxes* He lay out in the bushes from then* It was bad tines* Some folks would advise the black folks to do one way and then the Ku Kluxes come and make it hot for thou One thing the Ku Kluxes didn't want much big gatherings among the black folks* They break up big gatherings* Some white folks tell thm to do one thing and then some others tell them to do sens other way* That is the way it was* The Ku Kluxes was hot headed* Papa wasn't a bad man but he was afraid they did do so ouch* He was on the lookout and dodged then all the time* "I haven't voted for a long tiae* I couldn't keep ay taxes up* I don't own a hem* I pay |4 rent for it* It is a cold house net so good* I have famed all ay life* I still faza* Tiaes got so that no body would run you (credit you) and I coae here to get jobs between farming. I still faza* They hire aostly by the day day labor* Then two things and ay dis'bility is asking it mighty hard for me to live* I work at apy jobs I can get* "I signed up for the Old Age Pension* They said I couldn't work, I was too old* I wanted to work on the government work* I never got nothing* I don't get no kind of help. I thought I didn't know how to get into the Old ige Pension reason I didn't get it* It would help keep in wood this wet weather when work is scarce*" 170 171 30582 Interviewer Person interviewed Age Miaa Irene Robertson Walter Jones. Brinkley. Arkansas 72 " l father run away scared of the Yankees* He got excited and left* Ey My mother didn't want him to leave her. She was crying when he left. My father belong to the Wilsons* Mother was sold on the block in Richmond* Virginia when she was twelve years old and raver seen her mother again* Mother belong to Charles Hunt* Her name was Lucy Bint. She married three times* Charles Hunt went to market to buy slaves* We lived in Harde&an County, Tennessee when I was bora but he sent us to Mississippi* She worked in the field then but before then she was a house girl* No, she was black* We are all African* *I got eight children* When my wife died they finished scattering out* I come here from Grand Junctiony Mississippi* I eat breakfast on Christmas day 1883 at Forrest City and spent the day at Hazen* I come with friends* We paid our own ways* We come on the train and boat and walked some* "No, I don't take stock in voting. I never did. I have voted so long ago I forgot it all. "The biggest thing I can tell you ever happened to us more than I told you was in 1878 I had yellow fever* Dr. Milton Pruitt come to see me. The next day his brother come to see me* Dr* Milton died the next day. I got well. At Grand Junction both black and white died. Some of both color got well* A lot of people died* "How am I making a living? I don't make one* Mr* Ashly lets me live in a house and gives me scrap meat* I bottom chairs or do what I can. I past heavy work. The Welfare don't help me* I farmed, railroaded nearly all my life. Public work this last few years*" # m 173 30G44 Interviewer Samuel S. Taylor 5 Person Interviewed Offcar Felix June 11 1720 Brown Street, Little Bock, Arkansas Age 60 w My father's name was Peter Junell, Peter W# Junell. I don't know what the W. was for* He was bom in Ouachita County near Bearden, Arkansas. Bearden is an old town. It is fourteen miles from Camden. My dad was seventyfive years old h n he died* He died in 1924* He was very young in the time ve of slavery. He never did do very much work. "His master was named John Junell* That was his old master. He had a young master too, Warren Junell. His old master given him to his young master, Warren. My father's mother and father both belonged to the Junells. His mother's name was Dinah, and his father's name was Anthony. All the slaves took their last names after their owners. They never was sold, not in any time that my father could remember* "As soon as my father was large enough to go to walkin* about, his old master given him to his son, master barren Junell* Warren would carry him about and pake him rassle(wrestle). He was a good rassler. As far as work was concerned, he didnTt do nothing much of that. He just followed his young master all around rasslin. "His masters was good to him. They whipped slaves sometimes, but they were considered good. My father always said they was good folks. He never told me how he learnt that he was free.. "Pretty well all the slaves lived in log cabins. Even in my time, there was hardly a board house in that county. The food the slaves ate was mostly -2- 171 tread and milk c o m bread. Old man Junell was rich and had lots of slaves.* When he went to feed his slaves, he would feed them jus like hogs. He had a great long trough and he would have bread crumbled up in it and gallons of milk poured over the "bread, and the slaves would get round it and eat. Sometimes they would get to fighting over it. You know, jus like hogs J They would be eatin and sometimes one person would find somethin and get holt of it and another one would want to take it, and they would get to fight in over it. Sometimes blood would get in the trough, but they would eat right on and pay no Mention to it. f , I don't know whether they fed the old ones that way or not. I jus heered my father tell how he et out of the trough his self. "I have heered my father talk about the pateroles too. He talked about how they used to chase him. #ut he didn't have much experience with them, because they never did catch him. That was after the war %hen the slaves had been freed, but the pateroles still gpt after them, iy father remember how they would catch other slaves. One nigiht they went to an old man's house. It was dark and the old man told them to come on in. He didr^t have no gun, but he took his ax and stood behind the door on the hinge side. It was after slavery. When he said for them to come in, they rushed right on in and the old man killed three or four of them with his ax. He was a old African, and they never had been able to do nothin' with him, not even in slavery time. I never heard that they did nothin' to the old man about it. The pateroles was outlaws anyway. heard my father say that in slavery time, they took the finest and portlies look Negroes A the males for breeding purposes. They wouldn't let them strain themselves up nor nothin like that. They wouldn't make them io much hard work." 175 r305O Interviewer Miss Irene Robertson Person Interviewed Age Sam Keaton, Brinkley* Ark* 78 "I was b o m close to Golden Hill down in Arkansas County. My parents names was Louana and Dennis Keaton. children. Their master was Mr. Jack Keaton and Miss Martha* They had four boys * They all come from Virginia in wagons the second year of the war - the Civil War. walking. wagons* not. They had ten I heard 'em tell about Some of em walked, some rode horse back and some in I don't know if they knowed bout slave uprisings or I know they wasn't in em because they come here wid Mr* Jack Keaton. wid them. It was worse in Virginia than it was down here Mr. Keaton didn't give em nothing at freedom. They stayed on long as they wanted to stay and then they went to work for Mr. Jack Keaton1 s brother, Mr* Ben Keaton. ed on shares and picked cotton by the hundred. staid on down there till they died* They work- My parents I been working for Mr. Floria for thirty years. "My father did vote. He voted a Republican ticket. haven't voted for fifty years. I They that do vote in the Gen- eral election know very little bout what they doing. If they could vote in the Primary they would 'know but a mighty little about it. is at home* The women ain't got no business voting. Their place They cain't keep their houses tidied up and like they oughter be and go out and work regularly. That's the reason 2. I think they oughter stay at home and train the children better than it being done, "I think that the young generation is going to be lost. They killing and fighting* work much as I do. They do everything. No, they don't They don't save nothing 4 They don't save nothing 1 Times is harder than they used to be some* everybody wants to live in town. harder for me, My age is making times heap I live with my daughter, owns 40 acres land, a house, a cow, but I owe it bout all. Nearly I am a widower. I made three bales cotton, X tried to get a little help so I could get out of debt but I never could get no 'sistance from the Welfare.n I 176 Interviewer Person interviewed Age Watt McKinney Tines Kendrieks Trenton Arkansas 104 "My name is Tines Kendricks* I was borned in Crawford County, Georgia* You see, Boss, I is a little nigger and I really is more smaller now dan I used to be when I was young 'cause I so old and stooped over* I mighty nigh wore out from all these hard years of work and servin1 de Lord* My actual name what was give to me by my white folks, de Kendricks, was fTinyf* Dey called me dat fcause I never was no size much* Atter us all sot free I just changed my name to 'Tines* anf dats what I been goin' by for nigh on to ninety years. " fCordinf to what I Member 'bout it, Boss, I is now past a hundred and four year old dis past July de fourth two hours before day* YJhat I means is what I fmember fbout what de old mars told me dat time I corned back to de home place atter de War quit an' he say dat I past thirty then* My mammy, she said I born two hours before day on de fourth of July* Dat what dey tole me, Boss* I is been in good health all my days* I ain't never been sick any in my life 'scusin' dese last years when I git so old and feeble and stiff in de joints, and my teef 'gin to cave, and my old bones, dey 'gin to ache* But I just keep on livin* and trustin' in de Lord 'cause de Good Book say, ''Wherefore de evil days come an* de darkness of de night draw nigh, your strength, it shall not perish* I will lift you up 'mongst dem what f bides wid me*' Dat is de Gospel, Boss* "My old mars, he was named Arch Kendricks and us lived on de planta- tion what de Kendricks had not far from Llacon in Crawford County, Georgia* You can see, Boss, dat I is a little bright an* got some white blood in ne* Dat is 'counted for on my mammy's side of de family. Her pappy, he was a white man* He wasn't no Kendrick though* He was a overseer* Dat what my mammy she say an' then I know dat wasn*t no Kendrick mixed up in nothin* like dat* Dey didn't believe in dat kind of bizness. My old roars, Arch Kendricks, I will say dis, he certainly was a good fair man* Old mis' anf de young mars, Sam, dey was strickly tough an', Boss, I is tellin' you de truth dey was cruel* De young mars, Sam, he never taken at all atter he pa. He got all he meanness from old mis' an1 he sure got plenty of it too* Old misf, she cuss an* rare worse 'an a man* Way 'fore day she be up hollerin' loud enough for to be heered two miles, 'rousin' de niggers out for to git in de fields even 'fore light* Mars Sam, he stand by de pots handin' out de grub an' givin' out de bread an' he cuss loud anf say: 'Take a sop of dat grease on your hoecake an' move erlong fast 'fore I lashes you.' Mars Sam, he was a big man too, dat he was* He was nigh on to six an' a half feet tall* Boss, he certainly was a chile of de dsbbil* All de cookin' in dem days was done in pots hangin' on de pot racks* Dey never had no stoves endurin' de times what I is tellin' you 'bout. At times dey would give us enough to eat. At times dey wouldn't just 'cordin' to how dey feelin' when dey dishin' out de grub* De biggest what dey would give de field hands to eat would be de truck what us had on de place like greens, turnips, peas, side meat, an' dey sure would cut de side meat awful thin toof Boss* Us alius had a heap of corn-meal dumplin's an' hoecakes* Old mis', her an1 Mars Sam, dey real stingy* You better not leave no grub a n > your plate for to throw away* You sure better eat it all iffen you like it or no* Old mis' and Mars Sam, dey de real bosses an' dey was wicked* Ifse tellin* you de truth, dey was. Old mars, he didn't have much to say 3* bout de runnin* of de place or de handlin* of de niggers* Tou know all de property and all the niggers belonged to old mis'* She got all dat from her peoples* Dat what dey left to her on their death* She de real owner of everything* *Just to show you, Boss, how ftwas with Mars Sam, anf how contrary an1 fractious anf wicked dat young white man was, I wants to tell you fbout de time dat Aunt Hannah's little boy Mbse died* Mose, he sick 'bout er week* Aunt Hannah, she try to doctor on him anf git him well an1 she tell old mis1 dat she think Mose bad off an1 orter have de doctor* Old mlsf, she wouldn*t git de doctor* She say Mose ain't sick much, an* bless my Soul, Aunt Hannah she right* In a few days from then Mose is dead* Mars Sam, he come cussin* an' tole Gabe to get some planks anf make de coffin anf sont some of dem to dig de grave over dere on de far side of de place where dey had er buryin*~ groun' for de niggers* Us toted de coffin over to where de grave was dug an' gwine bury little Mbse dar an' Uncle Billy Jordan, he was dar and begun to sing an1 pray an1 have a kind of funeral at de bury in' * Every one was moanin' an' singin' an' pray in' and Mars Sam heard 'em an' come sailin9 over dar on he hoss an* lit right in to cussin* an1 rarein* an* say dat if dey don*t hurry an* bury dat nigger an* shut up dat singin* an* carryin* on, he gwine lash every one of dem, an* then he went to cussin* worser an* 'busin* Uncle Billy Jordan* He say if fen he ever hear of him doin* any more preaehin* or prayin* * round *mongst de niggers at de grave-yard or anywheres else, he gwine lash him to death* No suh, Boss, Mars Sam wouldn*t even 'low no preaehin* or singin* or nothin* like dat* He was wicked* I tell you he was* "Old mis*, she ginrally looked after de niggers when dey sick an* give dem de medicine* An* too, she would get de doctor if fen she think 179 2. 180 dey real bad off 9cause like I said, old mis99 she mighty stingy an* she never want to lose no nigger by dem dyin9* How some~ever it was hard some time to get her to believe you sick when you tell her dat you was, an1 she would think you just playinY off from work* I have seen niggers what would be mighty near dead before old misf would believe them sick at all* "Before de War broke out, I can 'member there was some few of de white folks what said dat niggers ought to be sot free, but there was just one now anv then that took that stand* One of dem dat I 'member was de Rev* Dickey what was de parson for a big crowd of de white peoples in dat part of de county* Rev* Dickey, he preached freedom for de niggers and say dat dey all should be sot free an' gived a home and a mule* Dat preachin' de Rev* Dickey done sure did rile up de folks dat is de most of them like de Kendricks and Mr. Eldredge and Dr. Murcheson and Nat Walker and such as dem what was de biggest of the slaveowners* Right away atter Rev* Dickey done such preachin9 dey fired him from de church, an9 'bused him, an' some of dem say dey gwine hang him to a limb, or either gwine ride him on a rail out of de country* Sure enough dey made it so hot on dat man he have to leave clean out of de state so I heered. No suh, Boss, they say they ain't gwine divide up no land with de niggers or give them no home or mule or their freedom or nothin'. They say dey will wade knee deep in blood an' die first* "When de War start to break out, liars Sam listed in de troops and was sent to Virginny. There he stay for de longest* I hear old mis' tellin' 'bout de letters she got from him, an9 how he wishln9 they hurry and start de battle so9s he can get through killin9 de Yankees an9 get de War over an' come home* Bless my soul, it wasnft long before dey had de battle what Mars Sam was shot in* Be writ de letter from de hospital where they had took him* He say dey had a hard fight, dat a ball busted his gun, and another ball shoot his cooterments (aocouterments) off him; the third shot tear a big hole right through the side of his neck* The doctor done sew de wound up; he not hurt so bad* He soon be back with his company* "But it wasn't long 'fore dey writ some more letters to old mis* an* say dat Mars Sam*s wound not gettin* no better; it wasn*t healin* to do no good; every time dat they sew de gash up in his neck it broke loose again* De Yankees had been put tin* poison grease on the bullets* Dat was de reason de wound wouldn't get well* Dey feared Mars Sam go in' to die an' a short time atter dat letter come I sure knowed it was so* One night just erbout dusk dark, de screech owls, dey come in er swarm an* lit in de big trees in de front of de house* A mist of dust come up an* de owls, dey holler an' carry on so dat old mars get he gun an' shot it off to scare dem erway. Dat was a sign, Boss, dat somebody gwine to die* I just knowed it was Mars Sam* "Sure enough de next day dey got de message dat Mars Sam dead* Dey brung him home all de way from Virginny an' buried him in de grave-yard on de other side of de garden wid his gray clothes on him an* de flag on de coffin* That*s what I'se telling you, Boss, 'cause dey called all de niggers in an' 'lowed dem to look at Mars Sam* I seen him an' he sure looked like he peaceful in he coffin with his soldier clothes on* I heered atterwards dat Mars Sam bucked an* rared just *fore he died an* tried to get outen de bed, an' dat he cussed to de last* "It was this way, Boss, how come me to be in de War* You see, they 'quired all of de slaveowners to send so many niggers to de army to work diggin' de trenches an' throwin* up de breastworks an' repairin' de railroads what de Yankees done *stroyed* Every mars was 'quired to send one digger for every ten dat he had* Iffen you had er hundred niggers. you had to send ten of dem to de army* I was one of dem dat my mars 9 quired to send* Dat was de worst times dat dis here nigger ever seen an1 de way dem white men drive us niggers, it was something awful* De strap, it was goinf from ffore day till fway after night* De niggers, heaps of fem just fall in dey tracks give out anf them white men layin9 de strap on dey backs without ceastin9* Dat was zackly way it was wid dem niggers like me what was in de army work* I had to stand it, Boss, till de War was over* "Dat sure was a bad war dat want on in Georgia* Dat it was* Did you ever hear fbout de Andersonville prison in Georgia? I tell you, Boss, dat was fbout de worstest place dat ever I seen* Dat was where dey keep all de Yankees dat dey capture anf dey had so many there they couldn't nigh take care of them* Dey had them fenced up with a tall wire fence anf never had enough house room for all dem Yankees* They would just throw de grub to fem* De mostest dat dey had for fem to eat was peas anf the filth, it was terrible De sickness, it broke out fmongst 'em all de while, anf dey just die like rats what been pizened* De first thing dat de Yankees do when dey take de state fway from de Confedrits was to free all dem what in de prison at Andersonville* "Slavery time was tough, Boss* You just don9t know how tough it was* I can't 'splain to you just how bad all de niggers want to get dey freedom* With de ffree niggers9 it was just de same as it was wid dem dat was in bondage* You know there was some few ffree niggers9 in dat time even 9fore de slaves taken outen bondage* It was really worse on dem dan it was with dem what wasn't free* De slaveowners, dey just despised dem 9free niggers1 anf make it just as hard on dem as dey can* Dey couldn9t get no work from nobody. Wouldn9t airy man hire 9em or give fem any work at all* So because dey was up against it an9 never had any money or nothin9, 2. 183 de white folks make dese 'free niggers1 sess (assess) de taxes* In1 1 cause dey never had no money for to pay de tax wid, dey was put up on de block by de court man or de sheriff anf sold out to somebody for enough to pay de tax what dey say dey owe* So dey keep these ffree niggers1 hired out all de time most workin1 for to pay de taxes* I 'member one of dem 'free niggers* mighty well* He was called ffree Sol** H e had him a little home an' a old i woman an' some boys* Dey was kept bounded out nigh 'bout all de time workin* for to pay dey tax* Yas suh, Boss, it was heap more better to be a slave nigger dan er free un* An* it was really er heavenly day when de freedom come for de race* "In de time of slavery annudder thing what make it tougi on de niggers was dem times when er man an* he wife an* their chillun had to be taken 'way from one anudder* Dis sep*ration might be brung 'bout most any time for one thing or anudder sich as one or tudder de man or de wife be sold off or taken *way to some other state like Louisiana or Mississippi* Den when a mars die what had a heap of slaves, these slave niggers be divided up 'mongst de mars* chillun or sold off for to pay de mars' debts* Then at times when er man married to er woman dat don't belong to de same mars what he do, then dey is li'ble to git divided up an' sep'rated most any day* Dey was heaps of nigger families dat I know what was sep* rated in de time of bondage dat tried to find dey folkses what was gone* But de mostest of *em never git togedder ag'in even after dey sot free 'cause dey don*t know where one or de other is* "Atter de Var over an* de slaves taken out of dey bondage, some of de very few ihite folks give dem niggers what dey liked de best a small piece of land for to work* But de mostest of dem never give 'em nothin* and dey sure despise dem niggers what left 'em* Us old mars say s. 184 he want to 9 range wid all his niggers to stay on wid him, dat he gwine give f em er mole an1 er piece er ground* But us know dat old misf ainf t gwine agree to dat* And sure enough she wouldn't* I9se tell in9 you de truth, every nigger on dat plaoe left* Dey sure done dat; an9 old mars an9 old mis', dey never had a hand left there on that great big place, an9 all that ground layin' out* "De gov'ment seen to it dat all of de white folks had to make contracts wid de niggers dat stuck wid 'em, an9 dey was sure strict 9bout dat too* De white folks at first didn't want to make the contracts an' say dey wasn't gwine to* So de gov'ment filled de jail with 'em, an9 after that every one make the contract* "When my race first got dey freedom an9 begin to leave dey mars9, a heap of de mars got ragin9 mad an9 just tore up truck* Dey say dey gwine kill every nigger dey find* Some of them did do dat very thing, Boss, sure enough* I9se tellin' you de truth* Dey shot niggers down by de hundreds*, Dey jus9 wasn9t gwine let 9 em enjoy dey freedom* Dat is de truth, Boss* "Atter I come back to de old home place from work in' for de army, it wasn't long 9fore I left dar an9 git me er job with er sawmill an9 worked for de sawmill peoples for about five years* One day I heered some niggers tellin9 about er white man what done come in dar gittin9 up er big lot of niggers to take to Arkansas* Dey was tellin9 9 bout what a fine place it was in Arkansas, an9 how rich de land is, an9 dat de crops grow without working, an' dat de taters grow big as er watermelon an9 you never have to plant 9em but de one time, an9 all sich as dat* Well, I 'cided to come* I j'ined up with de man an' come to Phillips County in 1875* Er heap er niggers come from Georgia at de same time dat me an' Callie come* You know Callie, dats my old woman whats in de shack dar right now* Us first lived on Mr* Jim Bash's place over close to Barton* Us ainft been far off from dere ever since us first landed in dis county* Fact is, Boss, us ain't been outen de county since us first come here, an' us gwine be here now I know till de Lord call for us to ccme on home*11 30366 186 F0I L0RE SUBJECTS Watt McKinney Name of interviewer Superstitious beliefs Subject Story * Information * (If not enough space on this page, add page) There is an ancient and traditional belief among the Southern Negroes, especially the older ones, that the repeated and intermitted cries of a whippoorwill near a home in the early evenings of summer and occurring on successive days at or about the same time and location; or the appearance of a highly excited redbird, disturbed for no apparent reason, is indicative of some imminent disaster, usually thought to be the approaching death of some member of the family* Tines Kendricks, who says that he was born the slave of Arch Kendricks in Crawford County, Georgia, two hours before day on a certain Fourth of July, one hundred and four years ago, recalls several instances in his long and eventful life in which he contends the accuracy of these forecasts was borne out by subsequent occurrences* The most striking of these he says was the time his young master succumbed from the effect of a wound received at the first battle of Manassas after hovering between life and death for several days* The young master, Sam Kendricks, who was the only son of his parents, volunteered at the beginning of the War and was attached to the army in Virginia He was a very impetuous, high-spirited young man and chafed much under the delay occasioned between the time of his enlistment and first battle, This information given by Place of residence Occupation Tinea Kendricks (C ) Trenton. Arkansas None Age 104 2. wanting to have the trouble over with and the difficulties settled which he honestly thought could be accomplished in the first engagement with that enemy for whom he held such profound contempt * Sam Kendricks, coming as he did from a long line of slave-owning forebears, was one of those Southerners who felt that it was theirs to command and the duty of others to obey* They would brook no interference with the established order and keenly resented the attitude and utterances of Northern press and spokesmen on the slavery question* Tines Kendricks recalls the time his young master took leave of his home and parents for the war and his remarks on departing that his neck was made to fit no halter and that he possessed no mite of fear for Yankee soldier or Yankee steel* Soon after the battle of Manassas, Arch Kendricks was advised that Sam had suffered a severe wound in the engagement* It was stated, however, that the wound was not expected to prove fatal* This sad news of what had befallen the young master was soon communicated throughout the entire length and breadth of the great plantation and in the early evening of that day Tines sitting in the door of his cabin in the slave quarters a short distance from the master's great house heard the cry of a whippoorwill and observed that the voice of this night bird seemed to arise from the dense hedge enclosing the spacious lawn in front of the home* Disturbed and filled with a sense of foreboding at this sound of the bird, he earnestly hoped and prayed that the cry would not be repeated the following evening, but to his great disappointment it was heard again and nearer the house than before* On each succeeding evening according to Tines Kendricks the call of the bird came clearly through the evening's stillness and each time he noticed that the cry came from a spot nearer the home until at last the bird seemed perched beneath the wide veranda and early on the morning following, a very highly excited redbird darted from tree to tree on the front lawn* 187 The redbird continued these peculiar actions for several minutes after which it flew and came to rest on the roof of the old colonial mansion directly above the room formerly occupied by the young master* Tines was convinced now that the end had come for Sam Kendricks and that his approaching death had been foretold by the whippoorwill and that each evening as the bird approached nearer the house and uttered his night cry just so was the life of young Sam Kendricks slowLy nearing its close and the actions of the redbird the following day was revealing evidence to Tines that the end had come to his young master which indeed it had as proven by a message the family received late in the morning of this same day* 189 v JvK.^O^Jr Interviewer Person interviewed Age Miss Irene Robertson Frank Kennedy, Holly Grove, Arkansas 65 or 70? "My parents1 name was Hannah and Charles Kennedy. They b'long to Master John Kennedy. I was raised round Aberdeen, Mississippi but they come in there after freedom. I heard em talk but I couldn't tell you much as where thay come from. They said a young girl bout got her growth would A auction off for more than any man. They used em for cooks and house women. I judge way they talked she be fifteen or sixteen years old. They brought $1,600 and #2,000. If they was scared up, where they been beat, they didn't sell off good. I knowed Master John Kennedy* "The Ku KLux come round but they didn't bother much. They would bother if you stole something. Another thing they made em stay close bout their own places and work. I don't know bout freedom. "I been farmin' and sawmillin' at Clarendon. I gets jobs I can do on the farms now. I got rheumatism so I can't get round. I had this trouble five years or longer now. "The times is worse, so many folks stealin' and killin'. The young folks don't work steady as they used to. Used to get figured out all you raised till now they refuse to work less en the money in sight* They don't work hard as I allers been workin'. "I got one girl married. I don't have no land nor home* I works fer all I have yet* 2. "I have voted not lately. I think my color outer vote like the white folks do long as they do right* The women takin1 the mens1 places too much it pears like. But they may be honester. I don't know how it will be." 190 4 r w "k ' - 191 ' oUOOO Interviewer Person Interviewed Age Samuel S Taylor Mrs* A* (Adrianna) W* Kerns 800 Victory Street, Little Rook, Arkansas 85 "When they first put me in the field* they put me and Viney to pick up brush and pile it, to pick up stumps, and when we got through with that, she worked on her mother's row and I worked on ny aunt's row until we got large enough to have a row to ourselves* Me and Viney were the smallest children in the field and we had one row eaoh* Some of the older people had two rows and picked on eaoh row* "fr birthday is on the fourth of November* and I am eighty-five years Ic old* You can count back and see what year I was born in* Relatives / mother's first child was her master1 s ohild* I was the second child but my father was Reuben Dortoh* He belonged to Colonel Dortoh# Colonel Dortoh died in Princeton, Arkansas, Dallas County, about eighty-six miles from here* He died before the War* I never saw him* But he was sy father's first master* He used to go and get goods, and he caught this fever they had then I think it was cholera and died* After Colonel Dortoh died, his son-in-law, Archie Hays, became ny father's second master* Were all with Hays when we were freed* " t - father1 s father was a white man* He was named Wilson Rainey* I Iy never did see him* U y mother has said to me many a time that he was the S meanest man in Dallas County* 1& father' 3 mother was named Viney* That was Ar her first name* I forget the last name* 1 y mother1 s name was Martha Hays^ S * z. and ny grandmother's name on r p mothers side m s Sallie lays* a ISyr maiden name was Adrianna Dortoh* A Devoted Slave Husband n I have heard i y mother tell many a time that there was a slave man who a used to take his own dinner and carry it three or four miles to his wife* His wife belonged to a mean white man who wouldn't give them what they needed to eat* He done without his dinner in order that she might have enough* Where would you find a man to do that now? Nowadays they are taking the bread away from their wives and children and carrying it to some other woman* Patrollers "A Negro couldn't leave his master's place unless he had a pass from his master* If he didn't have a pass* they would whip him* U r father was y out once and was stopped by them* They struck him* Wheoa sy father got back home, he told Colonel Dortoh and Colonel Dortoh went after them pateroles and laid the law down to then*--told then that he was reaty to kill ' *** *** "The pateroles got after a slave named Ben Holmes once and run him clean to our place* He got under the bed and hid* But they found him and dragged him out and beat him* Work "I had three aunts in the field* They could handle a plow and roll logs as well as any man* Trees would blow down s i trees would have to be ad carried to a heap and burned* 192 2. 193 11 1 been whipped many a time by ny mistress and overseer* If& get behind with ny work and he would come by and give me a liok with the bull whip he oarried with him* tt At first when the old folks out wood* me and Viney would piok up ohips and burn up brush* We had to piok dry peas in the fall after the crops had been gathered* We picked two large basketsful a day* "When we got larger we worked in the field picking cotton and pulling corn as high as we could reach* You had to pull the fodder first before you could pull the corn* When we had to come out of the field on account of rain, we would go to the corn crib and shuck corn if we didn't have some weaving to do* We got so we could weave and spin* When master caught us playing, he would set us to cutting jackets* He would give us each two or three switches and we would stand up and whip eaoh other* I would go easy on Viney but she would try to cut me to pieces* She hit me so hard I would say, 'Yes suh, massa*' And^he would say, 'Why you sayin' "Yes suh, massa," to me? I ain't doin' nothin' to you*' "tr mother used to say that Lincoln went through the South as a beggar Iy and found out everything* whan he got back, he told the North how slavery was ruining the nation* He put different things before the South but they wouldn't listen to him* I heard that the South was the first one to fire a shot* "Lemma tell you how freedom came* Our master came out where we was grubbing the ground in front of the house* Vy father was already in Little fr Rock where they were trying to make a soldier out of him* Master came out and said to mother, 'Martha, they are saying you are free but that ain't go in' to las' long* You better stay here* Reuben is dead*' "Mother then commenced to fix up a plan to leave* She got the oxen yoked up twice, but when she went to hunt the yoke, she couldn't find it# Negroes were all going through every which way then* Peace was declared before she could get smother chance* Word came then that the government would carry all the slaves where they wanted to go* Mother came to Little Rook in a government wagon* fl She left Cordelia* Cordelia was her daughter by Archie Hoys* Cordelia was supposed to join us when the government wagon came along but she went to sleep* One colored woman was coming to get in the wagon and her white folks caught her and made her go back* - Them Yankees got off their horses and went over there and made them turn the woman loose and let her come on* They were rough and they took her on to Little Rock in the wagon* "The Yankees used to come looking for horses* One time Master Archie had sent the horses off by one of the colored slaves who was to stay at his wife's house and hide them in the thicket* During the night, mother heard Archie Hays hollering* She wenfc out to see what was the matter* The Yankees had old Archie Hays out and had guns poked at his breast* He was hollering, 'No sir, I don't*' And mother came and said, 'Reuben, get up and go tell them he don't know where the horses is#f Father got up and did a bold thing* He went out and said, fWait, gentlemen, he don't know where the horses is, but if you'll wait till tomorrow morning, he'll send a man to bring them in*' I don't know how they got word to him but he brought them in the next morning and the Yankees taken them off* "Once a Rebel fired a shot at a Yankee and in a few minutes, our place was alive with them* They were iporking like ants in a heap all over the place* They took chickens and evexything on the placed 195 Master Archie didn't have no sons large enough for the ar y* If he had* they would hams killed him because they would have thought that he was harboring spies*11 Interviewer' s Comment Mrs* A* (Adrianna) W* Kerns is a sister to Charles Green Dortoh* Cross reference; see his story* 30850 Interviewer Person interviewed Age 196 Miss Irene Robertson George Key Forrest City* Arkansas 70 plus "I was born in Fayette County, Tennessee* My mother was Henrietta Hair* She was owned by David Hair* He had a gang of children* I was her only child* She married just after the surrender she said* She married Henry Key* "One thing I can tell you she told me so often* The Yankees come by and called her out of the cabin at the quarters* She was a brown girl* They was going out on a scout trip to hunt and ravage over the country* They told her to get up her clothes, they would, be by for her* She was grandma's and grandpa's owners' nurse girl* She told them and they sent her on to tell the white folks* They sent her clear off* She didn't want to leave* She said her master was plumb good to her and them all* They kept her hid out* The Yankees come slipping back to tola her off* They couldn't find her nowhere* They didn't ax about her* They was stealing her f o r a cook she thought. She couldn't cook to do no good she said* She wasn't married for a long time after then. She said she was scared nearly t o death till they took her off and hid her* "I have voted but not for a long time* I'm too old to get about and keep too sick to go to the polls to vote. I got high blood pressure* "Times is fair* If I was a young man I would go to work* I can't grumble* Folks mighty nice to me* I keeps in line with my kin folks and men my age* j ( 2. "The young age folks don't understand me and I don't know their ways asither. They may be all right, but X don't know." 197 30854 Interviewer Person interviewed Age Mies Irene Robertson I&cy ey Forrest City, Arkansas 70 plus *I was born in Marshall County, Mississippi* I seen Yankees go by in droves* I was big enough to recollect that* Old mis9, Ellis Marshall9 s mother, named all the colored children on the place* All the white and colored children was named for somebody else in the family* Aunt Mary Marshall stayed in the house wid old mis9* "Old mis9 had a polly parrot* That thing got bad 9bout telling on us* Old mis9 give us a brushing* Her son was a bachelor* He lived there* He married a girl fourteen or fifteen years old'and Lawrence Marshall is their son* His sister was in Texas* They said old man Marshall was so stingy he would cut a pea in two* Every time we9d go in the orchard old polly parrot tell on us* We9d eat the turning fruit* One day Aunt Mary (colored) scared polly with her dress and apron till he took bad off sick and died* Mr. Marshall was rough* If he9d found that out he'd 9bout whooped Aunt Mary to death* He didn9t find it out* He9d have crazy r namely Sam, and Fill* her lifetime thence te her children her lawful heirs forever n I do warrant and forever defend said negro girl and d her children against all lawful claims whatsoever. July, 1840. Witness, J.Funkhouser. Tom Hinchea Barker. Filed for record, Feb. 16, 1841. When this bill of sale WcS read to "Aunt Susie" she said with great interest* "Yes'm , yes'm that sure as my Ma and my two brothers, Sam and Fill* tven come a 'nother brother* A13en* and then Jack and then I'm 211 Aunt Susie King next then my baby sister Miliy Jane. Yesfm wefs come fbout every two years *Yesfni, ole Missy was ricVij s * had lots of money, lots of lanf. *e Her girl, she jes* had one* married Jov^n Nunley, Mister Ab, married Miss Ann Darnell, Mister Jack *e married Miss Milly Holt, and Kister Calvin he married Miss Iacky Foster. Tesfm they lived all fround fbout us* Some at Kheafs Hill and some at Cane Hill** and to prove the keenness of this old slavets mind, as well as her accuracy, one need only to go to t*e county deed records Wfcere in 1849, Rebecca Ricv deeded several 40 acres tracts of land to her sons, James* Calvin, William Jackson and Absaolum. This same deed record gives t^e names of the wives of t^ese sons just as *Aunt Susie* named them. However, Miss Lacky Foster was *Kelika Foster.* Then Aunt Susie started remembering: *Yesfm, my motherfs name was Sally* Shefd belonged to Mister Tom H* Barker and he gived her to Miss Becky, his daughter* I think of t* em all lots of days* I know a veap of folks t^at some times I forgot a When the Wfcr came, we lived in a big log *>ouse. We had a loom room back of the kitcheno I had a good mother* She wove some. We all wove mosf all of t blankets and carpets and counterpans and Old Missey s^e loved >e to sit down at t . loom and weave soipe,* wit* a gay chuckle Aunty Susie ve said,* then shefd let me weave anf Old Missey she'd say I takes *er work and t*e loom a*ay from her. I did love to weave* all t*em bright colores, blue and red and green and yellow. They made all the colors in the back yard in a big kettle* my mother, Sally did the colorin' *. Aunt Susie King "We had a heap of company* The preacher came a lot of times and when the War come Ole Missey she say if we all go with her* shefd take us all to Texas* lefs ffraid of the Yankees; ffraid they gat us* We went in wagons Ole Kissey in the carriage* We never took nothin* but a bed stead for Ole Missey* They was a great drove of we darkies* Part time we walked* part time we rode# We was on tve road a long time* First place we stopped was Collins County* and stayed awhile I recollect* We had lots of horses too* Some white folks drove 'long and offered to take us away from Ole Missey but we wouldn't go* Ve didn*t want to leave Ole Missey, shefs good to us* Oh Lord* it would a nearly kilt her effen any body*4 hit one of her darkies; I*d always stay in the house and took care of Ole Miss* She was pretty woman, had light hair* She was kinda punny tho* somet* inf matter with her mosf all the time* headache or toothache or something** "Mister Rich went down to the river swimminf one time I heard* and got drowned*" "Yes'm, they was good days fof the Ifar*" "Yes'm we stayed in Texas until peace was made* We was then at Sherman* Texas* Peace didnft make no difference with us* We was glad to be free* and we com'd beck to Arkansas with Ole Missey* We didn't want to live down there* Me and my man* Charlie King* was married after the War* and we went to live on Mister Jim Mbores place* Ole Miss giv'd my ma a cow* I made my first money in Texas* workinf for a woman and she giv*d me five dollars*" "Yes 'm after Peace the slaves all scattered fbout * "T^e colored folks today lak a whole heap bein* like they was fof tve T&r* Theyfs good darkies* and some aint so good*" 212 217 Aunt Susie King Me and my man had seven children all dead but two* Bob Hives with me* I donft worry *bout food* W c ainft come no ways starving f I have all I want to eat* Bob he works for Missus Wade every morninf tendin* to her flowers and afternoons works for him self. S*e owns this vouse, lets us live in it* S*e*s good all right* good woman.* *I like flowers too* but ain't got no water, no more. Water's scarce* Someone turned off the hydrant** *I belong to the Baptist church a long while** *Do you know Gate~eye Fisher?* When I said *yes* I went down to talk to him last week**she said** well* law me, Gate^eye ainft no fool* Hefs the best cook as ever struck a stove* He married my baby sister* Milly Jane's child. Harriet Lee Ann* she's my niece* She left him* said she'd never go lack no more to his* She's some* where over in Oklahoma** *And did you see Doc Flowers? Yes'm, I was mos' a motver to vim* One time my man and me heard a pec kinf at the do'* Wefs eatin' supper* I went to the do' and tviere wis Doc* He and his step-pa* Ole Uncle Ike, had a fig^t and Doc come to us and stayed fbout three years* He started cryinf** *Yes'a my Fa and Ha had belonged to Mister John Barker* before ve giv'd my Ua to Miss Becky, my Pa was a leather worker. He could make shoes, and toots and slippers** *Yestm* Good bye* Come back again honey. Yes'm I'd like a little snuff** not the sseet kind* It makes my teeth feel better to have snuff* I ain't got much but snags>and snuff, a little mite helps them.* O w w O*. J Interviewer Person Interviewed Age 214 Mrs* Bsrnice Bowden William Kirk 1910 W* Sixth Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 84 "I been here ever since 1853 yes ma'mi Cose I 'member the war! I tell you I've seen tham cannon balls goin' up just like a balloon* I wasn't big enough to work till peace was declared but they had ay msnmy and daddy under the lash* One good thing fbout my white folks, they give the hands three months9 school in9 every year* My manmy and daddy got three months9 schoolin9 in the old country* Some said that was General Washington9s proclamation, but some of 9en wouldn't hear to it* Vhen peace was declared, some of the niggers had as good education as the white man* That was cause their owners had 9lowed it to 'em* "They used to put us in cells under the house so the Yankees couldn't get us* Old master9s name was Sim Kirk and he had overseers and nigger dogs (bloodhounds) that didn't do nothin9 but run thai niggers* "I fsomber one time when they say the Yankees was eomln' all us chll* lun, boys and girls, white and black, got upon the fence and old master come out and say 9Get in your holes!9 "The war went on four years* Tham was turrible times* I donft never want to see no more war* Tham that had plenty, time the regiment went by they didn9t have nothin9* Old mistress had lots a turkeys and hogs and the Yankees Just cleaned 9em out* Didn91 have time to pick 9em just skinned 9sou They had a big eamp 'bout as long as from here to town* 2. They homed up the big house as flat as this floor* They wasn't nothin9 lefttoutthe chimneys* Oh the Yanks** burned up plenty* They burned Raleigh and they turned Atlanta that was the southern capital. I've seen the Yankees go right out in people's fields and make 'em tak the horses out* Then they'd saddle 'em and ride right off* "General Grant had ten thousand nigger soldiers outside of the Irishman and the Rxtchmsn* I know General Grant looked fearful whan he corns by. After surrender he had a corps pass through and notify the people that the war was over* "Abraham Lincoln was a war captain* He was a man that believed in right* He was seven feat four inches high* "I was born in Horth Carolina and I corns here in ' sixty seven. I worked tool" 215 30754 A Interviewer 216 Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed_ Batty Kromp, Helena. Arkansas "Mother come to Helena, Arkansas from lake Charles, Louisiana* I was born here since freedom* She had twelve children, raised us two* She jus9 raised me en my sister* She lives down the street on the corner* She was a teacher here in Helena years end years* I married a doctor* I never had to teach long as he lived, then X was too old* I never keered 9bout readin9 and books* I rather tomboy about* Then I set up housekeepin9 * I donft know nothin9 9bout slavery* I know how they ecme here* Two boats named Tyler and Bragg* The Yankees took 9 em up and brought 9 em up to their camps to pay them to wait on them* They come* Before 9maneipatlon my mammy end daddy owned by the very same old fellar, Thomas Henry McBeil# He had a big two-story stone house and big plantation* Mother said she was a field hand* She ploughed* He treated 9em awful bad* He overworked 9em* Mother said she had to work when she was pregnant a t a as other times* She said the Yankees aa took the pantry house and cleaned it up* They broke in it* Ifm so glad the Yankees come* They so pretty* I love 9em* Vhah me? I can tell 9em by the way they talk and acts* You ain9t none* You don9t talk like 9am* You don9t act like 9am* I watched you yeate9d9y* You don9t walk like 'em# You act like the rest of these southern women to me* "Mother said a gang of Yankees come to the quarters to haul the children off and they said, 'We are going to free you all* Coma on*' She said, \ 'My husband in the field*' They aont fer *1b* He e r s hard as he could* an They loaded men and all on them two gunboats* The boat was anchored south of Tom Henry McNeill's plantation* He didn't know they was gone* When they got here old General Hindxnan had forty thousand back here in the hills* They fired in* The Yankees fired 1 The Yankees said they was goin' to drive 'em back and thsy scared 'em out of here and give folks that brought in them boat houses to live in* Mammy went to helping the Yankees* They paid her* That was 9 fore freedom* I loves the Yankees* General Hindman9s house was tore down up there to build that schoolhouse (high school)* The Yankees said they was goin' to water their horses in the Mississippi River by twelve o'clock or take hell* I know my mammy and daddy wasn't skeered 'cause the Yankees taking keer of 'em and they was the ones had the cannons and gunboats too* I jus' love the Yankees fer freeing us* They run white folks outer the houses and put colored folks in 'em* Yankees had tents here* They fed the colored folks till little after 'mancipation* When the Yankees went off they been left to root hog er die* White folks been free all der lives* They got no need to be poor* I went to school to white teachers* They left heref folks didn't do 'em right* They set 'em off to theirselves* Wouldn't keep f em, wouldn't walk 'bout wid 'em* They wouldn't talk to 'em* The Yankees sont 'em down here to egprcate us up wid you white folks* Colored folks do best anyhow wid black folks' children* I went to Miss Carted and to Mrs* Mason* They was a gang of 'em* They bo'ded at the hotel, one of the hotels kept 'em all* They stayed 'bout to theirselves* 'Course the white folks had schools, their own schools* "Ku ELux They dressed upland come in at night, beat up the men 'bout here in Helena* Mammy washed and ironed here in Helena till she died* I never did do much of that kinder work* I been housekeeping purty near all my days 18 "Mammy was Fannie Thompson in Richmond, Virginia* She was took to New Orleans on a boat and sold* Sold in New Orleans* She took up wid Edmond Clark* Long as you been going to school don't you know folks didn't have no marryin' in slavery times? I knowed that* They never did marry and lived together all their lives* Preacher married me colored preacher* My daddy* Edmond Clark, said McNeil got him at Kentucky* "I done told you 'nougb* Now what are you going to give me? The gover'ment got so many folks doinf so much you can't tell what they after* Wish I was one of fem* "The present times is tough* Ve ain't had no good times since dem banks broks her* Three of 'em* Folks can't get no credit* Times ain't lack dey used to be* No use talking 'bout this young generation* One day I come in my house from out of my flower garden* I fell to sleep an' I had $17*50 in little glass on the table to pay my insurance* It was gone when I got up* I put it in there when I lay down* I know it was there* It was broad open daytime* Folks steals and drinks ibiskey and lives from hand to mouth now all the time* I sports my own self* Ain't nobody give me nothin' since the day I come here* I rents my houses and sells flowers*" Interviewer18 Comment This old woman lives in among the white population and rents the house next to her own to a white family* The lady down at the corner store said she tells white people, the younger ones, to call her Mrs* Krump. She didn't pull that on me* She once told this white lady storekeeper to call her Mrs* Ho one told me about her, because the lady said they all know she is impudent talking* She is old, black, wealthy, and arrogant* I passed her house and spied her* f FOLKLORB SUBJECTS . J t H Name of Interviewer Subject 220 Mra* W. M Ball Folk Tales* Story: One of the favorite folk songs sung to ths children of a half century ago was "Bun Nigger Run, or the Patty Roll fill Get Y u." Pew of the children of today have ever heard this humorous ditty, and would, perhaps, be ignorant of its moaning. To the errant negro youths of slave timss, however, this tune had a significant, and sometimes tragic, meaning. The "patty rolls'* were guards hired by the plantations to keep the slaves from running away* The following story is told by an ex-slave: "When I wux a boy, dere wuz lotsa Indians livin' about six miles frum de plantation onrtiich1 wuz a..slave* De Indians alius held a big danee ever9 few months| an9 all de niggers would try to attend* On one ob dese oaten9tious occasions about 50 ef us niggers conceived de idea of goinv 9 without gettin1 permits frum de Mahster* As soon as it gets dark, we quietly slips out en de quarters, one by one, so as not to disturb de guards* Arrivin1 at de danee9 we jinad de festivities wid a will* Late dat nite one ob de boys wuz goin' down to da spring fo9 to get a drink ob water when he notice somethin9 mo via1 in da buahes* Gettin9 up closah, he look1 again ifeen - Lawd hab me ray! Fatty rollers! A whole bunch ob 'em! Breathless, de nigger comas rushin* back, and broke de sad news. Dem Riggers wuz scared 9mos9 to death9 9cause dey knew it would mean 100 lashes for evah las9 one ob dem off en day got eaught. After a hasty consultation, Sammy, de leader, suggested a plan which wuz agreed on* Goin9 into de woods, we cuts several pieces of grape vine, and stretches it acrosa de pathway, where we knowed ae patty rollers would hab to ccme, tien1 it to trees on both sides* One ob de diggers den starts down de trail whistlin9 so as to 'tract de patty rollers Mention, which ha she did, fo1 here dey all cum, runnin1 jus9 as hard as dey could to keep Pg ae FQLgLORS 8DBJBCT3 W, M. Ball Nome of Iatorvi ewer Felk Talss. Subject Story: (Continued) dem niggers ttvm gettin* away* As de patty rollers hit de grape Tine, stretched across de trail* dey jus* piles up in one big heap. While all dis commotion wuz goin' on, us niggers makes fo' de cotton fiel' nearby, and vends our way heme* We hadn* no more'n got in bed, when de mahster begin knoekin* on de doer* "Jim", he yell, "Jim, open up de doahi" Jim gets up, and opens de doah, an de mahster, wid several more men, ocmes in de house* "Iheres all de niggers?" he asks* Dey's all heah," Jim says* De boss walks slowly through de house, eeuntin* de niggers, an* sho* nuf dey wuz all dere* "Mus* hab been Jim Dixon's negroes," he says finally* "Tea, suh, Cap'n, dey wuz a let happen in dem times dat de mahsters didn't know nuthin' about*B Information given by Place ef B^aldeneo Occupation Preston Kyles 800 Block. Laurel St*. Texafkana. Ark. Minister. (Agfr) 81 30883 u Hane of Interviewer Subject lOTirfxiiB SPBJBCTS Oo ii Apparition and fill?o* *th -llsp Story InfOnastion: raw i peculiarly auaeeptiblc to hallueiaat ions* Itost any eld negro can recall having had several experiences vita "de spirits." Sane of these apparitions were doubtless real, as the citizens during Beooastruction Days employed various methods la keeping the negro la subjection. the organizers of the Ku ELux KLan, shortly after the Civil lar, reoegaized and capitalized oa the superstitious nature of the negro* This weakness in their character doubtless prevented mueh bloodshed during this hectic period. The following is a story as told by a venerable eoeralare in regard to the "spirits") "fee day, when I wuz a young man, me an* a nigger, by de name ov Henry, wuz hunt in' la an* old field. In den days bear, deer, turkey, and squirrels wuz plentiful an' *twaat long befo* we had kilt all we could carry* As we wuz start in1 heme some monstrous thing rlz xp right oaack dab la front ov us, adt aerc*a 100 feet away* I asked fisnxy: "Blade Boy, does yo* sec whut I see?" an* Banry say, "Bigger I hopes yo* don't seetiuxtI sec, cause dey ain*t n6 such aaiu* But dere It stood, wid Its sleeves gently flappin* In de wind* dressed In white* Ovah 8 feet tall, it wuz, an* all I yells at it, "Hurt does yo* want?" but It dldn*t say nuthin*. I yells w 1 no* but It jus* stands there, not w i n * a finger* Qrabbia* de gun, I takes careful aim aa* craokd down oa *em, but still he doa't move* Henry, thinkin* maybe I wuz too scared to *oot straight, say: "Bigger, gib me dat gun J" I gibs Henry de gun but It doa*t take but oae shot to eonvlate him dat he aln*t rfiootln* at any aortal be la*. Throwin* down de gua, Henry say, "Bigger, lets get away trm die place," which It sho* didn't take us long to do." Information givea hrfe Bgeafcan Brlea / Occupation: Mlalftoy (Age) 81 ELace of 6 Interviewer Person interviewed Age n Mrs* Bernice Bowden Susa Lagrone 25th and Texas Streets, Pine Bluff, irk* 79 I don't know exactly how old I em hut I know I was here at surrender* I was born in Mississippi* I seen the soldiers after they come home* They camped right there at our gate* I think -- now I don't know, but I think I was bout six or seven when they surrendered* I went down to the gate with Miss Sally and the children* Old mistress1 name was Sally Stanton* She was a widow woman. *I learned to knit durin1 the war* They'd give me a task to do, so much to do a day, and then Ifd have all evenin' to play* "My father was a mechanic* He laid brick and plaster* You know in them days they plastered the houses* He belonged to old man Frank Scott* He was such a good worker Mr* Scott would give him all the work he could after he was free* That was in Mississippi* "I went to school right smart after freedom* Fore freedom the white folks learned me my ABC's* My mistress was good and kind to me* "When we went down to the gate to see the soldiers, I heard Miss Judy say (she was old mistress1 sister), I heard her say, 'Well, you let em beat you' and started cryin'. I cried too and mama said, 'What you cryin' for?' I said, 'Miss Judy's cryin'.' Mama said, 'You fool, you is free!' I didn't know what freedom was, but I know the soldiers did a lot of devilment* Had guards but they just run over them guards* 2. "I think Abraham Lincoln wanted to give the people some land after they was free, but they didn't give em nothin1 just turned em loose* "Course we ought to be free you know privilege is worth everything* "After surrender my mother stayed with old mistress till next year* She thought there wasn't nobody like my mother* When she got sick old mistress come six miles every day to see her and brou^t her things till she died* "My mother learned to weave and spin and after we was free the white folks give her the loom* I know I made a many a yard of cloth after surrender* My mother was a seamstress and she learned me how to sew* "I never did hire out just worked at home* My mother had six boys and six girls and they're all dead but me and my sister* "Somebody told me I was twenty-five when I married* Had three children all livin'. "I used to see the white folks lookin' at a map to see where the soldiers was fightinf and I used to wonder how they could tell just lookin' at that paper* "Old mistress said after freedom, 'Now, Susa, I don't want you to suffer for nothin.' I used to go up there and stay for weeks at a time* "I just got down with rheumatism here bout three or four years ago, and you know it goes hard with me I always been used to workin' all my life*" QOA 225 80463 Interviewer Person interviewed Age Miss Irene Robertson Barney A* Laird Brinkley, (near Moroe) Arkansas 79 "I was born in Pinola County, Mississippi* I remembers one time soldiers come by on all black horses and had a bundle on one shoulder strapped around under the other arm* They wore blue jackets* Their horses was trained so they marched good as soldiers* They camped not far from our house* There was a long string of soldiers* It took them a long time to go by* "One time they had a dinner in a sorter grove on a neighbor's farm* All us children went up there to see if they left anything* We et up the scraps* I say it was good eating* The fust Yankee crackers I ever et was there that day* They was fine for a fact* "Our owner was Dr* Laird* When I come to know anything his wife was dead but his married daughter lived with him* Her husband's name was John Balentine* My parents worked in the field and I stayed up at the house with my old grandpa and grandma* Their house was close to the white folks* Our houses was about on the farm* Some of the houses was pole houses, some hewed out* The fireplace in our house burned long wood and the room what had the fireplace was a great big room* We had shutters at the windows* The houses was open but pretty stout and good* We had plenty wood* "My parents both lived on the same farm* They had seven children* My mother's name was Caroline and my father's name was Ware A* Laird* Mother never told us if she was ever sold* Father never was sold* He never talked much* 2. "One thing I know is: My wife's pa was sold. Squire Lester, so him and Adeline could be on the same farm* Them my wife's parents* They never put him on no block, jes' told him to get his belongings and where to go* I never seen nobody sold* *Br* Laird was good to his darkies* My whole family stayed on his place till he died* I don't know how long* I don't know if I ever knowed when freedom come on* We had a hard time durin' the Civil War* That why I hate to hear about war* The soldiers tore down houses, burnt houses* They burnt up Br* Laird's gin* I think it burned some cotton* They tore down fences and hauled em off to make fires at their camps* That let the stock out what they maybe did leave an old snag* Fust cussia'I ever heard done was one of them soldiers* I don't know what about but he was going at it* I stopped to hear v h t he saying* I never heard nobody cuss so much ua over nothing as ever I found out* They had cleaned us out* We didn't have much to eat nor wear then* We did have foe then from what they told us* The old folks got took care of* That donft happen no more* "I never sew. a Ku Klux* I heard tell of them all my life* *Dr* Laird was old man and John Balentlne was a peaceable man* He wanted his farm run peaceable* He was kind as could be* "I been farming all my life* I still be doing it* I do all I can* It is the young boys' place to take the plough handle* the making a man out of their young strength* They don't want to do it* Some do and sane wonft stay on the farm* Go to town is the cry* I got a wife and two boys* They got families* They are on the farm* I tell them to stay* "I get help from the Welfare if I'm able to come get what they give me* 226 "I used to pay my taxes and vote* Now if I have a dollar I have to buy something to eat* Us darkies satisfied with the best the white folks can do* Darkies good workers but poor managers is been the way I seen it all my life* One thing we donft want no wars*" 228 Interviewer Person interviewed Act Mars* Bernloe Bowden Arey Lamar 6X2 X* 14th Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 78 Yes'm, I was born in slavery days but I don't know what day* But you know I been hustlin' 'round here a long time* "My mother said I was a great big girl when surrender cosaa* I was born in Greenville, Mississippi but I was raised down at Lake Dick* I was a servant in Captain Will Nichols' house* I got a cup here now that was Captain Nichols9 cup* Now that was away back there* That's a slavery time cup* After the handle got broke my mother used it for her coffee cup* "Hy mother9s name was Jane Condray* After everything was free, a lot of us emigrated from the old country to Arkansas* When we come hare we cca through Memphis and I know I saw a pair of red shoes and cried for mama to buy fem for met but she wouldn't do it* "After I was grown and livin9 in Little Bock, I bought me a pair of red shoes* I know I wore 9 em once and I got ashamed of 9 em and blacked 9 em* "My brother run avay when they waa goin' to have that Baxter-Brooks War and ain't been aeon since* "I waa the oldeat girl and never did gat a education, and I hate it* I learned to work though* "I don't know 9bout this younger generation* It looks like they9re put tin' the old folks in the background* But I think it'a the old chriatian people is holdlm' the world together today*" 30450 229 NAL:3 OF INTERVIEiifER PERSON INTERVIEWEE AGE Irene Robertson . Solomon Lambert,Folly Grove, rk.fR.F.D. 89 SUBJECT : EX-SLAV3RY STCRYn I. parents belong to Jordon and Judy Lambert. /y They (the Jordon family ) had a big family. They never was sold. I heard fem say that. They hired their slaves out. Some was hired fer a year. From New Year day to next New Year day. That was a busy day. That was the day to set in workin' overseers and ridin1 bosses set in on New Year day. I? parents1 name was Fannie .y and Ben Lambert. They had eight children. "How did they marry? They say they jump the broom- stick together! But they had brush brooms so I recken that whut they jumped* Think the moster and .mistress jes havin' a little fun outen it then. The brooms the sweep the floor was sage grass cured like hay. It grows four or five feet tall. They wrap it with string and use that fer a handle . (illustration The way they married the man ask his moster then ask her moster. If they agree it be all right. One of 'em would 'nounce it*fore all the rest of the folks up at the house and some times they have ale and cake. If the man want a girl and ther be another man on that place wanted a wife the mostcrs would swop the women mostly. Then one announce the^ married. That what they call a double weddin1. Some got passes go see their wife and family fbout every Sunday and some other times like Fourth er July. They have a week ob rest when they lay by the crops and have some time not so busy to visit Christmas . 230 "I never seen no Ku Klux* There was Jay Hawkers. They was folks on neither side jess goin1 round, robbin1 and stealin1, money, silver, stock or anything else they wanted, We had a prutty good time we have all the hands on our place at some house and dance. We made our music, husic is naturTl wid our color a -Juice (Jew's) harp. had big times too* They make the f i d d l e and They most all had "bango. White folks They had mo big gatherins than they have now* They send me to Indian Bay once or tvdce a week to get the mail. I had no money. They give my father little money long a n d give him some 'bout Christmas* White folks send their darkies wid a order to buy things. I never seen a big tovm till I started on that run to Texas. The,/ lock the men 450 miles to Indian Nation to make a crop. We went in ilay and came back in October. They hired us out. r. Jo Lambert a..d 1 r. l easley took us . One o f T em come back and got us. That kept us f o . goin* t o war. They left the women,children and old r:: men,too old fer war. "How'd I know fbout war? That . a the big thing they talk vs T fcout. Gee 'em. The first I seen was when I was shuckin1 corn at the corn pin(crib) a man come up in gray clothes.(He was a spy). The way he talk you think he a southern man 'cept his speech was hard a:d :; short. I noticed that tc begin wid. They thought other rehire Is in the corn pin tut they wasn't. Wasn't nobody out there- but me . Then here come a iaa in blue uniform. After vMle here come the regiment. It did scare me. Bob and Tom( white boys) Lambert gone to war then. They fooled round a ,/hile then thc^ galloped off. I show was glad when the last man rid off! L oster Lambert then hid the slaves in the bottoms* We carried provisions and they sent more'long. We stay two or three days or a week when they hear a regiment comin' through or hear fbout a scoutin gang comin' through* They would come one road and go bads: another road* We didh't care if they hid us* We hear the guns. We didn't wanter go down there* That was white man's war* in 1862 and 1865 they slipped off every man and one woman to Selena. I was yofcin' up oxeh* Man come up in rebel clothes. H fas a spy. I thought I was gone then but and a guard whut I didn't see till he left went on* I dodged round till one day I had to get off to mill. The Yankees run up on me and took me on. I was fifteen years old. I was mustered in August and let out in 1864 when it was over. I was in the Yankee army 14 months. They told me when I left I made a good soldier. I was with the standing army at Helena. They had a battle before I went in. I heard them say. You could tell that from the roar and cannons. They had it when I was in j Texas. I wasn't in a battle. The Yankees begin to get slim then they ! made the darkies fill up a r put t e ; in front. I heard 'em say they fd h;; had one mighty big battle at Helena. I had to drill and guard the camps and guard at the pickets (roads into Helena). They never let me go scoutin* I walked home from the army. I was glad to get out. I expeoted to get shot 'bout all the time. I aint seen but mighty little difference since freedom. I went back and stayed 45 years on the Lambert place. I moved to Duncan. Moster died foe the Civil War. Some men raised dogs-hounds. If something got wrong they go get the dogs and use fem. If some of the slaves try to run off they hunt them with the dogs. It was a big loss when a hand run off they couldn't ford that thing. They whoop ' e m mostly fer stealin'. They trust fem in everything then they whoop !em if they steal. They know it wrong. Course they did. The worse thing I ever seen in slavery was when we went to Texas we camped close to Camden. Camden,Arkansas I On the way down there we passed by a big house,some kind. I seen mighty little of it but a big yard was pailened in. It was tall and fi xed so they couldn't get out* They opened the big gate and let us see. was full of darkies. All sizes* All ages. That was a ITigger Trader Yard the worst thing I ever seen or heard tell of in my life* I heard 'em say they would cry 'em off certain times but you could buy one or two any time jes by agreement. I nearly fell out wid slavery then. I studied 'bout that heap since then* I never seen no cruelty if ,a man work and do right on my moster's places he be honored by both Mack and white. ?oe raoster died I was 9 year old, X heard him say I valued at |900.00. I never was sold. "When I was small I minded the calves when they milk, pick up chips to dry fer to start fires,then I picked up nuts,helped feed the stock,learned all I could how to do things 'bout the place. We thought m owned the place. I was happy as a bird. I didn't know no better than it was mine. All the home I ever knowed* I tell you it was a good home. Good as ever had since. It was thiser way yo mama's home is your home. Well my moster's home was my home like dat. " We et up at the house in the kitchen. We eat at the darkey houses. It make no diffurence -one house clean as the other* It haft to be so. They would whoop you foe your .nasty habits quick as anything and quicker. Had plenty clothes and plenty to eat. Folk's clothes made outer more lastin1 cloth than now. They last longer and didn't always be gettin' more new ones. They washed down at the spring. The little darkies get in (tubs) soon as they hang out the clothes on the ropes and bushes. The suds be warm, little darkies race to get washed. Folks raced to get through jobs then and have fun all time* ''Foe I jined the Yankees I had hoed and I had picked cotton. Moster Lambert didn't work the little daries hard to to stunt them. See how big I am? I been well cared fur and done a sight er work if it piled up so it could be seen. (Solomon Lambert is a large well proportioned negro.) In 1870 the railroad come in here by Holly Grove. That the first I ever seen. The first cars. They was small. W I never baowd I oughter recollect what all they talked but she said they both (mother and father) come from Kentucky to Tennessee?, then to Arkansas in wagons; and on boats too I reckon. The Lamberts brought them from Kentucky. For show I can't tell you no more 'bout them. I heard 'em say they landed at the Bay(lndian Bay). "Fine reports: went out if you Jin the army whut all you would get. I didn't want to be there. I know whut I get soon as ever I got way from them. Course I was goin' back. I had no other place to go* The government give out rations at Indian Bay after the war. I didn't need none. I got plenty to eat. Two or three of us colored folks paid Mr. Lowe #1.00 a month to teach us at night. We learned to read and calculate better. I learned to writ . We stuck to it right smart while. tt I been married twice. Joe Yancey (white) married me to my first wife at the white folk% house. The last time Joe Lambert(white) married me in the church. I had 2 boys they dead now> and 1 girl* She is living. During slavery I had a cart I drove a little mule to. I took a barrel of water to the field. I got it at the well. I put it close by in the shade of a tree. Trees was plentifulI Then I took the breakfast and dinner in my cart. I done whatever come to my lot in Indian Nation. After the war I made a plowhand. "Say there, from 1864 to 1937 Sol Lambert farmed." Course I hauled and cut wood1,but my job is farmin'. I share croppe. I worked fer l/5 and l/4 and I have rented. Farain' is my talent. That whar all the darkey belong. He is made do. He can stand the sun and he needs meat to eat. That is where the meat grows . "I got chickens and a garden. I didn't get the pigs I spoke fer. I got a fine cow. I got a house- 10j| acres of ground*That 234 is all I can look after. I oaint get fbout much. I rid on a wagon (to town) my mare is sick I wouldn't work her. I got a buggy. Good nought fer my ridin' I don't come to town much. I never did. I get a Federal soldier's pension. I tell you 'bout it. White folks tole me 'bout it and hope me see 'bout gettin' it. mighty proud of it I'm It is a good support for me in my old hejpless days* I'm mighty thankful for it. I'm glad you sent me word to come here I love to help folks. They so good to me . *I vote a Republican ticket. I don't vote. I did vote when I was 21 years old. It was stylish then and I voted some since then along. I don't bother with votin' and I don't know nuthin 'bout how it is done now. I tried to run my farm and let them hired run the governuiint. I knowed my job like he knowed his job. I come back to tell you one other thing. .My Captain was Edward Boncrow. W I told you all I know 'bout slavery lesS you ask me 'bout some thin' I might answer; We ask if we could go to white church and they tell us they wanted certain ones to go today so they could fix up. It was after the war new churches: and schools sprung up. Not fast then. Prices of slaves run from 1600 to $2000 fer grcwm to middle age. Old ones sold low, so did young ones. 1600 was a slowrbid. That is whut I heard. 156 Pine Bluff District FOLKLORE SUBJECTS Name of Interviewer Martin - Barker Subject Ex-Slave Story - Information (if not enough space on this page add page) I was born a slave, my owner was Mr. Rhodes of Virginia* On a large plantation, my white folks gave a big to do, and served wine* Had corn shuckings* Swapped help around harvesting time* I was sold when 6 or 7 years old* Sold to highest bidder. First marster gave my mother to his white daughter and let her keep me* I was raised as a house boy* I was always a mean boy* T t e I rin v a sold I split another boys head open with an axe* v* Then I runned off* ?h$tY caught me with blood hounds* My master whipped me with a cowhide p. He made me take my clothes off and tied me to a tree* He would use the whip and then take a drink out of a jug and rest awhile, then he would whip me again* Sometimes we would set up until midnight pickin* wool* I would get so sleepy, couldnft hardly pick de wool* I hung up my stocking at Christmas to get gifts. When we left de plantation, we had to get a pass to go from one plantation to another* We went to church, sat on de back seat of the white folks churoh* It was a Baptist. Baptized in pool* Yihite preacher said: "Obey your master .!t TOien I oame to Arkanansas, I was sold to Mr* Larkin. This information given by Place of Residence Frank Larkin RFD # 1- Bx* 73 AGE 240 Interviewer Mrs Bernice Bowden Person interviewed Frank Larkin 1126 V* Second Avenue$ Pine Bluff, Arkansas Age 77 "Yes ma,mt I was born in slavery times, right about 1860% I was bred and born in Virginia belonged to a man named Bhodes* When I was a little fellow, me and my mother was sold separate* My mother was sent to Texas and a man named Larkin bought me* "I member when people was put upon the block and sold* Man and wife might go together and might not* Yes ma'm, they sho did separate mother and chllden* "Take a little chile, they would be worth a thousand dollars* Why old master would just go crazy over a little boy. They knowed what they would be worth when they was grown* and then they kept em busy* "I canft remember no big sight in Virginia but I remember when the hounds would run em* Some of the colored folks had mighty rough owners* "I remember when the Yankees come and took the best hoss my old boss had and left old crippled hoss with the foot evil* "And they'd get up in a tree with a spyglass and find where old boss had his cotton hid, come down and go straight and burn it and the com crib and take what meat they wanted and then burn the smoke house* Yes'm, I remember all that* I tell you them Yankees was mean* Used to shake old mistress and try to make her tell where the money was hid* If you had a fat cow, just shoot her down and cook what they wanted* My old boss vent to the bottoms and hid* Tried to make old mistress tell where he was*. "Hot all the old bosses was alike* Some fed good and some didn't* But they clothed em good heavy cloth* Old man Larkin was pretty good man* We got biscuits every Sunday morning, other times got shorts. People was really healthier then* "I was brought up to work* The biggest trainin' we got was the boss told us to go there and come here and we learned to do as we was told* People worked in them days* A deal of em that won't work now* "IXiring slavery days, colored folks had to go to the same church as the white folks and sit in the back* "My father died a long time ago* I don't remember anything bout him and I never did see my mother any more after she was sold* "After the war, old boss brought me to Arkansas when I was bout twelve years old* Biggest education I got, sit down with my old boss and he'd make me learn the alphabet* In those times they used the old Blue Back Speller* "After we come to Arkansas I worked a great deal on the farm* Farmin' that was my trade* I staid with him four or five years* He paid me for my work* "Well, I hope we'll never have another war, we don't need it* "I never had trouble votin' but one time* They was havin' a big row between the parties and didn't want us to vote unless we voted democratic, but I voted all right* I believe every citizen ought to have the right to vote* I believe in people havin' the right what belongs to em* "Ifm the father of thirteen childen by one woman seven living somewhere, bat they ain't no service to me* "Younger people not takin1 time to study things* They get a little education and think they can do anything and get by with it* And there's a lot of em down here on this Cummins farm now." 239 Interviewer Person interviewed Age Mrs. Bernice Bowden frank Larkin 618 I* Fifteenth, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 85 I was somewhere 'bout twelve years old when the Civil War ended* I was the carriage driver, fire maker, and worked in the field sons* "I was bred and born in Virginia and I was sold; I was sold* My first old boss was a Rhodes and he sold me to a man named Larkin* See, we had to take our names from our boss* Ms and my mother both was sold* I was some-* where between seven and eight years old* Then old boss give my mother to his daughter and she carried her to Texas and he kept me* Hever have seen her since* "He was good to me sometimes but he worked us night and day* Had a pile of wool as big as this room and we had to piek it and card it 'fore we went to bed* Old boss was sittin* right there by us* Oh, yes*m* Old boss was better to me than old missis* She'd want to whip me and he'd say he'd do it; and he'd take me down to the quarters and have a cowhide whip end he would whip a tree and say, 'Now you holler like I'm whippin' you*' I'd Just be a bawlin* too I'm tellin* you but he never hit me nary a lick* "All the ehillun, when they was clear in' up new ground, had to piek up brush and pile it up* Kver'body knowed how much he had to do* Sver' woman knowed how much she had to weave* They made ever'thing shoes and all* "Them Yankees sure did bad--burned up the cotton and the corn* I seen one of 'mi get up in a tree and take his spyglass and look all around; 2. directly he'd come down and vent just as straight to that cotton as a bird to its nest* Oh, yes ma'am, they burned up everything. I was a little seared of 'am tut they said they wasn't goin* to hurt us* Old master had done left hone and gone to the woods* It was enough to scare you all them guns stacked up and bayonets that long and just as keen* Come in and have old missis cook for 'em* Sometimes they*d go and leave lots to eat for the colored folks and maybe give *em a blanket* Wouldn't give old missis anything; try to make her tell where the money was though* "Vhen they said Vieksburg was captured, old master come out hollerin* and cryin' and said they taken Tioksburg and we was free* Some of 'em stayed and some of 'em left* l e and my grandma and my aunt stayed there i after we was freed 'bout two years* They took care of me; I was raised motherless* "I farmed all my life* Never done public work two weeks in my life* Don't know what it is* "Old master had them blue back spellers and 'fore freedom sometimes he'd make us learn our ABC's* "And he'd let you go to church too* He'd ask if you got 'ligion and say, 'Now, when the preacher ask you, go up and give him your hand and then go to the back*' In them days, didn't have any but the white folks* church* Bat I was pretty rough in them days and I didn't J'ine* "But I tell you, you'd better not leave the plantation without a pass or them paddyrollers would make you shout* If they koteh you and you didn't have a pass, a whippin1 took place right there* 0h Lord, that's been a long time* I sits here sometimes and looks back and think it's been a long time, but I*m still livin'* "I've always tried to keep out of tremble* 1 Co'se I've had sons pretty tough times* X ain't never been 1 rested for nothin1* I ain9t never been inside of a jail house* I've had sons kin folks in there though* "I've been a preacher forty years* Don't preach much now* My lungs done got decayed and I oanft hold up* Sons people thinks preachin1 is an easy thing but itfs not* "Prettiest thing I ever saw when the Yankees was travelin' was the drums and kettledrums and them horses* It was the prettiest sight I ever saw* Them horses knowed their business, too* You couldn't go up to 'em either* They had gold bits in their mouths and looked like their bridles was covered with gold* And Yankees sittin1 up there with a sword* "Old boss had a fine saddle horse and you know the Yankees had a old horse with the footevil and you know they turned him loose and took old boss's saddle horse* He didn't know it though; he was in the woods* I believe there is people that can give you good luck* I know a woman that told me that I was goin' to have some good luck and it worked just like she said* She told me I would be the onliest man on the place that would pay out my mole and sure 'nough I was* I cleared forty dollars outside my mule and my corn* She said I was born to be lucky* Told me they would be lots of people work agin me but it wouldn't do no good*" 242 ^ Interviewer Person interviewed Age Mrs* Bernice Bowden yilliam Lattimore 606 West Pollen Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 78 "Yes'm I was a slave I was born in 1859 in Mississippi* During the war I wasn't grown but I can remember when the Yankee soldiers come to Canton, Mississippi* We was sittin9 out in the yard and the white folks was on the porch when they was bombardin9 Jackson* We could hear the cannons* The white people said the Yankees was tryin9 to whip the rebellion and set the niggers free* Vhen they got done I didn91 know what had happened but I remember the colored people packed up and we all went to Vicksburg* My father ran off and jined the Yankee army* He was in Colonel Zeigler's regiment in the infantry* I knowed General Grant when I seed him* I know when Abraham Lincoln died the soldisrs (Yankees) all wore that black band around their arms* "After my father was mustered out we went to Warren County, Mississippi to live* He worked on the halves with a schoolteacher named Mr* Hannum* He said he was my godfather* "One time after the war Mr* Lattimore came and wanted my father to live with him but I didn91 want him to because before the surrender old master whipped my father over the head with a walking stick 'cause he stayed too long and I was afraid he would whip him again* " 9 Did you ever vote?9 Me? Yes ma9m I voted* I don9t remember who I voted for first my 'membranes don9t serve me I ain9t got 2. that fresh enough in my memory* I served eight years as Justice of the Peace after I come to Arkansas* I remember one time they put one colored man in office and I said that's pluckin' before it is ripe* We elected a colored sheriff in Warren County once* The white men went on his bond, but after awhile the Ku Klux compelled them to get off and then he couldn't make bond* He appealed to the citizens to let him stay in office without bond but they wouldn't do it* When a man is trying to get ejected they promise a lot of things but afterwards they is just like a duck they swim off on the other side. I went to school after freedom and kept a goin' till I was married* I was a school director when I was eighteen* I didn't have any children and the superintendent who was very rigid and strict said 'Boy you is not even a patron of the school*' But he let me serve* I used to visit the school 'bout twice a week and if the teacher was not doin' right, I sure did lift my voice against it* "I lived in Chicot County when I first come to Arkansas and when I moved to Jefferson County, Judge Harry E* Cook sent my reputation up here* I ain't never peeped into a jailhouse or had handcuffs on these hands* "We've got to do something 'bout this younger generation* You never saw anything sicker* They is degenerating* "I hold up my right hand, swear to uphold the Constitution and preserve the flag and I don't think justice is being done when they won't let the colored folks vote* Yte'd like to harmonize things here* God made us all and said 'You is my ehillun*' " 243 30756 A / Miss Irene Robertson Interviewer Person interviewed Age Bessie Lawsom, Helena, Arkansas 76 "I was born in Georgia. My mama was brought from Virginia tc one of the Carolina states, then to Georgia* recollect but one of her masters* His wife, now I remember her well* She was sold twice* I don't I heard her speak of Master Bracknell* She nursed me* I was sickly and they needed her to work in the crop so bad* She done had a baby leetle older than I was, so I nursed one breast and Jim the other* She raised me and Jim together* llama was name Sallie and papa Mathew Bracknell. They called him Mat Bracknell* I don't know my master's name They had other children* n Me and Jim dug wells out in the yard and buried all the little ducks and chickens and made graves. We had a regular burying ground we made* They treated u s pretty good as fur as I knowed* I never heard mama com- plain. She lived till I w a s forty years old. Papa died a few years after freedom. He had typhoid fever. He was great to fish. I believe now he got some bad water to drink out fishing* There w a s six of us and three half children* I'm the onliest one living as I knows of. One sister died in 1923 in Atlanta* She come to see r e She lived with big rich folks there* a* She was a white man's girl* She never had so much bad luck as we dark skin children the way it was* My papa had to ^o to war with some of Master Bracknell's kin folks, maybe his wife's kin folks, and they took him to wait on them at the battle-fields* war. Some soldiers camped by at the last of the They stole her out. She went to take something to a sick widow woman 2 fw * -j l for old mistress* She never got back for a week* She said she was so scared and one day when her man, the man that claimed her, went off on a scout trip she asked a man,.seemed to be a big boss, could she go to that thicket and get some black gum toothbrushes* He let her ride a little old broken down horse out there* She had a bridle but she was bare back* She come home through the pasture and one of the colored boys took the horse back nearly to the camps and turned him loose* 'Fo'e my own papa got back she had a white chile* Master Bracknell was proud of her* Papa didn't make no difference in her and his children* After the War he bought a whole bolt of cloth when he went to town* Mama would make us all a dress alike* The Yankees whooped mama at their camp* away and that come in her mind* She said she was afraid to try to get Old mistress thought that widow woman was keeping her to wait on her and take care of her small children* She wasn't uneasy and they took care of me* "I don't recollect freedom* I heard mama say a drove come by and ask her to come go to Atlanta; they said Yankees give 'em Atlanta* she knowed if she went off papa wouldn't know where she was* she had two young children she couldn't leave* They went on* She said She told 'em She told old mistress and she said she done right not to go* "The Yankees stole mama's feather bed* Old mistress had great big high feather beds and big pillows. Mama had a bed in a shed room open out on the back piazza* They put them big beds across their horses and some took pillows and down the road they went* It was cold and the ground froze* They made cotton beds then and the Yankees done got all the geese and chickens* They nearly starved* stock* The Yankees took a l l the cow3 and "Master Bracknell was cripple* He had a store at Cross Roads* It was twenty-five miles from Marietta, Georgia* They never troubled him like they did old mistress* She was scared of them* She knowed if they come and caught her gone they would set fire to the house* No, they never burned nothing on our place but they did some in sight* I can remember seeing big fires about at night and day time too* "We lived on Master Bracknell's place till I was eight years old and my sister five* We come to South, Alabama, then to Mississippi and then up the river to Helena* I married in Jackson, Mississippi* A white boy married us* We lived on his place and he was going to preach* He wasn't a preacher then* Richard Moore was his name* It took him several weeks to learn what to say* He practiced on us* He thought a heap of me and he ask Jesse if he could marry us* He brought us a big fine cake his mother cooked for us when he come* My husband named Jesse Lawsom* He was raised in Louisiana* We lived together till he died* My mother went blind before she died* His mother lived there, then we took care of them and after he died his mother lived with i e Now I lives with this niece here some and my daughter in a Jackson* I had fourteen children* I just got one left and grandchildren I go to see* I make the rounds* Some of 'em good and some of them ainft no / account at tall* "I used to take advice* They get up and leave the place* They donft want old folks to advise 'em* If they can't get their price they sit around and go hungry* They wonft work for what I used to be glad to get* I keep my girl on the right path and that is all I can do* My niece don't work out but her husband works on the farm all the time* She helps him* They go out and live till the work is done* He is off now ploughing* Times is fast sure as you born, girl* Paster 'an ever I seen*" #676 Interviewer Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed Henry Lee R.F*D., two and one-half miles, Palestine, Arkansas Age 87 "I was born close to Huntsville, Alabama during slavery* My master was Tom Laughinghouse and Miss Fannie, his wife* They had two children, Jarman and Mattie* He was Dr* George Laughinghouse*s brother* Br* George lived at Forrest City* "He brung us to the old Pope place close to Forrest City after 'mancipation* Ve didn't know we was free* Finally we kept hearing folks talk, then Master Tom told us we was free* Ve cleared land right on after freedom like we was slaves* "General Lee, a white man, owned a boat on the Mississippi River* He owned my father* Ve took on his name way after freedom* Mother was Becky Laughinghouse and father was Villis lee* They had six children* "After I come to Arkansas I went to school three days to a white man* He was sont here from the North somewhere* "My folks was all black pure stock niggers and field folks same as I is. "Mother's owners was good to her* They give them all day Saturday to wash and iron and cook for her folks* They got a whooping if they went to the field Monday morning dirty* They was very good to us* I can recollect that* They was a reasonable set of white folks* They weighed out everything* They whooped their hands* They had a white overseer but he wasn't hired to whoop Laughinghouse' s slaves* 2M "They flowed mother to weave at her home at night* He had seven or eight families on his farm* "The well was a curiosity to me then and would sure be one now* Ve had a walled and curbed well* A long forked pole, a short chain and a long rope* We pulled up the water by the long forked pole* Coldl It was good cold water* Beats our water all to pieces* "The soldiers come up in a drove one day and ask mother for me* She didnft let any of us go* "Our master got killed over here close to Forrest City* We all picked cotton, then we all went to gin* A coupling pin broke and let a wooden block come down on him* It weighed one thousand pounds I expect* He was spreading a sheet and smoothing the cotton* It mashed and smothered him both* That was first of our scattering* "The colored folks raised gardens in the fence comers* They raised a heap of stuff that way* Ve lived a heap better then than now* " f father died and mother started share cropping* First, one-half and iy then, one-third went to us* Things went on very well till the commissary come about* The nigger got figured clean out* "Nearly all the women of them days wore bonnets or what they called hoods one the other* Boys wore long shirts to calf of their legs* "We rode oxen to church* Many time rode to church and home in ox wagon# "Ku ELuxes followed Pattyrollers, then come on White Caps* If the Pattyrollers kilt a slave he had to pay the master the price* The Ku Kluxes rode at night* All of femfs main business was to keep the slaves at their own places and at work* Iffen the master instructed them to keep offen his place they kept off* They never come on our place* But though I was feared of fem* s. "I needs help and I don't git it* I applied* 'Cause a grandson helps us a little I don't git the welfare pension* I need it and I think I ought to git it* I worked hard, bought this house, paid my taxes still trying* Still they don't aid me now and I passed aiding my own self* I think I oughten to git lef' out 'cause I help myself when I could* I sure is left out* Been left out* "A part of the people is accountable for the way the times is going on* Some of them is getting it all and don't give the others no show a tall* Times is powerful hard for some and too easy for others* Some is turned mean and some cowed down and times hard for them what can't work hard*" 249 v s T / Interviewer Miss Sallle C. Miller ^^^^^^^^^^mmmmam^mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmrnmwmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Person interviewed Age Mandy Lee, Coal 5111* Arkansas 85 "Yes'm I was a slave* I been here* I heard the bugles blowing, the fife beat, the drums beat, and the cannons roar* Ve started to Texas but never got across the river* I don't know what town it was but it was just across the river from Texas* My white folks was good to me* I staid with them till they died* Missy died first, then master died* I never was away from them* They was both good* My mammy was sold but I never was* They said they was surrendered when we come back from Texas* I heard the drums beat at Ft* Smithtihenwe come back but I don't know what they was doing* I worked in the house with the children and in the field too* I help herd the horses* I would card and spin and eat peaches* No, that wasn't all I had to eat* I didn't have enough meat but I had plenty of milk and potatoes* I was born right here in Goal Hill* I ain't never lived anywhere else except when we went South during the war* "Law woman I can't tell you what I think of the present generation** They are good in their way but they don't do like we did* I never did go naked* I don't see how they stand it* "I could sing when I was young* Ve sang everything, the good and bad*" 30744 251 "K, . Interviewer Person interviewed Age lira* Bernlce Bowden Mary lee 1308 Texas Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 74 I was bora in 1864, March the fourth, the year before the Civil War ended* ill I know is what they told me and what I read* "Born in Texas, but my mother and father was both born in Georgia* "My mothftr said her white folks was good to her* She was the house girl, she didnft have to work in no field* "I went to school when I was six or elgfrt, I don't remember which* I had right smart schooling* "I remember my mother1 s young missis run off and got married* She was just a young girl, Ybout seventeen* That's been a long time* "I got a book sent to me a while back* It's a Catholic book 'History of Church and StateYes'm, I'm a Catholic* Used to belong to the Methodist church, but I wouldn't be a Methodist no more* I like the Catholics* You would too if you was one of 'esu "I been here in Arkansas since 1891* That's goin' right on up the road* "I can't do much work now, my breath gets short* "I used to make thirty-five dollars a month washin1 and lronin'* Oh, that was a long time 'fore the depression* I don't think nothin' of this younger generation* All goin' the same way* Oh lord, you better let 'em alone, they won9t take no foolishness*" 30747 N y Interviewer ^ Person interviewed Age lira. Bernice Bowden Talitha lewis 300 E* 21st Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 86 "I should say I was born in slavery times! Now if you ask me something I don't know, I couldn't tell you, honey, 'cause I believe in people tellin' the truth* "In a way I know how old I is* I give what my white folks give me* They told me I was born in 1852* Yes ma'am, my young missis used to set down and work on me* She'd say, 'Get it in your head' 'cause I ain't got no education* *I 'member my old missis* Know her name as good as I do mins* Name was Maria Whitley* After old master died, his property was divided and Jim Whitley drawed me and my mother and my sister* Yes ma'am, it was my sifter* "Goldaboro, North Carolina isrtiereI was born, in Johnston County* "Do I 'member anything 'bout peace declared? I should say I do 'member long time 'fore it come* "I seed so many different regiments of people I didn't know which was which* I know the Yankees called ever'body Dinah* They'd say to me, 'Dinah, hold my horae,' and my hands would be full of bridles* And they'd say, 'You got anything buried?' The white folks had done buried the meat under my mother's house* And say, 'Is they good to you?' If they hadn't a been we wouldn't a known any better than to tell it* "I 'member they found where the meat was buried and they ripped up my mother'8 feather bed and filled it full of ham* and shoulders, 2. and there wasn't a middlin' in the lot* And kill ehickens and geesel They got ever9thing and anything they wanted* "There was a battle-field about four miles from us where they fit at* "Honey, I can't tell it like I know it, but I know it* "Old master was a good man* Tou had plenty to eat and plenty to wear* And on Monday morning aXX his colored folks had clean clothes* I wish I could tell it like I know* He was a good man but he had as mean a wife as I ever saw* She used to be Nettie Sherrod and she did not like a black face* Yes ma'am9 Jim Yhitley was a good man but his father was a devil* "If Hassa Jim had a hand he couldn't control, he sold him* He said he wasn't goin9 to beat 9em or have 'em run off and stay in the woods* Yes9m, that was my master, Jim Ihitley* "His overseer was Zack Hill when peace declared* "How long I been in Arkansas? Me? Ve landed at Marianne, Arkansas in 1889* They emigranted us here* They sure said they had fritter trees and a molasses pond* They said to just shake the tree and the fritters would fall in the pond* You know anybody that had any sense wouldn't believe that* Yes ma9am, they sure told that lie* 9 Course there was times when you could make good money here* "I know I is a slave time chile* I fared well but I sure did see some that didn't* "Our white folks had hands that didn9t do nothin9 but make clothes and sheets and kivers* "Baby, them Ku Klux was a pain* The paddyrollers was bad enough but them Ru Klux done lots of devilment* Yes ma'am, they done son* devilment* "I worked for a white man once was a Ku Klux, but I didn9t know it for a long time* One time he said, 9Now when you're foolin9 around in my closet s. cleanin9 up, I want you to be pertlckler*' I seed them rubber pants what they filled with water* I reckon he had enough things for a hundred men* His wife say, Wow, Talitha, don't let on you know what them things is*1 "Now my father belonged to the Adkins* He end my mother was married with a stiffcate 'fore peace declared and after peace declared they got a license and was married just like they marry now* "My master used to ask us chillun, 'Do your folks pray at night?* Ve said 'no' 'cause our folks had told us what to say* But the Lawd have mercy, there was plenty of that gain' on* They'd pray, fLawd, deliver us from under bondage *9 "Colored folks used to go to the white folks9 church* I was raised up under the old Primitive Baptist feet washin9 church* Oh, that9s a time, baby! "What I think of the younger generation? I don9t know what to think of 'em* I don't think I know they is goin9 too fast* "I learned how to read the Bible after I 'fessed religion* Tes ma9am, I can read the Bible, praise the Lawdl" 254 30781 Interviewer Person interviewed Age 84 255 Samuel S Taylor Abble Lindsay 914 W* Tenth Street, Little Bockf Arkansas . lOi! Glass1 uf - "I was born June 1, 1856; the place at that time was called Lynngrove, Louisiana* It was just about a mile from the post office, and was in Morehouse Parish in the first ward in the tenth ward I mean* Relatives "My father was named Alec Summerville He named himself after the Civil War* They were going around letting the people choose their names* He had belonged to Alec Watts; but v&en they allowed him to select his own name after the war, he called himself Summerville after the town Summerville (Somerville), Alabama* His mother was named Charlotte Dantzler* She was born in North Carolina* John Hayues bought her and brought her to Arkansas* My father was an overseer's child* You know they whipped people in those days and forced them* That is why he5didn't go by the name of Watts after he got free and could select his own name* "The name of my mother's mother was Celia Watts* I don't know my grandfather's first nana* Old man Alec Watts' father gave my mother to him* I didn't know anything about that except what was told to me* They bought her from South Carolina* They came to Louisiana* My father was bought in South Carolina too* After the Haynes met the Watts, Watts married old man Haynes' daughter* He gave my father to his daughter, Mary Watts* She was Mary Watts after she was married* She was Mary Haynes before* Watts' father gave my mother to Alec Watts* That is just the way it was* "My mother and father had three children to live* I think there were about thirteen in all* There are just two of us living now* I couldnft tell you where Jeffrey Summerville, my living brother, is living now* Slave Houses "The slaves lived in hewed-log houses* I have often seen hewed-log houses* Have you ever seen one? You cut big logs and split them open with a maul and a wedge* Then you take a pole ax and hack it on both sides* Then you notch it -cut it into a sort of tongue and groove joint in each end* Before you cut the notches in the end, you take a broad ax and hew it on both sides* The notch holds the corners of the house ties every corner* You put the rafters up just like you do now# Then you lathe the rafters and then put boards on top of the rafters* Sometimes shingles were used on the rafters instead of boards* "You would finish off the outside of the walls by making clay cakes out of mud and filling up the cracks with them* When that clay got hard, nothing could go through the walls* Sometimes thin boards were nailed on the inside to finish the interior* Furniture and Food "They had planks homemade wooden beds* They made tables and chairs* They caned the chairs* They made the tables with four legs* You made it just like you would make a box, adding the legs* "A little house called the smokehouse was built in one of the corners of the yard* They would weigh out to each one so much food for the week's supply mostly meat and meal, sometimes rice* They'd give you parched meal and rye too* 57 "Sometimes they had the slaves cook their food in the cabins* Mostly all the time* My people ate in the kitchen because my mother was the cook and my father was the yard man. The others mostly cooked at home in their cabins* Work "My mother and father worked around the house and yard. Slaves in the field had to pick a certain amount of cotton. The man had to pick from two to three hundred pounds of cotton a day if he wasn't sick, and the woman had to pick about one hundred fifty* Of courBe some of them could pick more. They worked in a way of speaking from can till can't, from the time they could see until the time they couldn't. They do about the same thing now. Recreation "I remember the time the white folks used to make the slaves all come around in the yard and sing every Sunday evening. I can't remember any of the songs straight through. I can just remember them in spots. 'Give me Jesus, you can have all the world In the morning when I arise, Give me Jesus*' ******** (Fragaent) 'Lie on him if you sing right Lie on him if you pray right God knows that your heart is not right Come, let us go to heaven anyhow.' ******** (Fragnent) 'The ark was seen at rest upon the hill On the hills of Calvary And Great Jehovah spoke Sanctify to God upon the hill.' ******** (First verse) 258 9 Peter spied the promised land On the hill of Calvary And Great Jehovah spoke Sanctify to God upon the hill.1 (Second verse) There was lots more that they sung* "They could go to parties too, but when they went to them or to anything else, they had to have a pass* When they went to a party the most they did was to play the fiddle and dance* They had corn huskings every Friday night, and they ground the meal every Saturday. The corn husking was the same as fun. They didn't serve anything on the place where I was* I never knew them to serve anything at the corn shuckings or at the parties. Sometimes they would give a picnic, and they would kill a hog for that* Life Since Freedom "Right after the war, my father hired me out to nurse* Then I stayed around the house and helped my stepmother, and the white girls taught me a little until I got to be thirteen years old* Then I got three months1 schooling in a regular school* I came here in 1915* I had been living in Newport before that* Yes, I been married, and that's all you need to know about that* I got two children: one fifty-three years old, and the other sixty* * Opinions "I don't have much thinking to do about the young people* It's a lost race without a change*" Interviewer's Comment "Mother" Lindsay is a Bible-reading, neat and clean-appearingf pleasant-mannered business woman, a little bulky, but carrying herself like a woman thirty years* She runs a cafe on Ninth Street and manages her own business competently* She refers to it as "Hole in the Wall." I had been trying for sometime to catch her away from her home* It was almost impossible for me to get a story from her at her restaurant or at her home* She doesn't like to sit long at a time and doesn't like to tell too much* When she feels quarters are a little close and that she is telling more than she wants to, she says, "Honey, I ain't got no more time to talk to you; I got to get back to the cafe and get me a cup of coffee." Will Glass, who has a story of his own, collaborated with her on her story. He has an accurate and detailed memory of many things* He is too young to have any personal memories. But he remembers everything he has been told by his grandparents and parents, and they seem to have talked freely to him unlike the usual parents of that period* Interviewer Person interviewed Age Mr8* Bernice Bowden Boaa Lindsey 302 S* Miller Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 85 "I was born in Georgia and I'm 83* "My white folks was named Abercrombie* "I don't remember my mother and I hardly remember my father* My white folks raised me up* I 'member my missis had me bound to her when I was twelve* I know when my grandma come to take me home with her, I run away from her and went back to my white folks* "My white folks was rich* I belonged to my young missis* She didn't 'low nobody to hit me* When she went to school she had me straddle the horse behind her* The first readin' I ever learned was from the white folks* "I think the Yankees took Columbus, Georgia on a Sunday morning* I know they just come through there and tore up things and did as they pleased* "I stayed there a long time after the Yankees went back* "Old master wasn't too old to go to war but he didn't go* I think he had to dodge around to keep the Yankees from gettin' him* I think he went to Texas but we didn't go* "I loved my white folks 'cause I knowed more about them than anybody else. "I come here to Arkansas with a young white lady just married* She suaded me to come with her and I just stayed* "Biggest thing I have did is washin1 and ironin'. But now I am doing missionary work in the Sanctified church. "I don't know fbout the younger generation. Looks like 'bout near ever'body lost now. There's some few young people is saved now but they ainft many." 262 21 Interviewer Person interviewed Age Thomas Elmore Laey William Little. Atkins, Arkansas 85 "I was bom on the plantation of Dr. Andrew Scott, bat my old ma9ster was Col. Ben T* Embry. The 14th of March, in the year 1855, was my birthday. Yes suh, I was born right here at old Galla-Bock! My old Ma9ster Embry had a good many slaves* He went to Texas and stayed about throe years* Took a lot of us along, and de first work I ever done after I was set free was pickin9 cotton at #2 a hundred pounds* Dere was seventy-five or a hundred of us freed at once. Yes suh! Den we drove five hundred miles back here from Texas, and drove five hundred head of stock* We was refigses~~dat9 s de reason we had to go to Texas* Pfether and mother both passed away a good many years ago. Oh, yes, / dey was mighty well treated while dey was in slavery; never was a kinder mas9r anywhere dan my old mas9r* And he was wealthy, too had lots of land, and a store, and plenty of other property* Many of the slaves stayed on as servants long after the War, and lived right around here at old (Sella Bock* "No suh, I never belonged to no chu9ch; dey thought I done too such of the devil9s work playin9 the fiddle* Used to play the fiddle for dances all around the neighborhood* One white man gave me #10 once for playlnf at a dance* Played lots of the old-time pieces like 9Turkey in the Straw9, 'Dixie9, and so on* 21 *We owns our home here, and I has another one* Been married twice and raised eighteen ehillun* Yes suh, we've lived here eighteen years, and had fine health till last few years, hut my health is sorter po'ly now* Got a swell in' in my laigs* " (Chuckling) I sure remembers lots of happy occasions down here in days before the Var* One day the steamboat come up to the landin1. It was named the Haumelle yes suh, llaumelle, and lots of hosses and cattle was unloaded from the steamer* Sure was busy days then* And our old mas'r was mighty kind to us** j f D t "Uncle Bill" did not know how he came about the name "Little*" jfI Perhaps it was a nickname bestowed upon him to distinguish him from some other William of larger stature* However, he stands fully six feet in height, and has a strong, vigorous voice* He is the sole surveying ex~ slave of the Galla Rock community* 263 oG 0352 Interviewer Person interviewed Age Thomas Elmore Lacy "Aunt Minerva" Lofton Russellville, Arkansas 69 "Come int Yes, my name's Minerva Lofton at least it was yistiddy. Now, whatcha gonna ask me? Hope you ain't saying something that'll git me in bad* Don't want to git in any more trouble* Hard times' bad enough* "I was born in the country nine miles from Clarendon, Monroe County, December 3, 1869* Father died before I was bora* My mother came from Virginia, and her mistress' name was Bettie Clark* They lived close to Richmond, and people used to say 'Blue Ridge,' so I think it was Blue Ridge County, Virginia* Mother was sold to Henry Cargile C-a-r-g-i-l-e* "then they were expecting peace to be declared soon a lot of the colored people named Parks took many of the slaves to Texas to escape from the Yankee a, but when they got to Corpus Christ! they found the Yankee soldiers there just the same, so they came back to Arkansas* I sure used to laugh at my dear old mother when she'd tell about the long trip to Corpus Christi, and things that happened on the way* They stopped over at Camden as they went through, and one of the colored gals who hated her played a prank on her to take out her spite on mother: They had stopped at a dairyman's home near Camden, and she sent my mother in to get a gallon of buttermilk* After drinking all she could hold she grabbed mother by the hair of the head and churned her up and down in the buttermilk till it streamed down her face, and on her clothes a sight to behold* I laughed and laugjhed until my sides ached when mother told me about this* 2 265 * "Old mistis9 name (that is, one of the old mistis9) was Bettie Young, and my mother was named Bettie for her; she was a namesake sort of a wedding present, I think* "I9ve been a member of the Pentecostal church for nineteen years* "No sir, I never have voted and never expect to* Why? Because I have a religious opinion about votin9* I think a woman should not vote; her place is in the home raising her family and attending to the household duties* We have raised only two boys (stepchildren) had no children of our own but I have decided ideas about women runnin9 around among and votin9* When I see em settin9 around the ballot box at the polls, sometimes with a cigarette in their mouths * and again slingin9 out a 9 damn9 or two, I want to slap em good and hard* "Yes, the old time religious songs I sure remember some of them! Used to be able to sing lots of em, but have forgotten the words of many* Let9s see: 9 9 I m a-go in9 to tell my Lord, Daniel in de lion9s den; I f m a-goin9 to tell my Lord, I9m a-goin9 to tell my Lord, Daniel in de lion9s den*9 Here98 another: 9 Big bells a-ringin9 in de army of de Lord; Big bells a-ringin9 in de army* I9m so glad I9m in de army of de Lord; My soul's a-shoutin9 in de army*9 "Modern youth? Humph! I think they are just a fulfilling of what Christ said: 9 They shall grow wiser as they grow older, but weaker*9 Where is it in the Scripture? Wait a minute and I911 look it up* Now, let9s seewhere was that passage? It says 9weaker9 here and 'weaken9* Never mind wait* I911 find it* Well, anyway, I don't know jest how to describe this generation* 2. I heard a white woman once say that she had to do a little cuss in1 to make herself understood* 'Casein1 ?f Why, fcussinf1 Is jist a polite word for it* "Good~bye, mister* You oughta thank the Lawd youfve got a job!" FOLKLORE SUBJECTS Name of Interviewer Subject S. S. Taylor Biographical Sketch of Robert Lofton Story - Information. (If not enough space on this page add page) Robert Lofton was born liaroh 11, 1855 in McDonogh, Georgia. His master lived in town and owned two Hegro women and their children. On0 of these was Lofton's mother. His father was a Negro who lived back of him and belonged to the local postmaster. He had a wagon and did .public hauling for his master, Dr. Tie. He was allowed to visit his wife and children at nights, and was kept plentifully supplied with money by his master* Lofton's master, Asa Brown, bought, or acquired from time to time in payment of debt smother slaves. These he hired out to fazmers, collecting the wages for their labor* After the war, the Lofton family came to Arkansas and lived in Lee County just outside of Oak Forest. They were share croppers and farmers throughout their lives. He has a son, however, a war veteran and unusually intelligent* Robert Lofton is a fine looking old man, with silky white hair and an octoroon appearance, although the son of two colored persons* This information given by Place of Residence Occupation Robert Lofton ( 1904 Cross Street. Little Rock. Arkansas Farmer (no longer able to work) Age 88 ) z. 268 He remembers scarcely anything because of fading mental powers, but he is able to take long walks and contends that only in that way can he keep free from rheumatic pains* He speaks of having died recently and come back to life, is extremely religious, and is fearful of saying something that he should not* miners *S i I ur^ t N U r c k U, ISST. "I was in McDonogh, Georgia when the surrender came* There was A plenty of soldiers in that little town Yankees and Rebels* And they was sending mall out through the whole country* The Rebels had as good chance to know itoat was in the mail as the Yanks (his mother's husband's master was postmaster) did* How Freedom Came "The slaves learned through their masters that they were free* The Yankees never told the niggers anything* They could tell those who were with them that they were free* And they notified the people to notify their niggers that they were free* 'Release him* If he wants to stay with you yet, he may* Ve don't require him to go away but you must let him know he is free*' "The masters said, 'You are free now, Johnnie, just as free aa I am*' Many of them put their things in a little wagon and moved to some other plantation or town or house* But a heap of them stayed right where they were* "My father found out before my mother did* He was living across town behind us about one-fourth of a mile* Dr* Tie, his master, had a post office, and that post office was where they got the news* My father got the news before my master did* He got on to it through being on with Dr* Tie* So my father got the news before ay master, Asa Brown, did and he earns over and told my mother before my master did* But my master csme out the next thing and told her she could go or cone as she pleased* She said shevd stay right along* And we got along just as we always did until my father came and told us he was going to Atlanta with a crew of Yankees* Itaployment and Post-War Changes in Residence "He got a wagon and a team and run us off to the railroad* He got a job at Atlanta directly* After he made a year in Atlanta, he got dissatisfied * He had two girls who were big enough to cut cotton* So he decided to go fazm* He went to Tennessee and we made a crop there* Then he heard about Arkansas and came here* When he came here, somehow or other, he got in a fight with a colored man* He got the advantage of that man and killed him* The officers came after him, but he left and I ain't never seen nor heerd of him since* He went and left my poor mother and her five children alone* But I was getting big enough to be some help* And we made crops and got along somehow* "I don't know what we expected* I never heerd anyone say a word* I was children you know9 and it was mighty little that children knew because the old folks did not talk with them much* What They Got "I never heerd of anything any of them got* I never heerd of any of them getting anything except work* I don't recollect any pension or anything being given them nothing but work* 270 21 Folks on this place would leave and go over on that place, and folks on that jplaee would come over here. They ate as long as the white' folks ate* le stayed with our old master and mistress, (Mr. Asa Brown and Mrs. Sallie Brown). Good Master and Mistress "They did not ship us. They didn't whip nobody they had. They were good white folks. My mother never was whipped. She was not whipped j after the surrender and she wasn't whipped before, jjfo lived in the some house as our masterjand we ate what he ate. Vives and Husbands "There was another woman my master owned. Her husband belonged to another white man. My father also belonged to another white man. Both of them would come and stay with their wives at night and go back to work with their masters during the day. My mother had her kin folks who lived down in the country and my mother used to go out and viait them. I had a grandmother way out in the country. My mother used to take me and go out and stay s day or so. She would arrange with mistress and master and go down Saturday and she would take me along and leave her other children with this other woman. Sunday night she would make it back. Sometimes she wouldn't come back until Monday. "It didn't look like she was any freer after freedom than she was before. She was free all the time she waa a slave. They never whipped her. Asa Brown never whipped his niggers. \ -L J j , 5# Lotting Out Slaves "Asa Brown used to rent out his nlggsrs9 sometimes. Tou know, they used to rent them. But he never rented my mother though. He needed her all the time. She was the cook. He needed her all the time and he kept her all the time. He let her go to see grandmother and he let her go to church. "Sometimes my mother went to the white church and sometimes she went to the colored folks church. When we went to the white folks church, we took and sat down in the back and behaved ourselves and that was all there was to it. When they'd have these here big meetings revivals or protracted meetings they call them she'd go to the white and black. They wouldnft have them all at the same time and everybody would have a chance to go to all of them. / "They wouldn't allow the colored to preacly4nd they wculdnft even call on them to pray but he could sing as good as any of them. / "Generally all colored preachers that I knowed of was slaves./ The slaves attended the churches all right enough Methodists and Baptists both white and black. I never heard of the preachers saying anything the white folks did not like. "The Methodists9 church started in the North. There was fourteen or fifteen members that got dissatisfied with the Baptist church and went over to the Methodist church. The trouble was that they werenft satisfied with our Baptism. The Baptists were here before the Methodists were thought of. These here fourteen or fifteen members came out of the North and started the Methodist church going. S7J L 2* 272 Share Cropping "Share cropping has been ever since I knowed anything* It was the way I started* I was working the white man's land and stock and living in his house and getting half of the cotton and com* We had a garden and raised potatoes and greens and so on9 but cotton and corn was our crop* Of course we had them little patches and raised watermelon and such like* Food and Quarters "We ate whatever the white man ate* My mother was the cook* She r" p.4 had a cook-room joined to her room [which reached clear over to the white folks9 house*! Everything she cooked on that stove, we all ate it, white and black soma of the putting, some of the cakes, some of the pies, some of the custard, some of the biscuits, some of the corn bread we all had it, white and black* I don't know no difference at all* Asa Brown was a good old man* There was some mean slave owners, but he wasn't one* Whippings "You could hear of some mean slave owners taking switches and beating their niggers nearly to death* But I never heerd of my old master doing that* Slaves would run away and it would be a year or two before they would be caught* Sometimes they would take him and strip him naked and whip him till he wasn't able to stand for running away* But I never heerd of nothing like that happening with Asa Brown* But he sometimes would sell a hand or buy one sometimes* He'd take a nigger in exchange for a debt and rent him out* p idi &i Voting "There waen't any voting by the slaves* But ever slnee freedom they have been voting. Hone of ay friends ever held any office* I don't know anything about the niggers not voting now. Don't they vote? Fatter Rollers, K. K. K., Vhite Carmelias, Ktc. "My mother and father knowed about Fatter Rollers, but I don't know nothing about them* But they are dead and gone. I have heerd of the Ku Klux but I don't know nothing about it. I don't know what I used to know. No sir, I am out of the question now. "There is one thing I keep straight. Vhen I wants to drink or when I wants to eat oh yes, I know how to go to bed. "Tou know I have seen the time when they would get in a close place and they would make me preach, but it's all gone from me now. I canft recollect." O 30741 274 Mary D* Hudgins 10? Palm Street, Hot Springs, Ark Interviewer Mary D Hudgins Person Interviewed Home , John H* Logan Jlged c 89 449 Gaines Avenue* Gaines Avenue was once a "Quality street"* It runs on a diagonal from Malvern Avenue, a one-time first cless residential thorofare^to the Missouri Pacific Tracks* Time was when Gaines led almost to the gates of the fashionable Combes Racetrack. Built up during the d^ys of bay windows Gaines Avenue has preserved half a dozen land marks of former ;jenteelity. Long stretches "between are filled "shot gun" houses* unaquainted for many years v < t a \ih paintbrush* "/Vithin half a block of the streetcar line . on Malvern an early spring had encouraged plowing of a 200 foot square garden* Signs such as "Hand Laundry" appear frequently* But by far the most frequent placard is "FOB SALE" a study in black and white, the insignia of a local real esta e firm specializing in foreclosures* 2 Hdis ugn J.H Logan The street number sought proved to be two doors beyond the red brick church. A third knock brought a slight, wrinkled face to the door, its features aquilin$, in coloring only the mildest of mocha* Its owner Laura Burton Logan* after satisfying herself that the visitor wasn't just en intruder, opened the door wide and invited her to co_:e inside* "Logan, oh Logan, come on here, come on in here*" she called to an old man in the next room. "Law, I don't know whether he can tell you anything or not He's getting pretty feeble. Now five or six years ago he could have told you lots of things. But now ---I don't know*" Into the "front room" hobbled the old fellow. His back was lent, his eyes dimmed with age* was the sort often, called "goodMi His face not good in the sense stupid acquiescence but rather evidence of an intelligent, non-preditory meeting of the problems of life* A quarter, handed the old fellow at the beginning of the interview remained clutched in his hand throughout the entire conversation* Because of events during the talk the interviewer reached for her change purse to find and 275 2 JH . Hudgins Logan offer another quarter* It was not in her purse* Getting up from her chair she locked on the floor about her. It wasn't there. Mrs* Loga ^., who had gone back to bed, wanted to know what the trouble was* and was worried when she found what was missing* By manner the interviewer put over the idea thet she wasn't suspecting either of the two* But Logen, not havfcfcg heard the entire conversation got to his feet and extended his hand the one holding the quarter offering it beck to the interviewer* When he rose, ther was the purse as it had slipped down on the seat of the rocker which the interviewer had almost "taken and in which she had probably carelessly tossed her purse* A second quarter, added to his first, brought a beaming smile from the old man* But for the rest of the afternoon there was a lump in the interviewer's throat* Here was a man, evidently terribly in need of money, ready, without even a tiny protest, to return a gift of cash which must have meant so muoh to him- on the barest notion in his mind that the interviewer wanted it beck* n Be patient with me ma'am," Logan began, "I can't remember so good* lad I want to get it all right* want to spoil my record now* I don't I been honest all my life, always stood up and told the truth, done what was right* want to spoil things and lie in my mouth now. I don't Give me time to 276 4 Hdis ugn I . H * Logan think. I was "born on in 1848 December 1 think* December 15* It was I was born in the house of Mrs* Cozine* She was living on Third Street in Little Hock* It was near the old Catholic Church, Was only a little ways from the State House* Mrs* Gozine, she was my first mistress* Then she sold me, me and my mother and a couple of brothers* It was Governor Roane she sold me to* how old I was good sized boy, though* maybe six years old* a mighty fine man* Don't know just Guess I was five He was a fine man, Governor Hoane was He always treated me good* Raised me up to be a good man* I remember v;hen he gives us a free-pass, That v;as during the war. Ee said, Now boys, you be good. is right, and don't you tell any stories* You stand for what I've'raised you up to do right When he wasn't governor any more he went back to Pine Bluff* We lived there a long time, right up until I was grown* I was with Governor Roane I can't right correct things in my mind altogether, but I think I was with him until I was about 20* Whe the war come on, Governor Roane helped to gather up troops* He called us in out of the fields and asked us if we v;anted to go* I did* Right today I should be getting a pension, I w s tru^ly in the army* pension. Ought to be getting a Once a white man, Mr, Williams, I believe his name was , tried to get me to gp with him to Little Rock# 5 Hftdgins X*H* Roane Getting me a pension would be easy he said* But somehow we never did go* I worked in the powder factory for a while* they set me to hauling things mostly food from the Brazos river to Tyler, Texas* Then We had hard times then we had a time didn't* and don't you let anybody tell you we Sometimes we didn't havw any bread* sometimes we didn't have any water* And even I wasn't so old, but I was a pretty good man- pretty well grown up* After the war I went b:ck with my pappy* While I'd belonged to Governor Roane, Roane was my name* But when I went bsck with, father, I took his name* 7/e farmed for a while and later I went to Little Rock* I did lots of things there* shojj for one thing* worked the lathes* Worked in a cabinet maker's Was classed as a good workman too* I Did a good job cf it* I never was the sort th: t had to walk around looking for work* Folks used to come and get me and ask me to worfc for them* Eow'd I happen to come to Hot springs ? They gpt me to come to work on the water mains* worked for the water works a 7 cng time* Then I worked for a iir* Smith in the bath house* I fired the furnace for him* Then for about 15 years I kept the yard at the Kingsway the Eastman it was then* I kept the 278 2 J.H Logan lawn clean at the Sastman Hotel, Hudgins That was about the last steacy work I did* Yes and in between I used to haul things. an express wagon* Used to build rock walls too. Had me Built good walls* Who did you say you was, Miss ? Your father was Jack Hudgins Law, child, law " A feeble hand reached fer the hand of the white woman and took it* i'he old eyes filled with tears and the face distorted in reaping* For a few minutes he sat, then he rose, and the young woman rose with him, ,For a moment she put a comforting arm around him and soon he was quieter* tt Lav, so your father was Jack Hudgins* How well I does remember him, v.'hatever did become of th t fine boy ? Dead did you say ? I remembers now* a mighty He was a fine man, mighty fine man, Jack Hudgins girl t Yes, iiiss, I guess you has seen me around a lot* of folks know me. Lots They* 11 come along the street and they* 11 say, Hello Logan!1 and sometimes I won't know who they are, b^rt they'll know me* I remember once, it's been years and years ago, a man come along Central Avenue the s rBet a white man, I was going along and suddenly he grabbed me and hugged me* It 279 2 J.H Logan Hudgins 280 scared me at first* Logan,* l e says, 'Logan* he.says again* i Logan, I*d know you anywhere* But I didn't recognize him* How glad I am to see you** Wife,*he sa s *wife, come on over end speak to Logan, he saved my life once** Invited me to come and see him too, he did* Things have been mighty hard for the laat few years* Seems like we could get the pension* First they h - d a rule :. that we'd have to sign away the home if we got $9*6 a month* Well, my wife's daughter was talcing care of us. Even if we got the $9 she'd still have to help. She wasn't making much, but she was dividing everything going without shoes and everything. So we thought it wasn't fair to her to sign away our home after all she'd done for us we was de&d so that they'd just kick her out when she'd been too good to us* So we says Hoi* We been told that they done changed that rule, but we can't seem to get help at all. Maybe, Miss, there's southing you can do. We sfare would be thankful, if you could help us get on* All my folks is dead, my mother and my father and all my brothers, my first and my second wives and both my children* My wife's daughter helps us all she can* She's mighty good to us. Don't know what we'd do without her. Thank you, glad you come to see us* yo Glad to know y u* If can talk to them over at the Court House, we'd be glad* GrO:>d-"bye* Gome to see us ag in*" Interviewer Mrs. Be mice Bowden Person interviewed Age 78 Residence Elvie Lomack Foot of King Street on river bank. no number; Pine Bluff, Arkansas "Coma right in and I111 tell you what I know. I was born in Tennessee in slavery days. No iaafm I do not know what year, because I canft read or write W I know who r y mistress was. She was Miss Lucy Ann Dillard. She a come from Virginia. She was an old maid and she was very nice. Some very good blooded people come from Virginia. She brought my mother with her from Virginia before I was born. "My father belonged to the Crowders and mammy belonged to Miss Lucy Ann Dillard. They wouldn*t sell pappy to Miss Lucy and she wouldnft sellraoxamyto the Crowders, so mammy lost sight of him and never married again. She just married that time by the consent of the white folks. In them tines they wasn't no such thing as a license for the colored folks. "I remember my mother milked and tended to the cows and issued out the milk to the colored folks. "Miss Lucy lived in town and come out once a week to see to us. When the overseer was there she come out oftener. \rie stayed right on there after the war, till we come to Arkansas. I was betwixt eleven and twelve years old. "And we was fooled in this place A man my mother knowed had been here two years* He come back to Tennessee and, oh Lord, you could do this and do that, so we come here* "First year we come here we all got down sick* When we got well we had to go to work and I didn't have a chance to go to school* "I've seen ny mother wring her hands and cry and say she wished she was back in Tennessee where Lucy Ann Dillard was* "5Jhen I got big enough I went to work for Ben Johnson and stayed there fifteen years. I never knew when my payday was. Mammy come and got my pay and give ne just what she wanted r e to have* And as for n rurinin' up and down the streets why r a a y would a died first* She's arm dead and in her grave but I give her credit care of us* she took the best of She had three girls and they didn't romp up and down the big road neither* "I just looks at the young folks now* If they had been comin' along when I was, they'd done been tore all to pieces* They ain't raisin* em now, they're just comin' up like grasvs a i weeds* And as rd for speakin' to you'now just turn their heads* Now I'm just fogy nuf that if I meet you out, I'll say good mornin' or good evenin'* "If it hadn't been for the Yankees, we'd have the yoke on our necks right today. The Lord got into their hearts* "Now I don't feel bitter gainst people* Ain't no use to hold malice gainst nobody got to have a clean heart* Folks does things cause they's ignorant and don't know no better and they shouldn't be crowned with it* 21 "But Ifll tell you the truth I've heard my mother say she was happier in slavery times than after cause she said the Dillards certainly took good care of her* Southerners got a heart in ecu" i 283 '30328 284 Interviewer: Mary D, Eud r lns Person Interviewed Home Henry Long Age c 71 113 Bast Grand "Yes, 'urn, I owns my own h o m e a n d what*3 more it's on the same street with the Mayor's house, Yes 'ua, I owns a good hara.e% ho.3 my own chickens and my flowers and I has a pension of 50 a month* "Just the other day I got a letter* It wanted me to join the National Association of Retired Federal Workers* I took the letter to the boss and he told me not to bother* Guess I d better spend my money on myself* M I got some oil stock too* dividends since I had it* are digging a new v.ell* Been paying pretty good Didn't pay any this year. They That'll maybe mean more money* It's paid pretty good up to now. we*re getting along pretty good* Yes, me and my wife, Nothing to Y orry v ut * 2 Hudgins Henry Long "Yihere was I b o r n i t was in Kentucky, Russellville it was, just a few miles from Bowling Green. Yes, um, Kentucky was a regalar slave s c e e fft a genuine slave state* Lots of em there* "The man we belonged to his name was Gabe Long. I remember hear in* *em tell how they put him up on one block and sold him* too. They put his wife up on another and said her Only they both went in different directions* They didn't see each other again for 30 years. had married again twice* By that time he My mother was his t':ird wife* She lived to be 102 and he lived to be 99. Yes, um, I comes from a long lived family* There's four of us still living* I got two brothers and one sister* back in Kentucky They all live pretty close to where we was all born* One time, when. I had a vacction you a vacation with pay you know t;.ey gives 30 days vacation it was. V/ell one time on my vacation I went back to see my sister* she is living with her daughter, living with his son. He's 73. own farm* He is 64* been farmers. she is 78. One brother is My youngest brother owns his All of *em back in Kentucky, they've I'm the only one who has worked in tarn. I never worked in town until I come to Arkansas* And 285 2 Henry Long Hudgins 290 "Been in Hot Springs for over 50 years* Law, when I first come there wasn t any Sastman hotel* There wasn't any Park hotel* up in Happy Hollow* I don't mean that Park Hotel The one I mean was down on Malvern* It burned in the fire of 1913* Law, when I come there wasn't nothing but mule street car * Hot Springs has seen lots of changes* " Back in Kentucky I*d been working around where I was born* 7/orked around the houses mostly* They paid me wages and wanted me to go on working for them* decided I wanted to get away* so I went to Little Hock* But didn't find nothing much to do there* up Cedar blades way* But I Then I went on Then I come to Hot springs* "first I worked for a man who had a big gardenit's out where South Hot springs is now oh you know what the man's name was he was named he was named name was Barker, that's it, Barker*" ( The "Barker Place" has been divided up into lots and blocks and is one of the more popular residential districts.) "Then I got a job at the Park hotel* didn't work in the yard. and the pantry. n o ma*em* I I worked in the refrigerators Then about meal times I served the fruit* You know how a big, fashionable hotel is there's lots of things that has to be done around em* 2 Hdis ugn Hny Ln er og "Finally I got rheumatism and I had to quit that kind of work. So I got a job firing the furnace at the electric light plant* It was down on Malvern then. was before the fire of 1913* the fire come. That I was working right there when It was pretty awful. everything out there on Malvern It burned just about and places on lots of other streets too* " After that I got a job at the Eastman hotel* I fired the furnace and worked on the boilers* a long time. Worked there Then they sent me to the Arlington. You know at that time the same company owned both the Eastman the Arlington* It wasn't this new Arlington second o n e t h e red brick one. I was here* and it was the Built that second one while The first one was wood* "Back in the time when I come, there was a creek running through most of the town. northern hotel . There wasn't any Great There was just a big creek there* "But how-sone-ever, to go on* After I worked at the Arlington on the boilers and the f u r n a c e I got a job at the Army and Navy Hospital. hospital either* too* Now that wasn't the new It was the old o n e i t was red brick 287 288 5 " Next, I worked at the LaMar Bath house* there a lor.g time for years and years* got to building over the bath houses. I was Then they One " y one b they tore down the old ones and put new ones up* I worked on at the LaMar until they tore the old one down to build the new one. Quapaw to work* Then I went up to the V/orked there for quite rome time* "Finally they sent for me to come on down and work for the government* the Superintendents* government when Dr. was his name* Bolton, was I*s v.'orked under a lot of I started working for the Dr. Dr, V.'arring Le v ' s a nice nan. .e I worle d for him too* oh, what was lis name warring Then there was Dr* Then ther<~ w*s De De DeTalin there that's it. Then there war, Dr. Collins, Ee was the last of the Doctors* !2hen there was lor, Allen and new lo?. Libbey* "Yes, 'urn, I worked for a lot of *em and made a HOME RUN with all of em, Zvery ore of em liked me. I always did good v.ork, i . l of em liked the way I worked* il Hudgins Henry Long " Yes 'um. I been married 4 1 years . years to the first woman 21 to this one* The first one come from Mississippi. one4 i name is Charlotte. v 20 Her nsme v,.s Ula. This She come from Magnolia that's in Arkansas* "You know i a am, I come from Kentucky where L* they raise fine race horses. lot. I worked around 'em a But I ain't seen many races* country. We lived out in the Y 290 Interviewer Mrs. Bernice Bowden Person Interviewed Annie Love 1116 . Twelfth Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas Age 85? "I donft know exactly how old I am. I was here when the war was goin* on. I know I used to see the soldiers come by and come in, but I wasn't big enough to work. I was born in Richmond, Virginia. "My owners moved from Virginia to Mississippi. My mother and I lived on one place and my father lived on another plantation. I remember one Sunday he come to see me and when he started home I know I tried to go with him. He got a little switch and whipped me. Thatfs the onliest thing I can remember bout him. "Billy Cole was my master and I didnft have any mistress cause he never was married* "My mother worked in the field and I was out there with her when the cannons commenced shoot inf at Helena. We said they was shootin1 at us and we went to the house. Oh Lord, we said we could see em9 Lord yes! "After surrender, our owner, Billy Cole, told us we was free and that we could go or stay so we stayed there for four or five years. I donft know ^shether we was paid anything or not. After that we just went from place to place and worked by the day. "I never did see any Ku Klux but they come to my mother's house one night and wanted my stepfather to show fem where a man lived* He went down the road with em a piece* They wanted a drink and, oh Lord, they'd drink mighty nigh a backet full* n 0h Lord, when I was young goin1 to parties and dances, that was my rule* Oh Lord, I went to them dances* "I went to church, too* That was one thing I did do* I ain't able to go now but I'll tell anybody when I could, I sure went* "I went to school mighty little off and on bout two years* I never learned nothin' though* "I lived right in Memphis mighty nigh twenty years then I come to Arkansas bout thirty-two years ago and I'm mighty near right where I come to Pine Bluff* "I don't know of anything else but all my days I believe I've worked hard, cookin' and washin' and ironin'*" m Inte rv ie wer #745 __ Samuel S. Taylor Person Interviewed Needham Love 1014 W. Seventeenth Street, Little Hock, Arkansas Age 80, or older "Old Joe Love sold us to old Jim McClain, Meridian, Mississippi, and old McClain brought us down on the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi. That was during the War* It was down there on a big old plantation where the cane was high as this house. I was born in Alabama* When the ?iar started, he brought us all down to Meridian and sold us. He sold me in my mother's arms* "We cut down all that cane and woods and cleared up the place on the Tallahatchie* V e did all that before we learned we was free* i "They built log houses for the white and black. They sealed the white folks' houses and chinked the colored folks'* They didn't have but one house for the white folks* There was only one white person down there and that was old Jim McClain. Just come down there in time of harvest* He lived in Lexington the rest of the time. He told his people, 'When I die, bury me in a bale of cotton.' One time he got sick and they thought he would die. They gathered all the hands up and all the people about the place. There was about three hundred. He come to his senses and said, 'What's all these people doing here?' "His son said, 'Papa, they thought you was goin' to die and they come up to see you.' "And he said to his son, 'Well, I ain't dead yet. Tell 'em to git back on the job, and chop that cotton.' 292 "I did not have any work to do in slavery time. When the War ended I was only five years old. But I played the devil after the War though. When the slaves were freed, I shouted, but I ainft got nothin' yet. I learned a lot thougho My father used to make a plow or a harrow. They made cotton in those days* Potatoes ain't no fcount now* In them days, they made potatoes so good and 3weet that they would gum up your hands* Mothers used to make good old ash cakes. Used to have pot-liquor with grease standin' up on it* People don't know nothin1 now. Don't know how to cook. n Uy father's name was Joe Love and my mother's name was Sophia. I don't know any of my grandparents. All of them belonged to old Joe Love* I never did know any of them. I know my father and mother my mammy and pappy that's what we called fem in them days a w 01d man Joe would go out sometimes and come in with a hog way in t e night. He was a cooper made water buckets, pans to make bread up in and things like that. Mammy would make us git up in the night and clean our mouths. If they didn't, children toould laugh at them the next day and say the spiders had been biting your mouth, 'cause we were sposed to had so much grease on our mouths that the spiders would swing down and bite them. "I professed religion when I was sixteen years old. It was down in the Free Nigger Bend where my father had bought a little place on the public, road between Greenwood and 3hellmount "I married that fall. My father had died and I had got to be a man. Done better then than I do since I got old. I had one cow and my mother let me have another. I made enough money to buy a pair of mules and a wagon. My wife was willing to work. She would go out and git some poke greens and pepper and things and cook them with a little butter. Night would come, we'd go out and cut a cord of wood. Got 'long better then than people do now "I began preaching soon as I joined the church* I began at the prayermeetings* I preached for forty-seven years before I fell* Ifve had two strokes* Itfs been twenty-eight years or more since I was able to work for myself* "I have heard about the pate roles but I never did know much about them* I have heard my father talk about them* He never would get a new suit and go to town but what they would catch him out and say, fTou got a pass?1 He would show it to them, and they would sit down and chew old nasty tobacco and spit the juice out on him all over his clothes* "The Ku Klux never did bother us any* Not after I got the knowledge to know what was what* They was scared to bother people fcause the niggers had gone and got them some guns and would do them up* "Old Jim McClain had one son who was bad* He used to jump on the niggers an* 'buse and beat them up* The niggers got tired of it and he started gittin' beat up every time he started anything and they didn't have no more trouble* "Jim McClain didn't misireat his niggers* The boys did after he was dead though* He died way after slavery. If a nigger went off his place and stole a cow or a hog or something* you better not come 'round there and try to do nothin' about it* Jim McClain would be right there to protect him* "When he died, the horses could hardly pull him up the hill* He wanted to stay back down there in the bottoms where that cotton was* "When I got to realizing, it was after freedom* But they had slavery rules then* There was one old woman who used to take care of the children while their parents were working in the fields* Sometimes it would be a week before I would see my mother and father* Children didn't set up then and look in old folks' faces like they do now. They would go to bed early* 295 lake up sometimes way in the middle of the night. Old folks would be holding a meeting and singing and praying* "They used to feed the children pot-liquor and bread and milk. Sometimes a child would find a piece of meat big as your two fingers and he would holler out, f0h look, I got some meat.1 "Fourth of July come, everybody would lay by. Niggers all be gathered together dancing and the white folks standin1 fround lookin' at them. "Right after the surrender, I went to night school a little, but most of my schooling was got by the plow. After I come to be a minister I got a little schooling. "I canft get about now. I have had two strokes and the doctor says for me not to go about much. I used to be able to go about and speak and the churches would give me something, but since this new 'issue1 come out, theology and dogology and all such as that, nobody cares to pay any 'tention to me. Think you are crazy now if you say 'amen.' Don't nobody carry on the church now but three people the preacher, he preaches a sermon; the choir, he sings a song; and another man, he lifts a collection. People go to church all the years now and never pray once. "I get some help from the Welfare. They used to pay me ten dollars pension. They cut me down from ten to eight. And now they cut me down to four. They cut the breath out of me this time. "I got some mighty good young brothers never pass me up without givin' me a dime or fifteen cents. Then I got some that always pass me up and never give me nothing. I have built churches and helped organize churches from here back to Mississippi. "I donft know what's goinf to become of our folks. All they study is drinking whiskey and gamblin' and runnin' after women. 21 296 They donft care for nothin1. What's ruinin' this country is women voting When a woman comes up to a man and smiles at him, he'll do what she wants him to do whether it's right or wrong* "The best part of our preachers is got so they are dishonest* Stealing to keep up automobiles* Some- of them have churches that ain't no bigger than this room** Interviewer's Comment The statements of Needham Love like those of Ella Wilspn are not consistent on the subject of age* It is evident, however, that he is eighty years old or older* He thinks so* He has memories of slave times* He has some old friends who think him older* 297 30589 Interviewer Samuel S. Taylor Person Interviewed Age Louis Lacas 1320 Pulaski Street, Little Rock, Arkansas 85 Masters, Birth, Parents, Grandparents "I was born in 1855 down on Bayou Bartholomew near Pine Bluff, Jefferson County, / "My mother's name was Louisa. She married a man named Bill Cardrelle after freedom* Her husband in slavery time was Sam Lucas* He belonged to a man by the name of O'Neil* They took him in the War and he never did come back to her* (He didn't much believe he was my father, but I went in his name anyway*) "My mother's father's name was Jacob Boyd* I was young, but I know that* He was free and didn't belong to nobody* That was right here in Arkansas* He had three other daughters besides my mother, and all of them were slaves because their mother was a slave* His wife was a woman by the name of Barclay. Her master was Antoine Barclay (?) She was a slave woman* She died down there in New Cascogne* That was a good while ago* "The French were very kind to their slaves* The Americans called all us people that belonged to the Frenchmen free people* They never gave the free Negroes among them any trouble. I mean the Frenchmen didn't give them no trouble "The reason we finally left the place after freedom was because of the meanness of a colored woman, Amanda Sanders. I don't know what she had against us. The old mistress raised me right in the house and fed me right at the table. When she died, this woman used to beat the devil out of m . 21 We had had good owners* They never had no overseers until just before the War broke outf and they never beat nobody* first^ overseer was on a boat named the Quapaw when the mate knocked him in the head and put him in a yawl and took him to the shore* The boss saw it' and took four men and went and got him and had the doctor attend to him* It was a year before he could do anything* He didn't stay there long before they had him in the War* He just got to oversee a short time after he got well. He was in the cavalry. The other boys went off later* They took the cavalry first. None of them ever came back* They were lost in the big fight at Vicksburg* My paran. Mark Noble , he was the only one that got back. "I don't remember my fatherfs father. But I know that his mother went in the name of Rhoda* I don't know her last name. She was my grandma on his side. "I belonged to a man named Brumbaugh. His first name was Raphael* He was a all right man* He had a colored man for an overseer before this here white man I was tellin9 you about came to him. 'Uncle9 Jesse was the foreman. He was not my uncle. He was related to my wife though; so I call him uncle now. Of course, I didn't marry till after freedom came. I married in 1875* Early Days "When I was a little child, my duty was to clean up the yard and feed the chickens. I cleaned up the yard every Friday. House, Furniture, and Food "My mother lived in a cabin log, two rooms, one window, that is one window in each room. 298 299 "They didn't have anything bat homemade furniture* We never had no bed bought from the store nothin1 like that* Ve just had something sticking against the wall* It was built in a corner with one post out* They made their table and used benches two -legged and sometimes four ^legged* !he two-legged benches was a long bench with a wide plank at each end for legs* "For food we got Just what the ^iite folks got* We didn't have no quarters* They didnft have enough hands for that* They raised their own meat* They had about seven or eight* There was Dan, Jess, Bill, Steve* They bought Bill and Steve from Kentucky. 1 "Old free Jack Jenkins, a colored man, sold them two men to olf master* * a Jenkins was the only Negro slave trader I ever knowed* He brought then down one evening and the old man was a long time trading* He made then run and jump and do everything before he would buy them* He paid one thousand five hundred dollars for each one of them* 'Free Jack9 made him pay it part in silver and some in gold* He took some Confederate paper* It was circulating then* Bat he wouldn't take much of that paper money* "He stole those boys from their parents in Kentucky* The boys said he fooled them away from their homes with candy* Their parents didn't know where they were* "Then there were my brothers two of them, John Alexander and Willism Hamilton. They were half"brothers* That makes six men altogether on the place* I might have made a miscount* There was old man Wash Pearson and his two boys, Joe and Nathan* That made ten persons with myself* "Brumbaugh didn't have such a large family* I never did know how large it was* 21 Soldiers "The rebel soldiers were often at my place* A bad night the jayhawkers would came and steal stock and the slaves too, if they got a chance* They cleaned the old man9s stock out one night* The Yankees captured them and brought them back to the house* They gave him his stallion, a great big fine horse# They offered him five thousand dollars for him but he wouldn't take it* They kept all the other horses and mules for their own use, but they gave the stallion back to the old man* If they hadn't give him back the stallion, the old man would have died* That stallion was his heart* The Yankees didn't do nobody no harm* "Vhen the soldier wagons came down to get the feed, they would take one crib and leave one* They never bothered the smokehouse* They took all the dry cattle to feed the people that were contrabands* But they left the milk cows* The quartermaster for the contrabands was Captain Mallory. The contrabands were mostly slaves that they kept in camps just below Pine Bluff for their own protection* How Freedom Came "It was martial law and twelve men went 9round back and forth through the county* They come down on a Monday, and told the children they were free and told them they had no more master and mistress and told them what to call them* No more master and mistress, but Mr* and Mrs* Brumbaugh* Then they came down and told them that they would have to marry over again* But my ma never had a chance to see the old man any more* She didn't marry him over again because he didn't come back to her* But they advised them to stay with their owners if they wanted to* They didn't say for none of the slaves to leave their old masters and go off* We wouldn't have left 300 but that old colored woman beat me around so all the time, so my mother came after me and took me home since I wanted to go* The Yankees1 officer told her it would be good to move me from that place so I wouldn't be so badly treated* The white folks was all right; it was that old colored woman that beat on me all the time* Right After Freedom "Right after freedom my mother married Bill Cardrelle* She moved from the O'Neil place and went up to a place called the Dr. Jenkins9 place* She kept house for her husband in the new place* I didn't do much there of any- thing* After they moved away from there when I was twelve years oldf they taught me to plow (1867)* I went to school in the contraband camp* Mrs* Clay and Mr* Clay, white folks from the North, were my teachers* At that time, the colored people weren't able to teach* I went a while to school with them* I got in the second reader--McGuffy9 s that9 s far as I got* "I stayed with my mother and stepfather till I was about sixteen years old* She sent me away to come up here to my father, Sam Lucas* My oldest brother brought me here and I worked with him two years* Then I went to a TfT named Cunningham and stayed with him about six months* He paid me Uti fifteen dollars a month andrayboard* He was going to raise my wages when his wife decided she wanted women to do the work* The women would slip things away and she wouldn't mention them to her husband till weeks afterwards. Then long after the time, she would accuse me* Those women would have the keys* When they went in to get soap, they would take out a ham and carry it off a little ways and hide* By the time his wife would tell him about it, you wouldn't be able to find it nowhere* "He owed me for a month's work. She told him not to pay it, but he paid it and told me not to let her know he did it. I didn't either, "When I left him, I came over the river here down here below Fourche Dam, I stayed there forty or fifty years in that place. When I was between thirty-two and thirty-three years old, I married, and I stayed right on in that same place* X farmed 0.11 the time down there* I had to go in a law suit about the last crop I made* Then I came here to Little Rock in 1904 and followed ditching with the home water company* Then I did gas ditching with the gas people* Then I worked on the street car line for old man White* I come down then got broke down, and couldn't do much* The relief folks gave me a labor card; then they took it away from me said I was too old* I have done a heap of work here in this town* I got old and had to stop* "I get old age assistance from the Welfare* That is where I get my groceries through them. I wouldn't be able to live if it wasn't for them* Opinions "There is a big difference between the young people now and what they used to be. The old folks ain't the same neither Interviewer's Comment Lucas told his story very fluently tut with deliberation and care* The statement about his father on the first page was not a slip. He told what he wanted to tell but he discouraged too much effort to go into detail on those matters* One senses a tragedy in his life and in the life of his mother that is poignant and appealing* Although he states no connection* one will not miss the impression that his stepfather was hostile* Suddenly we find his mother sending him to his father* But after he reached his father, there is little to indicate that his father did anything for him* Then, too, it is evident that his father deliberately neglected to remarry his mother after freedom* 30512 304 Interviewer Mlsa Irene Robertson Person interviewed Age r Lizzie Luckado Hazen, Ark, 71 "I was born at Duck Hill, Mississippi, of us children. All dead now but me. Louden and Jake Porter, My parents was Molly One master my parents talked about was Missis Molly and Dr, McCaskill, was mixed with Indian, There was three I don't think my mother Her father was a white man, but my father said he was Indian and African, My father was in the Civil War. "When the war was coming on they had the servants dig holes, then put rock on bottom, then planks, then put tin and iron vessels with money and silver, then put plank, then rocks and cover with dirt and plant grass on top. it grow. Water it to make They planted it late in the evening, I don't know what become of it. "When I was eight or nine years old I went to a tent show with Sam and Hun, my brothers. We was under the tents looking at a little Giraffe; a elephant come up behind me and touched me with its snout, legs. I jumped back and run under it between its That night they found me a mile from the tents asleep under some brush. torches. They woke me up hunting me with pine knot I had cried myself to sleep. The show was "Dan Rice and Coles Circus" at Dednen, Mississippi. They wasn't as much afraid of snakes as wild hogs, wolves and bears. 2. "My mother was cooking at the Ozan Hotel at Sardis, Mississippi. I was a nurse for a lady in town, children to the square sometimes. was on Court Square. I took the The first hanging I ever seen One "big crowd collected. The men was not kin, they called it "Nathaniel and DeBonepart" hanging. was colored folks hung. father. They One" killed his mother and the other his I never slept a wink for two or three nights, I dream and jump up crying. I finally wore it off. don't know how old I was. I was a girl and I Besides the square full of people, Mrs. Hunter's and Mrs. Boo's yards was full of people. "We cooked for Capt. Salter at Sardis, Mississippi. "The first school I went to was to Mrs. J. P. Settles. He taught the big scholars. She sent me to him and he whooped me for singing: "Cleveland is elected No more I expected." I was a grown woman. They didn't want him elected I recken the reason they didn't want to hear it. Nobody liked em teaching but the last I heard of them he was a lawyer in Memphis. If folks learned to read a little that was all they cared about,n 305 306 Interviewer Person interviewed Age Mrs* Bernlce Bowden _ John Luckett Highway No* 65, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 85 "I was horn in Mississippi up above Vicksburg. I 'member the old Civil War but I was just a little boy* Oh, Ifve seen the Yankees in Vicksburg where the battle was* "I was 'bout ten when freedom come nothin' but a boy* "Clara Luckett was my mother* When the War was in Port Pillow, I was a small boy* I don't know 'bout nothin' else that's all I know about it* "I been workin' at these mills ever since surrender* I been firin' for 'em* "I voted the Republican ticket* I voted for General Grant and Garfield* I was a young man then* I voted for McKinley too. I never did hold no office, I was workin' all the time* I knowed Teddy Roosevelt I voted for him. "Biey wouldn't let me go to school I was so bad. I went one day and whipped the teacher. I didn't try--I whipped him and they 'xpelled me from school* "Since I been in this country, firin' made me deaf*" 311 Interviewer Person Interviewed Age Miss Irene Robertson John Lynch. Brinkley. Arkansas 69 " t mother was a slave of Buck Lynch. They lived close to NashIy ville, Tennessee. My father run away from Buck Lynch before the Civil War. He lived in the woods till he nearly went wild. My mother fed him at night* I was twenty-one years old before I ever seen him* My mother worked several years and didn't know she was free. She come with some traders from close to Nashville out here* I was born at Cotton Plant* I got two living brothers in Memphis now* "I was raised a farmer. The first work I ever done away from home was here in Brinkley* I worked at the sawmill fur Gun and Black. Then I went to Ft* Sknith and worked in er oil mill* I come back here and farmed frum 1911 till 1915. Then I worked in the Brinkley oil mill* I cooked the cotton seed meal* One of my bosses had me catch a small cup full fur him every once in awhile* The oil taste something like peanut butter. It taste very well while it is hot and smells f*ne too. I quit work when they quit the mill here* It burned up* I do like the work* They got some crazy notion and won't hire old fellows like me no more* Jobs are hard to get. Younger men can get something seems like pretty easy* I make a garden. That is 'bout all I can do or get to do. "My mother's name was Molly Lynch. She cooked some at Cotton Plant and worked in the field. She talked a right smart bout the way she had to do in slavery times but I don't recollect much* 312 Shea been deed a long tint* I heard folks say times mas awful hard right after the war, that times was easier in slavery for de reason when they got siek they got the best of care* She said they had all kinds of herbs along the side of the walks in the garden. I don't guess after they got settle d times was near as hard. She talked about how hard it was to get clothes and something to eat* Prices seemed like riz like they are now. "I don't know 'bout s y father's votin9 cause I didn't know him t till after I was grown and not much then. He was down about Marianna when I knowed him. I did vote. I vote the Republican ticket* I like the way we voted the best in 1886 or '87. It was called Fair Divide* Xach side put his man and the one got most votes got elected. I don't think it necessary fur the women to vote. Her place is in the heme. Seem like the women all going to work and the men quit. About 40 years ago R. P. Polk was justice of the peace here and Clay Holt was the constable. They made very good offleers* I don't recollect nothing 'bout them being elected. Brinkley is always been a very peaoeable town* The colored folks have to go clear away from town with any rowdiness." (The Negroes live among the whites and at their back doors in every part of town.) "I live with my son-in-law. He works up at the Gazzola Grocery Company. He owns this house. He is doing very well but he works hard* "The young generation so far as I knows is getting along fairly well* I don't know if times is harder; they is jes' different* Vhen folks do right seems there9 s a way provided for^'em. s* "I signed up with the M A . I signed up two or three times tout they ain't give us nothing aaich yet* They wouldn't let me work* They said I was too old. I works if I can get any work to do.* 309 30512 310 Interviewer Miss Irene Robertson Person Interviewed Josephine Scott Lynch, Brinkley. Arkansas Age 69 "Josephine Scott Lynch Is my name and I sho don't know a thing to tell you* I don't remember my father at tall* The first thing I can remember about my mama she was fixing to come to Arkansas* She come as a immigrant* They paid her fare but she had to pay it back* Ve come on the train to Memphis and on the boat to Gregory Point (Augusta)* Ve left her brother with grandma back in Tennessee* There was three children younger than me* The old folks talked about old times more than they do now but I forgot all she said too much to tell it straight* "Ve farmed, cleared land and mama and me washed and ironed and sewed all our lives* I cooked for Mr. Gregory at Augusta for a long time* I married then I cooked and washed and ironed till I got so porely I can't do much no more* "I never voted and I wouldn't know how so ain't no use to go up there* "Some of the younger generation is better off than they used to be and some of them not* It depends a whole heap on the way they do* The colored folks tries to do like the white folks far as they's able* Everything is changing so fast* The present conditions is harder for po white folks and colored folks than it been in a long time* Nearly everything is to buy and prie s out of sight. Work Is so scarce."