Chapter 2

chickens.

Me an mah ole man is been married sixty-six years an have nevah had no chillun. Yo know little chillun is de sweetest thing in the worl'. Now if we had chillun we would have someone tuh take care of us in our ole days. Mah ole man, Tom, is 89 an I'se 82. Poar ole man. Ah does all ah kin fuh him but I'se ole too. These young niggers is gettin so uppity. They think they is better than we is. A Darkey jes don' love one another an stick t'gether like white fokes does. But ah is goin ter stick ter my ole man. He needs me. He is jes like a little helpless chile widout me ter look after him. Ah used to be mighty frisky an mighty proud when ah wuz young but ah wazn' as good then as ah is now. Ah likes ter go ter church. See that little white church over de hill? That is Douglas Chapel, a Baptist church. Me an mah ole man give de lan' fuh that church. We had plenty them days when Douglas was laid out (meaning Douglas Addition). But now poar ole niggers don' have enough ter eat all de time. None of them church members is missionary enough ter bring us somethin' ter eat. White fokes have good hearts but niggers is grudgeful. De bigges thing among white fokes is they do lie sometime an when they do they kin best a nigger all to pieces.

Niggers don' have as much 'ligion as they use ter. Ah went to a missionary meeting at one sister's house an she said ter me: "Sister Douglas, start us off wid a song" an ah started off with "Amazing Grace." Sang bout half of de first verse an noticed none of them j'ined in but ah kep' right on singin' an wuz gettin full of de sperit when that sister spoke up an said: "Sister Douglas, don' yo know that is done gone out of style?" an selected "Fly Away" an den all of them sisters j'ined in an sung "Fly away, fly away" an hit sounded jes like a dance chune.

Yas'm, that is our ole buggy standin aroun de corner of de house. We use ter ride in hit till hit got so rickety. An that ole horse is our fambly horse. Dolly Jane ah calls her. We've had her forty years an she gits sick sometime jes like ah does an ah thinks sho she is gone this time but she gits ovah hit jes like ah does when ah has a spell. We has lived in this house since 1900 but we is goin ovah on de utha side of de tracks soon wid the res of de niggers. Nobody lef on this side but white fokes now ceptin us. When de railroad come through down there ah had a cotton patch growin there an ah cried cause hit went through mah cotton patch an ruint part of hit. All we got out'n hit wuz damages.

No'm, mah ole man caint talk ter yo all terday; he is sick. Mebby ifn yo all come back he kin talk ter yo then.

(In the meantime we investigated Tom and Sarah Douglas and found that he has a bank account and at one time owned all the land that is now Douglas Addition. In a few days we went back and found Tom sitting on the porch.)

Uncle Tom Douglas--Yas'm, ah members de wah. Ah wuz fo'teen when de wah began an eighteen when hit closed. Mah marster wuz B.B. Thomas, Union Parish, Louisiana, near Marion, Louisiana. Ah saw de fust soldiers go an saw young marster go. When young marster come back at de close of de wah he brought back a big piece of mule meat ter show us niggers what he done have ter eat while he wuz in de army.

Ah nevah wuz sold but lots of marster's slaves wuz sold. They wuz sold jes like stock. Ah members one fambly. De man wuz a blacksmith, de woman a cook, an one of their chillun wuz waitin boy. They wuz put on de block an sold an a diffunt man bought each one an they went ter diffunt part of de country ter live on nevah did see one nother no moah. They wuz sole jes like cows an horses. No'm, ah didn't like slavery days. Ah'd rather be free an hungry.

(Tom is the only ex-slave who has told us that he had rather be free and we believe that is because he has a bank account and is independent.)

Yo say tell yo about hants. There is such a thing. Yes mam. Some fokes calls it fogyness but hit sho is true fuh me an Sarah has seed em haint we Sarah. Here young missy, what is yo doin wid that pencil?

(After we had put up our notebooks and pencils and assured them that we would not repeat it, they told us the following):

When me an Sarah lived out at de Moore place about three miles east on the main street road we seed plenty of haints. De graveyard wuz in sight of our house an we could see them sperits come up out de groun an they would go past de house down in a grove an we could see them there campin. We could see they campfires. We could hear their dishes rattling an their tincups an knives an forks. An hear em talkin. Den again they would be diggin with shovels. Sometimes in de graveyard we could see de sperits doin de things they did befo they died. Some would be plowing, some blacksmithing an each one doin what he had done while he wuz livin. When day wuz breakin they would go runnin crost our yard an git back in de graves. Yes'm, we seed em as long as we lived there. After we moved from ther somebody dug up some gold that wuz buried at de corner of de chimney. An hit is said that from that day hants have not been seen there.

Yes'm, there is no doubt erbout hit. They is such thin's as hants. Me an Sarah has both seed em but we aint seed any in a long time.

Interviewer: Mrs. Carol Graham Person interviewed: Tom & Sarah Douglas Resident: El Dorado, Arkansas Age: 90 and 83.

NOTE:

This is a second interview with Uncle Tom and Aunt Sarah Douglas. The first was sent to your office in September 1936 from interview by Mrs. Mildred Thompson, El Dorado, Arkansas. Mrs. Thompson is not now with the Project. Mrs. Carol Graham made the second interview.

_Tom Douglas--Ex-slave_. I was a slave boy till I was eighteen. Was born in 1847, 'mancipated in '65. No, my master did not give me forty acres of land and a mule. When we was 'mancipated my master came took us outside the gate across the road and told us we was freed. "You are free to work for anybody you want to." We set there a while then we went whare ol' master was and he tol' us if we wanted to stay wid him and finish the crop he would provide our victuals and clothes. The next year we worked for him on the halves, and continued to do so for four or five years. 'F we didn' eat an' wear it up he would give us the balance in money an we of'en had as much as fifty dollars when the year was over.

My ol' master was S.B. [TR: in two previous interviews, B.B. Thomas] Thomas. The young master was Emmett Thomas. Mr. Emmett was his son. Dey was near Marion, Louisiana, then I worked fuh his brother-in-law 'Lias George. His wife was Susan George. I tell you the fact, these times is much bettuh than slave times. If I'm hungry an' naked, I'm free. I'm crazy 'bout liberty.

I've heard of the Ku Klux Klan but never did see none of 'em. Have seen where they is been but nevuh did see 'em.

We voted several years. Was considered citizens--voted an' all that sort of thing. I think if we pay taxes we ought to vote for payin' taxes makes us citizens don' it? I used to be a big politics man--lost all I had house, forty acres, a good well an' stock an' ever'thing. I was tol' one day that the Ku Kluxes was comin' to my house that night an' I got on my horse at sundown an left an aint nevuh been back. I was a big politics man then--lost all I had and quit politics. I'm ninety years old and fifteenth of next September. Looks like the old might get pensions if old has anything to do with it I ought to get a pension but us ol' folks that is gettin' long an has a place to stay an' somethin' to eat they say don' get none.

I come to El Dorado January 3, 1893. This place was in the woods then. I bought 120 acres from Mr. Dave Armstrong at five dollars per acre and in nine years I had it all paid for. It was after I got tired of workin' on the halves that I bought me a place.

Worked at a sawmill four years beginnin in 1897 or 98. Than I jobbed aroun' town three years doin' this an' that an' the other. Carried $25 with me when I moved to town and brought $28 back with me. Cleared $1 a year an' got tired of that.

Am livin' off my land. Have sol' some an' am sellin some now but times is hard and folks can't pay. I takes in from $18 to $25 per month.

The young folks is gone to destruction. Aint nothin' but destruction. You is young your self but you can tell times aint the same as they was ten years back. Young folks is goin' to destruction. Me, I'm goin' home. Goin' back 80 years an comin' up to day I is seen a mighty big change. Me, I'm goin' home. Don't know what you young folks going to see eighty years from now. Everybody is trying to get something for nothing.

We use to sing "Gimme this Old Time Religion, It's Good enough for me". An' we sung "I'm a Soldier of the Cross" an lots of others. We don' live right now, don' serve God. Pride, formality an love of money keeps folks from worshipping an' away from the ol' time religion. You know that ol' sayin: "Preacher in the pulpit preachin' mighty bold; All for your money an' none for your soul." Seems like its true now days.

You ask does I have stripes on my back from bein beat in slave'y times? No maam. I was always a good boy and smart boy raised in the same yard with the little white chillun. You says Sarah told you that las' year? Missy you mus' be mistaken. I was whipped once or twice but I needed it then or ol' master wouldn't a whipped me an he never did leave no stripes on me. My old master was good to all his niggers and I'm tellin you I was raised up with his chullun an him and old mistress was good to me. All we little black chillun et out of the boilin' pot an every Sunday mornin' we had hot biscuit and butter for breakfact. No maam my old master was always good to his niggers.

(Above is as exactly told by Tom Douglas with the exception that he used the word Marster, for master; wuz for was, tuh for to; ah for I and other quaint expressions--these were omitted because of instruction in Bulletin received August 7th, 1937.)

Taken down word for word. August 11, 1937.

Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden Person interviewed: Sebert Douglas 610 Catalpa Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas Age: 82

"I was born in Lebanon, Kentucky. Gover Hood was my old master. His wife's name was Ann Hood.

"I 'member Morgan's Raid. I don't 'member what year it was but I 'member a right smart about it. Cumberland Gap was where they met.

"The Rebs and Yankees both come and took things from old master. I 'member three horses they taken well. Yankees had tents in the yard. They was right in the yard right in front of the Methodist church.

"My mother was Mrs. Hood's slave, and when she married she took my mother along and I was born on her place.

"I was the carriage boy in slave times. My father did the driving and I was the waitin' boy. I opened the gates.

"I 'member Billy Chandler and Lewis Rodman run off and j'ined the Yankees but they come back after the War was over.

"Paddyrollers was about the same as the Ku Klux. The Ku Klux would take the roof off the colored folks' houses and take their bedding and make 'em go back where they come from.

"We stayed right there with old master for two or three years, then we went to the country and farmed for ourselves.

"I went to school just long enough to read and write. I never seed no use for figgers till I married and went to farmin'.

"Since I been in Pine Bluff I done mill work. I was a sash and door man.

"I used to vote every election till Hoover, but I never held any office.

"The younger generation is bad medicine. Can't tell what's gwine come of 'em!"

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Henry Doyl, Brinkley, Arkansas Age: Will be 74 Feb. 2, 1938

"I was born in Hardeman County near Bolivar, Tennessee. My mother's moster was Bryant Cox and his wife was Miss Neely Cox. My mother was Dilly Cox. Two things I remembers tinctly that took place in my childhood: that was when my mother married George Doyl. I was raised by a stepfather. Miss Neely told my mother she was going to sell me and put me in her pocket. She told her that more'n one time. I recollect that.

"My oldest brother, one older en me, burned to death. My mother was a field hand. She was at work in the field. When she come to the house, the cabin burned up and the baby burned up too. That grieved her mighty bad and when Miss Neely tell her soon as I got big nough she was goner sell me mighty near break her heart.

"The first year after the surrender my father, Buck Rogers, left my mother in her bad condition. She said she followed him crying and begging him not to leave her to Montgomery Bridge, in Alabama. The last she seen him he was on Montgomery Bridge.

"They just expected freedom. My mother left her mistress and moved to the Doyl place. She didn't get nothing but her few clothes. I was born at the Doyl place. She worked for Moster Bob Doyl, a young man. They share cropped. We had a plenty I reckon of what we raised and a little money.

"I worked on Colonel Nuckles place when I got up grown. I worked on the Lunatic Asylum at Bolivar and loaded tires and ditched for the I.C. Railroad a long time.

"I don't recollect that the Ku Klux ever bothered us.

"My stepfather voted Republican ticket. I haven't voted for a good many years--not since Garfield or McKinley was our President.

"I come to Arkansas in 1887. I married in Arkansas. I heard that Arkansas was a rich country. My mother was dead. My stepfather had been out here. I come on the train, paid my own way. Come to Palestine the first night then on to Brinkley. I been close to Brinkley ever since.

"The old man died what learned me how to walk rice levies. I still work on the place. Everybody don't know how to walk levies. It will kill an old man. Your feet stay wet and cold all time. I do wear hip boots but my feet stay cold and damp. I got down with the rheumatism and jes' now got so I can walk.

"I got a wife and three living children. They all married and gone.

"Times is hard for old folks and changed so much. Children used to get jobs and take care of the granny folks and the old parents. They can't take care of themselves no more it look like. I don't know how to take the young generation. They are drifting along with the fast times.

"I applied but don't get no pension."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Willie Doyld (male), Brinkley, Arkansas Age: 78 [-- -- 1938]

"I was born in Grenada, Mississippi. My parents belong to the same family of white folks. My moster was Jim Doyld. His wife was Mistress Karoline Doyld. Well as I recollect they had four childen. My parent's name was Hannah and William Doyld. I'm named for em. They was three of us childen. They belong to same family of white folks for a fact. I heard em say Moster Jim bought em offen the block at the same time. He got em at Galveston, Texas. He kept five families of slaves on his place well as I recollect.

"My pa was Moster Jim's ox driver. He drove five or six yokes at a time. He walk long side of em, wagons loaded up. He toted a long cowhide whoop. He toted it over his shoulder. When he'd crack it you could hear his whoop half a mile. Knowed he was comin' on up to the house. Them oxen would step long, peartin up when he crack his whoop over em. He'd be haulin' logs, wood, cotton, corn, taters, sorghum cane and stuff. He nearly always walked long side of em; sometimes he'd crawl upon the front wagon an' ride a piece.

"He was a very good moster I recken far as I knows. They go up there, get sompin' to eat. He give em a midlin' meat. He give us clothes. Folks wore heep of clothes then. They got whoopin's if they not do lack they tole em to do--plenty whoopin's! He kept ten dogs, they call bear dogs. They hunt fox, wolves, deer, bear, birds. Them dogs died wid black tongue. Every one of em died.

"We et at home mostly. We was lounced wid the rations but had a big plenty. We got the rations every Saturday mornin'. One fellow cut and weighed out the meat, sacked out the meal in pans what they take to git it in. Sometimes we et up at the house. Mama bring a big bucket milk and set it down, give us a tin cup. We eat it up lack pigs lappin' up slop. Mama cooked for old mistress. She bring us 'nough cooked up grub to last us two or three days at er time. Papa could cook when he be round the house too. I recollect all four my grandmas and grandpas. They come from Georgia. Moster Jim muster bought them too but I don't know if he got em all at the same time down at Galveston, Texas.

"Moster Jim show did drink liquor--whiskey. I recken he would. When he got drunk old missus have him on the bed an' she set by him till he sober up. Miss Karoline good as ever drawed a breath to colored and white.

"My grandma, mother's ma, was a light sorter woman. The balance of my kin was pure nigger.

"I kin for a fact recollect a right smart about the war. Papa went off to war wid Jack Hoskins. He was goin' to be his waitin' man. He stayed a good while fore he got home. Jack Hoskins got kilt fore he et breakfast one mornin'. That all I heard him say. I recken he helped bury him but I never heard em say.

"The plainest thing I recollect was a big drove of the Yankee soldiers--some ridin', some walkin'--come up to the moster's house. He was sorter old man. He was settin' in the gallery. He lived in a big log house. He was readin' the paper. He throwed back his head and was dead. Jes' scared to death. They said that was what the matter. In spite of that they come down there and ordered us up to the house. All the niggers scared to death not to go. There lay old Moster Jim stretched dead in his chair. They was backed up to the smoke house door and the horses makin' splinters of the door. It was three planks thick, crossed one another and bradded together wid iron nails. They throwed the stuff out an' say, 'Come an' git it. Take it to your houses.' They took it. It was ours and we didn't want it wasted. Soon as they gone they got mighty busy bringing it back. They built nother door an' put it up. Old Miss Karoline bout somewheres, scared purty near to death. They buried Moster Jim at Water Valley, Mississippi. Miss Karoline broke up and went back to Virginia. My grandma got her feather bed and died on it. Bout two years after that the Yankees sot fire to the house and burned it down. We all had good log houses down close together. They didn't bother us.

"I don't recollect the Ku Klux.

"Our folks never knowed when freedom come on. Some didn't believe they was free at all. They went on farmin' wid what left. What they made they got it. My folks purty nigh all died right there.

"I lives alone. I got two childern in Lulu, Mississippi. I had three childern. My wife come here wid me. She dead.

"I had forty acres land, two mules, wagon. It went for debts. White folks got it. I ain't made nuthin' since.

"I ain't no hand at votin' much. I railly never understood nuthin' bout the run of politics.

"I hates to say it but the young generation won't work if they can get by widout it. They take it, if they can, outen the old folks. I used to didn't ask folks no diffrunce. I worked right long.

"I gets commodities wid this old woman. I come here to build her fires and see after er. I don't git no check."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Wade Dudley, Moro, Ark. Age: 73

"Bill Kidd and Miss Nancy Kidd owned my parents. I was born close to Okalona, Chickasha County, Mississippi, about the last year of the Civil War. Mr. Bill was Miss Nancy's boy. He was a nigger trader. They said the overseers treated em pretty rough. They made em work in nearly a run. When Miss Nancy was living they was rich but after she died he got down pretty low. He married. Course I knowd em. I been through his house. He had a fine house. My mother said she was born in Virginia. She belong to Addison and Duley. Her mother come wid her. They sold them but didn't sell her father so she never seed him no more. She walked or come in a ox wagon part of the way. She was with a _drove_. My father come from North Carolina. His father was free. My father weighed out rations. He was bright color. He worked round the house and then durin' the war he run a refugee wagon. The Yankees got men, mules, meat from Mr. Bill Kidd. My father he was hiding em and hiding the provisions from one place to another to keep the Yankees from starving em all to death. My mother had nine boys. They all belong to Mr. Miller. He died, his widow married Mr. Owen then Mr. Owen sold them to Mrs. Kidd. That was where they was freed. My parents stayed about Mrs. Kidd's till she died. They worked for a third some of the time, I don't know how long. When I was a boy size of that yonder biggest boy my folks was still thinking the government was going to give em something. I was ten years old when they left Mrs. Kidd's. They thought the government was going to give em 40 acres and a mule or some kind of a start. I don't know where they got the notion. My father voted down in Mississippi. I vote. I was working in the car shops in St. Louis in 1923. Me and my wife both voted then. I worked there two years. I come back to Arkansas where I could farm. The land was better here than in Mississippi. I walked part of the way and rode part of the way when I come here from Mississippi. I vote a Republican ticket. Bout all I owns is two little pigs and a few chickens. I did have a spring garden. We work in the field and make a little to eat and wear.

"I find the present times is hard for old folks. Some young folks is doing well I guess. They look like it. I made application twice for help but I ain't never got on. I don't know what to think bout the young folks. If they can get a living they have a good time. They don't worry bout the future. A little money don't buy nothin' much now. It seem like everything is to buy. Money is hard to get."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Isabella Duke Little Rock, Arkansas (towards Benton) Visiting in Hazen Age: 62

[HW: Father Wore a Bonnet]

"My own dear mother was born at Faithville, Alabama. She belong to Sam Norse. His wife was Mistress Mai Jane. They moved to Little Rock years after my mother had come there. After seberal months they got trace of one another. I seed two of the Norse girls and a boy. Master Norse was a farmer in Alabama. Mother said he had plenty hands in slavery. She was a field hand. She had a tough time during slavery.

"Pa said he had a good time. 'Bout all he ever done was put on old mistress' shoes and pull her chair about for her to sit in. He built and chunked up the fires. Old mistress raised him and he had to wear a bonnet. He was real light. He said the worse whoopings he ever got was when he would be out riding stick horses with his bonnet on. The hands on the place would catch him and whoop him and say, 'Old mis' thinks he's white sure as de worl'.' The hands on the place sent him to the big house squalling many a time.

"After he got grown he could be took for a white man easy. He was part French. He talked Frenchy and acted Frenchy. Every one who knowd him in Little Rock called him Pa Frazier and called my mother Ma Frazier, but she was dark. Pa said he et out his mistress' plate more times than he didn't. She raised him about like her own boy.

"Mother had a hard time. Alex Norse bought my mother and a small brother from some people leaving her own dear mother when she was fifteen years old. Her mother kept the baby and the little boy took sick and died. But there had been an older boy sold to some folks near Norse's place before she was sold. The brother that was two years old died. There were other older children sold. My mother never saw her mother after she was sold. She heard from her mother in 1910. She was then one hundred and one years old and could thread her needles to piece quilts. Her baby boy six months old when mother was sold come to visit us. Mother wanted to go back to see her but never was able to get the money ready. Mother had good sight when she died in 1920. She was eighty-seven years old and didn't have to wear glasses to see. Mother's father was on another place. He was said to be part or all Indian.

"Mother said once a cloth peddler come through the country. Her older brother John lived on a place close to the Norse place. John told the peddler that ma took the piece of goods he missed. But John was the one got the goods mind out. The peddler reported it to Master Norse. He give my mother a terrible beating. After that it come out on John. He had stole the piece of cloth. John then took sick, lay sick a long time. Master Norse wouldn't let her go nigh John. She knowd when he died and the day he was to be buried. Master Norse wouldn't let her go nigh there, not even look like she wanted to cry.

"Mother married before freedom, jumped the broom she said. Then after freedom she married my father. My parents named Clara and George Frazier. She had twelve children. Pa was a cripple man. He was a soldier. He said he never was shot and never shot no one. He was on a horse and going this way (reeling from side to side dodging the shooting) all time. A horse throwed him and hurt his hip in the army. After that he limped. He drew a pension. I limps but I'm better as I got grown. I'm marked after him. One of my children I named after him what died was cripple like him. My little George died when he was ten. He was marked at birth after his grandpa. I had ten, jus' got five living children.

"My husband's father's father was in the Civil War. He didn't want to go out on battle-field, so in the camps he cut his eyeball with his fingernail so he could get to go to the horsepital. His eye went out. He hurt it too near the sight. He said he was sorry the rest of his life he done that. He got a pension too. He was blind and always was sorry for his disobedience. He said he was scared so bad he 'bout leave die then as go into the battlefield.

"In some ways times is better. People are no better. Children jus' growing up wild. Their education is of the head and not their heart and hands.

"I was raised around Little Rock is about right. I gets a pension. I'm sixty-two years old but I was down sick with nerve trouble several years. I'm better now. I've been gradually coming on up for over a year now.

"Mr. Ernest Harper of Little Rock takes out truckloads of black folks to work on his place in the country every day. They can get work that way if they can work."

Interviewer: Bernice Bowden Person interviewed: "Wash" Dukes 2217 E. Barraque Pine Bluff, Ark. Age: 83

"Yes'm, Wash Dukes is my name. My mother liked Washington so well, she named me General Washington Dukes, but I said my name was Wash Dukes. I'm the oldest one and I'm still here. Me? I was born in the state of Georgia, Howson County. Perry, Georgia was my closest place. I was born and raised on the Riggins place. I was born in 1855, you understand. The first day of March is my birthday. We had it on the Bible, four boys and four girls, and I was the oldest. House caught fire and burned up the Bible, but I always say I'm as old as a hoss.

"I can't see as good as I used to--gettin' too old, I reckon.

"Old master and mistis was good to us.

"My mother plowed just like a man. Had a little black mule named Mollie and wore these big old leggins come up to her knee.

"Old master was a long tall man with black hair.

"You know I was here cause I remember when Lincoln was elected president. He run against George Washington.

"I seen the Yankees but I never talked to em. I was scared of em. Had them muskets with a spear on the end. They give my uncle a hoss. When it thundered and lightninged that old hoss started to dance--thought twas a battle. And when he come to a fence, just jump right over with me on him. I say, 'Where you get that hoss?' and uncle say, 'Yankees give him to me.'

"I know one time they was a fellow come by there walkin'. I guess they shot his hoss. He had plenty money. I tried to get him to give me some but he wouldn't give me a bit.

"At Oglethorpe they had a place where they kep the prisoners. They was a little stream run through it and the Rebels pizened it and killed a lot of em.

"I was so crazy when I was young. I know one time mama sent me to town to get a dress pattern--ten yards. She say, 'Now, Wash, when you go across that bottom, you'll hear somethin' sounds like somebody dyin', but you just go on, it won't hurt you.' But I say, 'I won't hear it.' I went through there so fast and come back, mama say, 'You done been to town already?' I said, 'Yes, here's your dress pattern.' I went through there ninety to nothin'. I went so fast my heart hurt me.

"In slave times I remember if you wanted to go to another plantation you had to have a pass. Paddyrollers nearly got me one night. I was on a hoss. They was shootin' at me. I know the hoss was just stretched out and I was layin' right down on his neck.

"I stayed in Georgia till '74. I heared em say the cotton grow so big here in Arkansas you could sit on a limb and eat dinner. I know when I got here they was havin' that Brooks-Baxter war in Little Rock. I say, 'Press me into the war.' Man say, 'I ain't goin' press no boys.' I say, 'Give me a gun, I can kill em.' I wanted to fight.

"I tell you where I voted--colored folks don't vote now--it was when I was on the Davis place. I voted once or twice since I been up here. I called myself votin' Republican. I member since I been up here you know they had a colored man in the courthouse. When they had a grand jury they had em mixed, some colored and some white. I say now they ain't got no privilege. If they don't want em to vote ought not make em pay taxes.

"Up north they all sits together in the deppo but here in the south they got a 'tition between em.

"When I first went to farmin' I rented the land and the cotton was all mine, but now you work on the shares and don't have nothin'.

"If I keep a livin', I'm goin' away from here. I'm goin' up north. I won't go fore it gets warm though. I seen the snow knee deep in Cleveland, Ohio.

"I was workin' up north once. I had a pretty good job in Detroit doin' piece work, and doin' well, but I come back here cause my wife's mother was too old to move. If I had stayed I might have done well.

"I own this property but I'm bout to lose it on account o' taxes.

"I got grown boys and they ain't no more help to me than the spit out o' my mouth. None of em has ever give me a dime in their life. This younger generation is goin' to nothin'. They got a good education. I got a boy can write six different kinds a hands. Write enough to get in the pen. I got him pardoned and he's in Philadelphia now. Never sends me a dime.

"I never went to any school but night school a little. I was the oldest and it kep me knockin' around to help take care of the little ones.

"I preach sometimes. I'm not ordained--I'm a floor preacher, just stands in front of the altar."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Lizzie Dunn, Clarendon, Arkansas Age: 88

"I was born close to Hernando, Mississippi. My parents was Cassie Gillahm and Ely Gillahm. My master was John Gillahm. I fell to John Gillahm and Tim bought me from him so I could be with my mother. I was a young baby. Bill Gillahm was our old master. He might had a big farm but I was raised on a small farm. White folks raised me. They put me to sewing young. I sewed with my fingers. I could sew mighty nice. My mistress had a machine she screwed on a table.

"All the Gillahms went to Louisiana in war time and left the women with youngest white master. They was trying to keep their slaves from scattering. They were so sure that the War would be lost.

"The Yankees camped close to us but didn't bother my white folks to hurt them. They et them out time and ag'in. I seen the Yankees every day. I seen the cannons and cavalry a mile long. The sound was like eternity had turned loose. Everything shook like earthquakes day and night. The light was bright and red and smoke terrible.

"Mother cooked and we et from our master's table.

"We was all scared when the War was on and glad it was over. Mama died at the close. Me and my sister sharecropped and made seven bales of cotton in one year.

"When freedom come on, our master and mistress told us. We all cried. Miss Mollie was next to our own mother. She raised us. We kept on their place.

"I cooked for Joe Campbell at Forrest City. He had one boy I help to raise. They think well of me."

Interviewer's Comment

Very light mulatto. Bed fast and had two rolls and a cup of coffee. Had been alone all day except when Home Aid girls bathed and cleaned her bed. She is paralyzed. She said she was hungry.

Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden Person interviewed: Nellie Dunne 3900 W. Sixth Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas Age: 78

"Yes ma'am, I was slavery born but free raised. I was half as big as I is now. (She is not much over four feet tall--ed.) Born in Silver Creek, Mississippi. Yes ma'am. They give ever'body on the place their ages but mama said it wasn't no 'count and tore it up, so I don't know what year I was born.

"Cy Magby--mama was under his control. He would carry us over to the white folks' house every morning to see Miss Becky. When old master come after us, he'd say, 'What you gwine say?' and we'd say, 'One-two-three.' Then we'd go over to old Mis' and courtesy and say, 'Good morning, Miss Becky; good morning, Mars Albert; good morning, Mars Wardly.' They was just little old kids but we had to call 'em Mars.

"What I know I'm gwine tell you, but you ain't gwine ketch me in no tale.

"I 'member they was gwine put us to carryin' water for the hands next year, and that year we got free. My mother shouted, 'Now I ain't lyin' 'bout dat.' I sure 'member when they sot the people free. They was just ready to blow the folks out to the field. I 'member old Mose would blow the bugle and he could _blow_ that bugle. If you wasn't in, you better get in. Yes ma'am! The day freedom come, I know Mose was just ready to blow the bugle when the Yankees begun to beat the drum down the road. They knowed it was all over then. That ain't no joke.

"I was a full grown woman then I come to Arkansas; I wasn't no baby.

"I went to school one month in my life. That was in Mississippi.

"My Joe" (her husband) "just lack one year bein' a graduate. He went up here to that Branch Normal. That boy had good learnin'. He could a learnt me but he was too high tempered. If I missed a word he would be so crabb'y. So one night I throwed the book across the room and said, 'You don't need try to learn me no more.'"

Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor Person interviewed: William L. Dunwoody 2116 W. 24th Street, Little Rock, Arkansas Age: About 98

[HW: Remembers Jeff Davis]

"I was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in the year 1840.

"My father was killed in the Civil War when they taken South Carolina. His name was Charles Dunwoody. My mother's name was Mary Dunwoody. My father was a free man and my mother was a slave. When he courted and married her he took the name of Dunwoody.

Houses

"Ain't you seen a house built in the country when they were clearing up and wanted to put up somethin' for the men to live in while they were working? They'd cut down a tree. Then they'd line it--fasten a piece of twine to each end and whiten it and pull it up and let it fly down and mark the log. Then they'd score it with axes. Then the hewers would come along and hew the log. Sometimes they could hew it so straight you couldn't put a line on it and find any difference. Where they didn't take time with the logs, it would be where they were just putting up a little shack for the men to sleep in.

"Just like you box timber in the sawmill, the men would straighten out a log.

"To make the log house, you would saw your blocks, set em up, then you put the sills on the blocks, then you put the sleepers. When you get them in, lay the planks to walk on. Then they put on the first log. You notch it. To make the roof, you would keep on cutting the logs in half first one way and then the other until you got the blocks small enough for shingles. Then you would saw the shingles off. They had plenty of time.

Food

"The slaves ate just what the master ate. They ate the same on my master's place. All people didn't farm alike. Some just raised cotton and corn. Some raised peas, oats, rye, and a lot of different things. My old master raised corn, potatoes--Irish and sweet--, goober peas (peanuts), rye, and wheat, and I can't remember what else. That's in the eating line. He had hogs, goats, sheep, cows, chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks. That is all I can remember in the eating line. My old master's slaves et anything he raised.

"He would send three or four wagons down to the mill at a time. One of them would carry sacks; all the rest would carry wheat. You know flour seconds, shorts and brand come from the wheat. You get all that from the wheat. Buckwheat flour comes from a large grained wheat. The wagons came back loaded with flour, seconds, shorts and brand. The old man had six wheat barns to keep the wheat in.

"All the slaves ate together. They had a cook special for them. This cook would cook in a long house more than thirty feet long. Two or three women would work there and a man, just like the cooks would in a hotel now. All the working hands ate there and got whatever the cook gave them. It was one thing one time and another another. The cook gave the hands anything that was raised on the place. There was one woman in there cooking that was called 'Mammy' and she seed to all the chilen.

Feeding the Children

"After the old folks among the slaves had had their breakfast, the cook would blow a horn. That would be about nine o'clock or eight. All the children that were big enough would come to the cook shack. Some of them would bring small children that had been weaned but couldn't look after themselves. The cook would serve them whatever the old folks had for breakfast. They ate out of the same kind of dishes as the old folks.

"Between ten and eleven o'clock, the cook would blow the horn again and the children would come in from play. There would be a large bowl and a large spoon for each group of larger children. There would be enough children in each group to get around the bowl comfortably. One would take a spoon of what was in the bowl and then pass the spoon to his neighbor. His neighbor would take a spoonful and then pass the spoon on, and so on until everyone would have a spoonful. Then they would begin again, and so on until the bowl was empty. If they did not have enough then, the cook would put some more in the bowl. Most of the time, bread and milk was in the bowl; sometimes mush and milk.

"There was a small spoon and a small bowl for the smaller children in the group that the big children would use for them and pass around just like they passed around the big spoon.

"About two or three o'clock, the cook would blow the horn again. Time the children all got in there and et, it would be four or five o'clock. The old mammy would cut up greens real fine and cut up meat into little pieces and boil it with corn-meal dumplings. They'd call it pepper pot. Then she'd put some of the pepper pot into the bowls and we'd eat it. And it was good.

"After the large children had et, they would go back to see after the babies. If they were awake, the large children would put on their clothes and clean them up. Then where there was a woman who had two or three small children and didn't have one large enough to do this, they'd give her a large one from some other family to look after her children. If she had any relatives, they would use their children for her. If she didn't then they would use anybody's children.

"About eleven o'clock all the women who had little children that had not been weaned would come in to see after them and let them suck. When a woman had nursing children, she would nurse them before she went to work, again at around eleven o'clock and again when she came from work in the evening. She would come in long before sundown. In between times, the old mammy and the other children would look after them.

War Memories

"I saw Jeff Davis once. He was one-eyed. He had a glass eye. My old mistiss had three girls. They got into the buggy and went to see Jeff Davis when he come through Auburn, Alabama. We were living in Auburn then. I drove them. Jeff Davis came through first, and then the Confederate army, and then the Yankees. They didn't come on the same day but some days apart.

"The way I happened to see the Yanks was like this. I went to carry some clothes to my young master. He was a doctor, and was out where they were drilling the men. I laid down on the carpet in his tent and I heard music playing 'In Dixie Land I'll take my stand and live and die in Dixie.' I got up and come out and looked up ever which way but I couldn't see nothing. I went back again and laid down again in the tent, and I heard it again. I run out and looked all up and around again, and I still couldn't see nothin'. That time I looked and saw my young master talking to another officer--I can't remember his name. My young master said, 'What you looking for?'

"I said, 'I'm looking for them angels I hear playing. Don't you hear em playing Dixie?' The other officer said, 'Celas, you ought to whip that nigger.' I went back into the tent. My young master said, 'Whip him for what?' And he said, 'For telling that lie.' My young master said to him like this, 'He don't tell lies. He heard something somewhere.'

"Then they got through talking and he come on in and I seed him and beckoned to him. He came to me and I said, 'Lie down there.' He laid down and I laid down with him, and he heard it. Then he said, 'Look out there and tell him to come in.'

"I called the other officer and he come in. The doctor (that was my young master) said, 'Lie down there.' When he laid down by my young master, he heard it too. Then the doctor said to him, 'You said William was telling a damn lie.' He said, 'I beg your pardon, doctor.'

"My young master got up and said, 'Where is my spy glasses? Le'me have a look.' He went out and there was a mountain called the Blue Ridge Mountain. He looked but he didn't see nothin'. I went out and looked too. I said, 'Look down the line beside those two big trees,' and I handed the glasses back to him. He looked and then he hollered, 'My God, look yonder' and handed the spy glasses to the other officer. He looked too. Then the doctor said, 'What are we going to do?' He said, 'I am goin' to put pickets way out.' He told me to get to my mule. I got. He put one of his spurs on my foot and told me to go home and tell 'ma' the Yanks were coming. You know what 'ma' he was talking about? That was his wife's mother. We all called her 'mother.'

"I carried the note. When I got to Mrs. Dobbins' house, I yelled, 'The Yanks are coming--Yankees, Yankees, Yankees!' She had two boys. They runned out and said, 'What did you say?'

"I said, 'Yankees, Yankees!'

"They said, 'Hell, what could he see?'

"I come on then and got against Miss Yancy's. She had a son, a man named Henry Yancy. He had a sore leg. He asked me what I said. I told him that the Yanks were coming. He called for Henry, a boy that stayed with him, and had him saddle his horse. Then he got on it and rode up town. When he got up there, he was questioned bout how did he know it. Did he see them. He said he didn't see them, that Celas Neal saw them and the doctor's mother's boy brought the message. Then he taken off.

"Jeff Davis went on. The Confederates went on. They all went on. Then the Yanks passed through.

"The first fight they had there, they cleaned up the Sixty-Ninth Alabama troops. My young master had been helping drill them. He went on and overtook the others.

Right After the War

"I am not sure just what we did immediately after freedom. I don't know whether it was a year or whether it was a year and a half. I can just go by my mother. After freedom, we came from Auburn, Alabama to Opelika, Alabama, and she went to cooking at a hotel until she got money enough for what she wanted to do. When she got fixed, she moved then to Columbus, Georgia. She rented a place from Ned Burns, a policeman. When that place gave out, she went to washing and ironing. Sterling Love rented a house from the same man. He had four children and they were going to school and they took me too.

Schooling

"I fixed up and went to school with them. I didn't get no learning at all in slavery times.

How Freedom Came

"I don't know whether all the whites did it or not; but I know this--when they quit fighting, I know the white children called we little children and all the grown people who worked around the house and said, 'You all is jus' as free as we is. You ain't got no master and no mistiss,' and I don't know what they told them at the plantation.

Occupation

"Right after the War, my mother worked--washed--for an old white man. He took an interest in me and taught me. I did little things for him. When he died, I took up the teaching which he had been doing.

"At first I taught in Columbus, Georgia. By and by, a white man came along looking for laborers for this part of the country. He said money grew on bushes out here. He cleaned out the place. All the children and all the grown folks followed him. Two of my boys came to me and told me they were coming. We hoboed on freights and walked to Chattanooga, Tennessee. We stayed there awhile. Then a white man came along getting laborers. I never kept the year nor nothin'. He brought us to Lonoke County, and I got work on The Bood Bar Plantation. Squirrels, wild things, cotton and corn, plenty of it. So you see, the man told the truth when he said money grew on bushes.

"I taught and farmed all my life. Farming is the greatest occupation. It supports the teacher, the preacher, the lawyer, the doctor. None of them can live without it.

"I can't do much now since that lady knocked me down with her automobile and made me a cripple. I'd a been all right if so many of them young doctors hadn't experimented on me. Then I can't see good out of one eye. I can't do much now. I don't know why they won't give me a pension."

Interviewer's Comment

William Dunwoody had some of his dates and occurrences mixed up as would be natural for a man ninety-eight years old. But there was one respect in which he was sharper than anyone else interviewed.

At the close of the first day's interview when I arose to go he said to me, "Now you got what you want?" I told him yes and that I would be back for more the next day. Then he said, "Well, if you got what you want, there's one thing I want you to do for me before you go."

"Certainly, Brother Dunwoody," I said, "I'll be glad to do anything you want me to do. Just what can I do for you?"

"Well," he said, "I want you to read me what you been writin' there."

And I read it.

A little grandchild about four years old kept us company while he dictated to me. I furnished pennies for the child's candy and a nickel for the old man's tobacco.

The old man got a kick out of the dictation. After the first day, he became very cautious. He would say, "Now don't write this," and he wouldn't let me take it down the way he said it. Instead, he would make a long statement and then we would work out the gist of it together. He is not highly schooled, and he is not especially prepossessing in appearance; but he is a long way from decrepit--mentally.

He walks with a crutch and has a defect in the sight of one eye. He has good hearing and talks in a pleasant voice.

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Lucius Edwards Age: 72

Interviewer's Comment

I went to see Lucius Edwards, age seventy-two, twice. He has colitis. He wouldn't tell me anything. He said he was born in Shreveport, Louisiana and his father took him away so young he knew no mother; his aunt raised him. The first day he said he remembered all that about his parents' owners. The next day the nurse had him cleaned up and nice meals were sent in and still he wouldn't tell us anything. He told the nurse he had farmed and worked on the railroad all his life. He was up but wouldn't tell us anything. He told me, "I don't think I ever voted." We decided he might be afraid he'd twist his tales and we'd catch him some way.

Interviewer: Mary D. Hudgins Person Interviewed: John Elliott Age: 80 Home: South Border (property of brother's estate)

As told by: John Elliott

"No, ma'am. I ain't got no folks. They've all died out. My son, he may be alive. When I last heard from him, he was in Pine Bluff. But I wrote down lots of times and nobody can't find him. Brother said, that was before he died, that I could stay on in the place as long as I lived. His wife come to see me some years back and she said it was that way.

The comodity gives me milk, and a little beside. I'm expectin' to hear if I get the pension, Tuesday. No ma'am, I ain't worked in three years. Yes, ma'am, I was a slave. I was about 8 years old when they mustered 'em out the last time.

My daddy went along to take care of his young master. He died, and my daddy brought his horse and all his belongings home.

You see it was this way. My mother was a run-away slave. She was from, what's that big state off there--Virginia--yes, ma'am, that's it. There was a pretty good flock of them. They came into North Carolina--Wayne County was where John Elliott found them. They was in a pretty bad way. They didn't have no place to go and they didn't have nothing to eat. They didn't have nobody to own 'em. They didn't know what to do. My mother was about 13.

By some means or other they met up with a man named John Elliott. He was a teacher. He struck a bargain with them. He pitched in and he bought 200 acres of land. He built a big house for Miss Polly and Bunk and Margaret. Miss Polly was his sister. And he built cabins for the black folks.

And he says 'You stay here, and you take care of Miss Polly and the children. Now mind, you raise lots to eat. You take care of the place too. And if anybody bothers you you tell Miss Polly.' My Uncle Mose, he was the oldest. He was a blacksmith. Jacob was the carpenter. 'Now look here, Mose,' says Mister John, 'you raise plenty of hogs. Mind you give all the folks plenty of meat. Then you take the rest to Miss Polly and let her lock it in the smokehouse.' Miss Polly carried the key, but Mose was head man and had dominion over the smokehouse.

They didn't get money to any extreme. But whatever they wanted, Miss Polly would go along with them and they would buy it. They went to Goldsboro. That was the biggest town near us. The patrollers never bothered any of us. Once or twice they tried it. But Miss Polly wrote to Mr. John. He'd write it all down like it ought to be. Then they didn't bother us any more.

There was no speculation wid 'em like there was with other negro people. They never had to go to the hiring ground. Mr. John built a church for my mother and the other women who was running mates with her. And he built a school for the children. Some other colored children tried to come to the school too. They was welcome. But sometimes the white folks would tear up the books of the colored children from outside that tried to come.

Our folks stayed on and on. Mr. John was off teaching school most of the time. We stayed on and on. Pretty soon there was about 150-200, of us. Some of them was carpenters and some of them was this and some was that. Mr. John even put in a mill. A groundhog saw mill, it was. Some white men put it in. But it was the colored folks who run it. They all stayed right on on the farm. There wasn't any white folks about at all, except Miss Polly and Bunk and Margaret.

No, ma'am, after the war it didn't make much difference. We all stayed on. We worked the place. And when we got a chance, Mr. John let us hire out and keep the money. And if the folks wouldn't pay us, Mr. John would write the Federal and the Federal would see that we got our money for what we had worked. Mr. John was a mighty good man to us.

No ma'am. Nobody got discontented for a long time. Then some men come in and messed them up. Told us that we could make more money other places. And it was true too--if they had let us get the money. By that time Mr. John, had died. Bunk had died too, Miss Margaret had grown up and married. Her husband was managing the farm. He was good, but he wasn't like Mr. John. So lots of us moved away.

But about not making money. Take me. I raised 14-16 bales of cotton. The man who owned the land, I worked on halvers, sold it on the Liverpool market. But he wouldn't pay me but about 1/3 of what he collected on my half. And I says to him, 'You gets full price for your half, why can't I get full price for mine?' And he says, 'It's against the rules.' And I says, 'It ain't fair! And he says, 'It's the rules.' So after about six years I quit farming. You can't make no money that way. Yes--you make it, but you can't get it.

I went to town at Pine Bluff. There I got to mixing concrete. I made pretty good at it, too. I stayed on for some years. Then I came to Hot Springs. My brother was along with me. We both worked and after work we built a house. It took us four years. But it was a good house. It has six rooms in it. It makes a good home. My brother had the deed. But his widow says I can stay on. The folks what lives in the rest of the house are good to me.

When I got to Hot Springs I worked mixing concrete. There was lots of sidewalks being made along about that time. Then I scatter dirt all around where the court house is now. Then I worked at both of the very biggest hotels. I washed. I washed cream pitchers--the little ones with corners that were hard to clean.

No, I ain't worked in three years. It hard to try to get along. Some states, they pays good pensions. I can't be here long--don't look like I can be here long. Seems as if they could take care of me for the few days I'm going to be on this earth. Seems like they could.

Interviewer: Mrs. Carol Graham Person interviewed: Millie Evans Age:

Yo' say yo' is in'rested in the lives of the slaves? Well, Miss, I is one of 'em. Was born in 1849 but I don' know jus' when. My birthday comes in fodder pullin' time cause my ma said she was pullin up till bout a hour 'fore I was born. Was born in North Carolina and was a young lady at the time of surrender.

I don' 'member ol' master's name; all I 'member is that we call 'em ol' master an ol' mistress. They had bout a hundred niggers and they was rich. Master always tended the men and mistress tended to us.

Ev'y mornin' bout fo' 'clock ol' master would ring de bell for us to git up by an yo could hear dat bell ringin all over de plantation. I can hear hit now. Hit would go ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling and I can see 'em now stirrin in Carolina. I git so lonesome when I thinks bout times we used to have. Twas better livin back yonder than now.

I stayed with my ma every night but my mistress raised me. My ma had to work hard so ev'y time ol' mistress thought we little black chilluns was hungry 'tween meals she would call us up to the house to eat. Sometime she would give us johnny cake an plenty of buttermilk to drink wid it. They had a long trough fo' us dat day would keep so clean. They would fill dis trough wid buttermilk and all us chillun would git roun' th' trough an drink wid our mouths an hol' our johnny cake wid our han's. I can jus' see myself drinkin' now. Hit was so good. There was so many black fo'ks to cook fuh that the cookin was done outdoors. Greens was cooked in a big black washpot jus' like yo' boils clothes in now. An' sometime they would crumble bread in the potlicker an give us spoons an we would stan' roun' the pot an' eat. When we et our regular meals the table was set under a chinaberry tree wid a oil cloth table cloth on when dey called us to th' table they would ring the bell. But we didn' eat out'n plates. We et out of gourds an had ho'made wood spoons. An' we had plenty t'eat. Whooo-eee! Jus' plenty t'eat. Ol' master's folks raised plenty o' meat an dey raise dey sugar, rice, peas, chickens, eggs, cows an' jus' ev'ything good t'eat.

Ev'y ev'nin' at three 'clock ol' mistress would call all us litsy bitsy chillun in an we would lay down on pallets an have to go to sleep. I can hear her now singin' to us piccaninnies:

"Hush-a-bye, bye-yo'-bye, mammy's piccaninnies Way beneath the silver shining moon Hush-a-bye, bye-yo'-bye, mammy's piccaninnies Daddy's little Carolina coons Now go to sleep yo' little piccaninnies."

When I got big 'nough I nursed my mistress's baby. When de baby go to sleep in de evenin' I woul' put hit in de cradle an' lay down by de cradle an go to sleep. I played a heap when I was little. We played Susannah Gal, jump rope, callin' cows, runnin', jumpin', skippin', an jus' ev'ythin' we could think of. When I got big 'nough to cook, I cooked den.

The kitchen of the big house was built way off f'om the house and we cooked on a great big ol' fi' place. We had swing pots an would swing 'em over the fire an cook an had a big ol' skillet wi' legs on hit. We call hit a ubben an cooked bread an cakes in it.

We had the bes' mistress an master in the worl' and they was Christian fo'ks an they taught us to be Christianlike too. Ev'y Sunday mornin' ol' master would have all us niggers to the house while he would sing an pray an read de Bible to us all. Ol' master taught us not to be bad; he taught us to be good; he tol' us to never steal nor to tell false tales an not to do anythin' that was bad. He said: Yo' will reap what yo' sow, that you sow it single an' reap double. I learnt that when I was a little chile an I ain't fo'got it yet. When I got grown I went de Baptist way. God called my pa to preach an ol' master let him preach in de kitchen an in the back yard under th' trees. On preachin' day ol' master took his whole family an all th' slaves to church wid him.

We had log school houses in them days an fo'ks learnt more than they does in the bricks t'day.

Down in the quarters ev'y black family had a one or two room log cabin. We didn' have no floors in them cabins. Nice dirt floors was de style then an we used sage brooms. Took a string an tied the sage together an had a nice broom out'n that. We would gather broom sage fo' our winter brooms jus' like we gathered our other winter stuff. We kep' our dirt floors swep' as clean an' white. An our bed was big an tall an had little beds to push under there. They was all little er nough to go under de other an in th' daytime we would push 'em all under the big one an make heaps of room. Our beds was stuffed wid hay an straw an shucks an b'lieve me chile they sho' slep' good.

When the boys would start to the quarters from th' fiel' they would get a turn of lider knots. I specks yo' knows 'em as pine knots. That was what we use' fo' light. When our fire went out we had no fire. Didn' know nothin' bout no matches. To start a fire we would take a skillet lid an a piece of cotton an a flint rock. Lay de cotton on th' skillet lid an' take a piece of iron an beat the flint rock till the fire would come. Sometime we would beat fo' thirty minutes before the fire would come an start the cotton then we woul' light our pine.

Up at th' big house we didn' use lider knots but used tallow candles for lights. We made the candles f'om tallow that we took f'om cows. We had moulds and would put string in there an leave the en' stickin' out to light an melt the tallow an pour it down aroun' th' string in the mould.

We use to play at night by moonlight and I can recollec' singin wid the fiddle. Oh, Lord, dat fiddle could almos' talk an I can hear it ringin now. Sometime we would dance in the moonlight too.

Ol' master raised lots of cotton and the women fo'ks carded an spun an wove cloth, then they dyed hit an made clothes. An we knit all the stockin's we wo'. They made their dye too, f'om diffe'nt kin's of bark an leaves an things. Dey would take the bark an boil it an strain it up an let it stan' a day then wet the 'terial in col' water an shake hit out an drop in the boilin' dye an let it set bout twenty minutes then take it out an hang it up an let it dry right out of that dye. Then rinse it in col' water an let it dry then it woul' be ready to make.

I'll tell yo' how to dye. A little beech bark dyes slate color set with copperas. Hickory bark and bay leaves dye yellow set with chamber lye; bamboo dyes turkey red, set color wid copperas. Pine straw dyes purple, set color with chamber lye. To dye cloth brown we would take de cloth an put it in the water where leather had been tanned an let it soak then set the color with apple vinegar. An we dyed blue wid indigo an set the color wid alum.

We wo' draws made out of termestic that come down longer than our dresses an we wo' seven petticoats in the winter wid sleeves in dem petticoats in the winter an the boys wo' big ol' long shirts. They didn' know nothin bout no britches till they was great big, jus' wen' roun' in dey shirttails. An we all wo' shoes cause my pa made shoes.

Master taught pa to make shoes an the way he done, they killed a cow an took the hide an tanned it. The way they tanned it was to take red oak bark and put in vats made somethin' like troughs that held water. Firs' he would put in a layer of leather an a layer of oak ashes an a layer of leather an a layer of oak ashes till he got it all in an cover with water. After that he let it soak till the hair come off the hide. Then he would take the hide out an it was ready for tannin'. Then the hide was put to soak in with the red oak bark. It stayed in the water till the hide turned tan then pa took the hide out of the red oak dye an it was a purty tan. It didn' have to soak long. Then he would get his pattern an cut an make tan shoes out'n the tanned hides. We called 'em brogans.

They planted indigo an it growed jus' like wheat. When it got ripe they gathered it an we would put it in a barrel an let it soak bout a week then we woul' take the indigo stems out an squeeze all the juice out of 'em an put the juice back in the barrel an let it stan' bout nother week, then we jus' stirred an stirred one whole day. We let it set three or four days then drained the water off an left the settlings and the settlings was blueing jus' like we have these days. We cut ours in little blocks an we dyed clothes wid it too.

We made vinegar out of apples. Took over ripe apples an ground 'em up an put 'em in a sack an let drip. Didn' add no water an when it got through drippin we let it sour an strained an let it stan for six months an had some of the bes vinegar ever made.

We had homemade tubs and didn' have no wash boa'ds. We had a block an battlin' stick. We put our clo'es in soak then took 'em out of soak an lay them on the block an take the battling stick an battle the dirt out of 'em. We mos'ly used rattan vines for clotheslines an they made the bes clo'es lines they was.

Ol' master raised big patches of tobaccy an when dey gather it they let it dry an then put it in lasses. After the lasses dripped off then they roll hit up an twisted it an let it dry in the sun 10 or 12 days. It sho' was ready for some and chewin an hit was sweet an stuck together so yo' could chew an spit an 'joy hit.

The way we got our perfume we took rose leaves, cape jasmines an sweet bazil an laid dem wid our clo'es an let 'em stay three or fo' days then we had good smellin' clo'es that would las' too.

When there was distressful news master would ring the bell. When the niggers in the fiel' would hear the bell everyone would lis'en an wonder what the trouble was. You'd see 'em stirrin' too. They would always ring the bell at twelve 'clock. Sometime then they would think it was some thin' serious an they would stan up straight but if they could see they shadow right under 'em they would know it was time for dinner.

The reason so many white folks was rich was they made money an didn' have nothin' to do but save it. They made money an raised ev'ything they used, an jus' didn' have no use fo' money. Didn' have no banks in them days an master buried his money.

The floo's in the big house was so pretty an white. We always kep' them scoured good. We didn' know what it was to use soap. We jus' took oak ashes out of the fi'place and sprinkled them on the floo' and scoured with a corn shuck mop. Then we would sweep the ashes off an rinse two times an let it dry. When it dried it was the cleanes' floo' they was. To make it white, clean sand was sprinkled on the floo' an we let it stay a couple of days then the floo' would be too clean to walk on. The way we dried the floo' was with a sack an a rag. We would get down on our knees an dry it so dry.

I 'member one night one of ol' master's girls was goin' to get married. That was after I was big 'nough to cook an we was sho' doin' some cookin. Some of the niggers on the place jus' natchally would steal so we cook a big cake of co'n-bread an iced it all pretty an put it out to cool an some of 'em stole it. This way old master found out who was doin the stealin cause it was such a joke on 'em they had to tell.

All ol' master's niggers was married by the white preacher but he had a neighbor who would marry his niggers hisself. He would say to the man: "Do yo' want this woman?" and to the girl, "Do yo' want this boy?" Then he would call the ol' mistress to fetch the broom an ol' master would hold one end an ol' mistress the other an tell the boy and girl to jump dis broom and he would say: "Dat's yo' wife." Dey called marryin' like that jumpin the broom.

Now chile I can't 'member everything I done in them days but we didn' have ter worry bout nothin. Ol' mistress was the one to worry. Twasn't then like it is now, no twasn't. We had such a good time an ev'ybody cried when the Yankees cried out: "Free." Tother niggers say dey had a hard time 'fo' dey was free but twas then like tis now. If you had a hard time we don it ourselves.

Ol' master didn' want to part with his niggers an the niggers didn' wan' to part with ol' master so they thought by comin to Arkansas they would have a chance to keep 'em. So they got on their way. We loaded up our wagons an put up our wagon sheet an we had plenty to eat an plenty of horse feed. We traveled bout 15 or 20 miles a day an would stop an camp at night. We would cook enough in the morning to las' all day. The cows was drove t'gether. Some was gentle an some was not an did dey have a time. I mean, dey _had_ a time. While we was on our way ol' master died an three of the slaves died too. We buried the slaves there but we camped while ol' master was carried back to North Carolina. When ol' mistress come back we started on to Arkansas an reached here safe but when we got here we foun' freedom here too. Ol' mistress begged us to stay wid her an we stayed till she died then they took her back to Carolina. There wasn' nobody lef' but Miss Nancy an she soon married an lef' an I los' track of her an Mr. Tom.

El Dorado District FOLKLORE SUBJECTS Name of Interviewer: Pernella Anderson Subjects: Customs related to Slavery Time [HW: Ex Slave Story] Subject: Food--Particular foods typical and characteristic of certain localities and certain people (negroes) [Nov 6 1936] [TR: Additional topic moved from subsequent page.]

This information given by: Millie Evans (Negroes pronounce it Irvins) Place of Residence: By Missouri Pacific Track near MOP Shops Occupation: None Age: 87 [TR: Personal information moved from bottom of interview.]

I wuz a young lady in the time of surrender. I am a slave chile. I am one of them. I had a gran' time in slavery time. I wuz born wid de white foks. I stayed wid mah muthah at night but mah mistress raised me. I nussed mah mutha's gran'chile. I churned and sot de table. When de baby go to sleep in de evenin' I put hit in de cradle. An' I'd lay down by the cradle and go to sleep. Every evenin' I'd go git _lida knots_. I played a lots. I wuz born 1849. We played Susanna Gals, and we just played jump rope. Jes' we gals did. We played calling' cows. Dey'd come to us and we run from um. My [TR: 'I' corrected to 'My'] mistess wuz a millionaire. I went to school a while. I can count only lit bit. One uz de girl made fun uz me. She kotch me nodding and we fit dare in de school house. Old log school house. Dey had two big rooms. Ah went to de ole fokes' church. Young un too. We'd cry if we didn't git ter go ter church wid ma and pa.

Our table was sot under a china berry tree and ooo-eee chile I can see hit now. We et on a loal (oil) table cloth. When dey called us to de table dey would ring a bell. We didn' eat out uz plates. We et outn gourds. We all et outn gourds. When I got big nuff ter cook I cooked den. We had plenty to eat. We raised who-eee plenty meat. We raised our sugar, rice, peas, chikens, eggs, cows. Who-eee chile we had plenty to eat. Our mistess had ovah a hunert (100) niggers. Ole moster nevah did whip none uv us niggers. He tended de men and mistess always tended to us. I wudden (wasn't) quite grown when I wuz married. We cooked out in de yard an' on fireplaces too in dose big ubbens (ovens). We cooked greens in a wash pot jes like you boil clothes, dats de way we cook greens. We cooked ash cakes too an we cooked persimmon braid (bread). An evah thing we had wuz good too. We made our churns in dem days. Made dem outn cypress.

Evahbody cried when dem yankees cried out: "Free." We cried too; we hated hit so bad. We had such a good time. I is gittin so ole I can't member so ever' thin' I done. Now chile ah cain't member evah' thin' I done but in dem days we didn' have ter worry 'bout nothin'. Ole mistress wuz de one ter worry. Twasn't den like hit is now. No Twasn't. Tother niggers say dey had er hard time foe dem Yankee cried "Free" but it waz den jes like hit is now if you had a hard time we done hit ourselves.

[HW: Negro food]

_PERSIMMON PIE_ Make a crust like you would any other pie crust and take your persimmons and wash them. Let them be good and ripe. Get the seed out of them. Don't cook them. Mash them and put cinnamon and spice in and butter. Sugar to taste. Then roll your dough and put in custard pan, and then add the filling, then put a top crust on it, sprinkle a little sugar on top and bake.

_PERSIMMON CORNBREAD_ Sift meal and add your ingredients then your persimmons that have been washed and the seeds taken out and mash them and put in and stir well together. Grease pan well and pour in and bake. Eat with fresh meat.

_PERSIMMON BEER_ Gather your persimmons, wash and put in a keg, cover well with water and add about two cups of meal to it and let sour about three days. That makes a nice drink.

Boil persimmons just as you do prunes now day and they will answer for the same purpose.

_ASH CAKE_ Two cups of meal and one teaspoon of salt and just enough hot water to make it stick together. Roll out in pones and wrap in a corn shuck or collard leaves or paper. Lay on hot ashes and cover with hot ashes and let cook about ten minutes.

_CORNBREAD JOHNNY CAKE_ Two cups of meal, one half cup of flour about a teaspoon of soda, one cup of syrup, one-half teaspoon salt, beat well. Add teaspoon of lard. Pour in greased pan and bake.

[HW: _Water_ or _Milk_ added?]

(Old Mistress wud give us this corn bread johnny cake about four o'clock in de evening and give us plenty of buttermilk to drink wid it. Dey had a long trough. Dey kep' hit so clean fur us. Ev'ry evening about four dey would fill de trough full uv milk and wus abut 100 of us chilluns. We'd all get round de trough and drink wid our mouth and hold our johnny cake in our han's. I can jes see mahself drinkin now. It wus so good.)

_BEEF DUMPLINS_ Take the brough (meaning broth) from boiled beef and season with salt, peper and add you dumplins jus as you would chicken dumplins.

Pick and wash beet tops just as you would turnip greens and cook with meat to season. Season to suit taste. This makes the best vegetable dish.

_POTATO BISCUIT_ Two cups flour. Two teaspoons of baking powder, pinch of soda, teaspoon of salt, tablespoon of lard, two cups of cooked, well mashed sweet potatoes and milk to make a nice dough.

_IRISH POTATO PIE_ Boil potatoes, set off and let cool, then mash well and add one cup sugar, two eggs, butter size of an egg, milk, spice to suit taste, bake in pie crust. Irish potatoes make a better pie than sweet potatoes.

Interviewer: Mary D. Hudgins Person Interviewed: Mose Evans Home: 451 Walnut Aged: 76

Radios from half a dozen houses blared out on the afternoon air. Ben[TR:?] Winslow was popular but ran a poor second to jazz bands in which moaning trombones predominated.

At one or two houses a knock or jangling bell had roused nobody. "They's all off at work," a neighbor usually volunteered. But in this block of comfortable cottages fronting on the paved section of Walnut evidently there were a goodly number of stay-at-homes. A mild prosperity seemed to pervade everything. The Walnut section is in the "old part of town". Some of the houses had evidently been built during the 90s; but they were well kept up and painted.

There was evidence here and there of former dependence on wells for water. One or two had been simply boarded over. One, a front yard affair had been ingeniously converted into a huge flower pot. The well had been filled in, its circular brick walls covered with a thick layer of cement. Into this, while still damp, had been pressed crystals. Even in January the vessel bore evidence of summer blooming.

"_PREPARE TO MEET YOUR GOD_" admonished the electrified box sign attatched to the front porch of one dwelling. Its border was of black wood. The sign itself was of white frosted glass. Letters of the slogan were in scarlet.

Next doer was another religious reminder. It was a modest pasteboard window card and announced Bible Study at 2: P.M. daily.

Three blocks up Walnut the pavement ends. Beyond that sidewalks too, listlessly peter out. A young, but enthusiastically growing ditch is beginning to separate path from street. Houses begin to take on a more dilapidated appearance. They lean uncertainly.

A colored woman stops to stare at the white one, plants herself directly in the stranger's path and demands, "Is you the investigator? No? Well who is you looking for? Oh, Mose, he's at his son's. Good thing I stopped you. Cause you would have gone too far. He's at his son's. His grandson just done had his tonsils out. He's over there."

The interviewer climbed the ladder-like steps leading to "his son's house". No Mose wasn't there. He had just left. Maybe he'd gone home. The de-tonsiled child proved to be a bright eyed, saddle-colored youngster of three, enormously interested in the stranger. He wore whip-cord jodphurs--protruding widely on either side of his plump thighs--and knee high leather riding boots. Plump and smiling, he looked for all the world like a kewpie provided with a kink ey crown and blistered to a rich chocolate by a friendly sun.

The child eyed the interviewer's pencil. Since, she was carrying a "spare" she offered it to him. He smiled and accepted with alacrity. Later when the interviewer had found Mose and brought him back to the house to be questioned, the grandson brought forth his long new pencil and showed it with heartfelt pride.

On up the street went the interviewer. Arrived at 451 she approached the house through a yard strewn, with wood chips and piled with cordwood. Nobody answered her knock. Two blocks back toward town she was stopped by the same woman who had accosted her before. "Did you find him?" "No," replied the interviewer. "Well he's somewhere on the street. He's a'carrying a cane. You just stop any man you see with a cane and ask him if he ain't Mose Evans." The advice was sound/ The first elderly man coming north was carrying a cane. He was Mose Evans.

"So you-all got together?" called the officious neighbor. "Mose, you ought of asked her--when you see her coming up the street if she wasn't looking for you." "Maybe," said Mose, "but then I didn't know, and I don't want to butt into other folks business" "Huh," snorted the woman, "spose I hadn't butted in. Where'd you be. You wouldn't have found her and she wouldn't have found you!" Both Mose and the interviewer wore forced to admit that she was right--but from Mose's disapproving expression he, like the interviewer, was sorry of it.

"No, ma'am. I ain't been here long. Just about two weeks. You want to talk to me. Let's go on up to my son's house. We'll stop there. I's tired. Seems like I get tired awful quick. Had to go down to the store to get some coal." (He was carrying a paper sack of about two gallon capacity. "Coal" was probably charcoal--much favored among wash women for use in a small bucket-furnace for heating "flat-irons".) My wife has to work awful hard to earn enough, to buy enough coal and wood.

Did I say I'd been here two weeks? I meant I has been here two years. I's lived all over. Came here from Woodruff county. Yes, ma'am. I can't work no more. My wife she gets 2-3 days washing a week. Then she gets some bundles to bring home and do. She got sick, same as me and her brothers come on down to bring her up here to look after. They provided for me too. They took good care of us. Then one of 'em got sick himself, and the other he lost out in a money way. So she's a washing.

Can't remember very much about the war. I was just a little thing when it was a'going on. Was hardly any size at all. I does remember standing in the door of my mother's house and watching the soldiers go by. Men dressed in blue they was. Wasn't afraid of them--didn't have sense enough to be, I guess. Looked sort of pretty to me, dressed all in blue that way. And they was riding fine horses. Made a big noise they did. They was a'riding by in a sort of sweeping gallop. I won't never forgot it.

Guess Confederates passed too. I was too small to know about them. They was all soldiers to me. Folks told me they was on their way to Vicksburg. I heard tell that there was lots of fighting down around Vicksburg.

I was born on a place which belonged to a man named Thad Shackleford. Don't remember him very well. They took me away from his place when I was little. But I never did hear my mother say anything against him. Awful fine man, she said, awful fine man. I had lots of half sisters--5 of 'em and 6 half brothers. There was just one full sister.

Farm? Not until I was 14. Just stayed around the house and nursed the children. Nursed lots of children. Took care of them and amused them. Played with them. But for four, five, maybe six years I helped my mother farm. Went out into the fields and worked.

Then I went to myself. Yes, ma'am, I share cropped. Share cropped up until about 1908. By that time I had got together a pretty good lot and bought stock and tools. Then I rented--rented thirds and fourths. I liked that way lots best. It's best if a body can get himself stocked up.

But let me tell you, ma'am. It's a lot easier to get behind than it is to catch up. Falling behind is easy. Catching up ain't so simple. I sort of lost my health and then I had to sell my stock. After that it was share-crop again. I share cropped right up until 1935. That's when we come here.

Yes, ma'am we moved around a lot. Longest what I worked for any man was 12 years. He was J.W. Hill, the best man I ever did see. Once I rented from a colored man, but he died. Was with him 6 years before another man came into possession. Rented from Cockerill 4 years and Doss 2 years, and Doyle 3 years. But now I's like an old shoe. I's worn out. Been a good, faithful servant, but I's wore out."

Interviewer: S.S. Taylor Person interviewed: Rachel Fairley 1600 Brown St. Little Rock, Ark. Age: 75 Occupation: General Housework [Jan 23 1938]

[HW: Mother Stole to Get Food]

"My mother said she had a hard time getting through. Had to steal half the time; had to put her head under the pot and pray for freedom. It was a large pot which she used to cook in on the yard. She would set it aside when she got through and put it down and put her head under it to pray.

"My father, when nine years old, was put on the speculator's block and sold at Charlottesville, North Carolina. My mother was sold on the same day. They sold her to a man named Paul Barringer, and refugeed her to a place near Sardis, Mississippi, to the cotton country. Before he was sold, my father belonged to the Greers in Charlottesville. I don't know who owned my mother. I never did hear her say how old she was when she was sold. They was auctioned off just like you would sell goods. One would holler one price and another would holler another, and the highest bid would get the slave.

"Mother did not go clear to Sardis but to a plantation ten miles from Sardis. This was before freedom. We stayed there till two years after freedom.

"I remember when my mother moved. I had never seen a wagon before. I was so uplifted, I had to walk a while and ride a while. We'd never seen a wagon nor a train neither. McKeever was the place where she moved from when she moved to Sardis.

"The first year she got free, she started sharecropping on the place. The next year she moved. That was the year she moved to Sardis itself. There she made sharecrops. That was the third year after freedom. That is what my father and mother called it, sharecropping. I don't know what their share was. But I guess it was half to them and half to him.

"I do general housework. I been doing that for eleven years. I never have any trouble. Whenever I want to I get off.

"The slaves used to live in one room log huts. They cooked out in the yard. I have seen them huts many a time. They had to cook out in the yard in the summertime. If they didn't, they'd burn up.

"My mother seen her master take off a big pot of money to bury. He didn't know he'd been seen. She didn't know where he went, but she seen the direction he took. Her master was Paul Barringer. That was on McKeever Creek near Sardis. It was near the end of the war. I never heard my mother say what became of the money, but I guess he got it back after everything was over.

"They had to work all the time. When they went to church on Sunday, they would tell them not to steal their master's things. How could they help but steal when they didn't have nothin'? You didn't eat if you didn't steal.

"My mother never would have been sold but the first bunch of slaves Barringer bought ran away from him and went back to the places where they come from. Lots of the old people wouldn't stay anywheres only at their homes. They would go back if they were sold away. It took a long time because they walked. When my mother and father were sold they had to walk. It took them six weeks,--from Charlottesville, North Carolina to Sardis, Mississippi.

"In Sardis my father was made the coachman, and mother was sent to the field. Master was mean and hard. Whipped them lots. Mother had to pick cotton all day every day and Sunday. When I first seen my father to remember him, he had on a big old coat which was given to him for special days. We called it a ham-beater. It had pieces that would make it set on you like a basque. He wore a high beaver hat too. That was his uniform. Whenever he drove, he had to dress up in it.

"My mother tickled me. She said she went out one day and kill a billygoat, but when she went to get it it was walking around just like the rest of them. My mother couldn't eat hogshead after freedom because they dried them and give them to them in slave time. You had to eat what you could git then.

"My mother said you jumped over a broomstick when you married.

"My father and mother were not exactly sold to Mississippi. My father was but my mother wasn't. When Paul Barringer lost all of his niggers, what he first had, his sister give him my mother and a whole lot more of them. I don't know how many he had, but he had a great many. My father went alone, but all my mother's people were taken--four sisters, and three brothers. They were all grown when I first seen them. I never seen my mother's father at all.

"There was a world of yellow people then. My mother said her sister had two yellow children; they were her master's. I know of plenty of light people who were living at that time.

"My mother had two light children that belonged to her sister. They were taken from her after freedom, and were made to cook and work for their sister and brother (white). All the orphans were taken and given back to the people what owned them when freedom came. My mother's sister was refugeed back to Charlottesville, North Carolina before the end of the war so that she wouldn't get free. After the war they were set free out there and never came back. The children were with my mother and they had to stay with their master until they were twenty years old. Then they would be free. They wouldn't give them any schooling at all. They were as white as the white children nearly but their mother was a colored woman. That made the difference.

"My mother said that the Ku Klux used to come through ridin' horses. I don't remember her saying what they wore.

"When the Yanks came through, they took everything. Made the niggers all leave. My mother said they just came in droves, riding horses, killing everything, even the babies.

"I was born in Sardis, Mississippi, Panolun (?) County, April 10, 1863."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Pauline Fakes, Brinkley, Arkansas Age: 74

"My mama come from Virginia. Her owner was Moses Crawford. He had a bachelor son Prior Crawford. My papa's owner was Step Crawford. They was in Arkansas during the Civil War I know because I was born close to Cotton Plant. Papa's folks had lived in Tennessee but grandma and grandpa was raised in Indian Nation; they called it Alabama afterwards. She was a full blooded Creek and he was part Cherokee.

"Mama had twelve sisters and they was all sold. They took them to Texas. She never seen one of them again. Mama had scrofula and her owners let a woman take her North. She cured her. She wanted to keep her but they didn't let her. They kept her till freedom.

"The owners told them they was free. Stayed on a while. We never have got very fur off from where I was born. I had thirteen children of my own. Three living now.

"I know times was mighty hard when I was a child. Biscuits was big rarity as cake is now. I don't have much cake. Little cornbread and meat, molasses and proud to get that. We didn't have much clothes but we had plenty wood. We had wood to keep up the fire in the fireplace all night. They saw the back sticks in the woods and roll em up. In the coldest part of the winter they throw on a back log of green wood and pull the seats, had benches, didn't have chairs, way back in the middle of the room. It be snow and ice all over the ground. I got wood many a day. Yes, I plowed many a day. I done all kinds of field work, cook and wash and iron. Mid-wife is my talent. I been big and strong and work was the least of my worries.

"I can barely recollect seeing soldiers. They must have just got home from the war. The shiny buttons is about all I can recollect.

"I recollect the Ku Klux. They rode at night, some dressed in dark and some white clothes. They come through our house one time. I got under the cover. I was scared nearly to death.

"Near Cotton Plant there was a log cabin (Methodist?) church--Negro church two and one-half miles northeast direction. They had a Negro preacher. When they went to church they whooped and hollowed along the road. White people lived close to the road. The Ku Klux planned to break it up. They went down there and went in during their preaching, broke up and scattered their seats. One was killed. He may have acted 'smarty' or saucy or he may have been the leader."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Mattie Fannen, Forrest City, Arkansas Age: 87

"My mother was named Silla Davis. She had four children. Her owners was Jep Davis and Tempy Davis. She died and he married her niece, Sally Davis. He had fifteen children by his first wife and five more by his second wife. Wasn't that a plenty children doe? Mama was a field hand. She ploughed in slavery right along. My father was named Bob Lee (Lea?). I never knowed much about him. His folks moved and took him off. Mother was sold but not on a stand. She belong to Bill Davis. He was Jep's brother. They said Bill Davis drunk up mother and all her children. He sold Aunt Serina to a man in Elberton, Georgia and all he had left then was grandma. He couldn't sell her. She was too old and Aunt Kizziah and Aunt Martha lived with her. Mother was born in Georgia. When a child was sold it nearly grieved the mothers and brothers and sisters to death. It was bad as deaths in the families. Jep Davis had forty or fifty niggers. He had six boys. They all had to go to war. They was in the Confederate army. Billy Davis was his daddy's young overseer. He had been raised up with some of the nigger boys then come over them. They wouldn't mind his orders. He tried to whoop them. They'd fight him back, choke him, throw him on the ground. Then the old man would whoop them. We all wanted 'em all to come home but Billy. Billy Davis got killed at war and never come home. His sisters was afraid some of the nigger boys raised up with him on the place would kill him and wanted Jep to make him stay at the house. Jep Davis was a good master and he was bad enough.

"I seen mama whooped. They tied some of them to trees and some they just whooped across their backs. It was 'cordin' to what they had done. Some of them would run off to the woods and stay a week or a month. The other niggers would feed them at night to keep them from starving.

"Jep Davis made a will after his first wife died and give out all his young niggers to his first set of children. His young wife cried till he destroyed it. She said, 'You kept the old ones here and me and my children won't have nothing.' I was willed to Miss Lizzie. They was fixing the wagon for me to go in. I wanted to go to Jefferson on the train. I told them so. I wanted to ride on the train. I never did get off. His young wife started crying. Miss Lizzie lived with her brother. They didn't want this young woman to have their father and he did. They kept a fuss up with her and all left. Then he divided the land.

"I nursed for his second wife, Miss Sally. I was five years or little older when I started nursing for his first wife. I nursed for a long time. I don't like children yet on that account. I got so many whoopings on their blame. I'd drap 'em, leave 'em, pinch 'em, quit walking 'em and rocking 'em. I got tired of 'em all the time.

"Me and Zack (white) was raised up together. He was one of the old set of children. The baby in that set. I'd set on the log across a branch and wait till Zack would break open a biscuit and sop it in ham gravy and bring it to me after he eat his breakfast. One morning the sun was so bright; he run down there crying, said his mama was dead. He never brought me no biscuit. He had just got up. I was five years old. I said I was glad. Emily was the cook and she come down there and kicked me off the log and made my nose bleed. I cried and run home. My mother picked me up in her arms, took me in her lap and asked me about it. I told her I was glad 'cause she kept that little cowhide and whooped me with it. They took me to the grave. She wanted to be buried in a pretty grave at the side of the house off a piece. She was buried there first. There was a big crowd. I kept running up towards the grave and they would pull me back by my dress tail. She was buried in a metal coffin. Susan was the oldest girl. She fainted. They took her to a carriage standing close. The whole family was buried there. Took back from places they lived to be buried in that graveyard. That was close to Nuna, Georgia.

"When the old man Jep Davis married again, Miss Sally must have me sleep in her room on a pallet so I could tend to the baby. The older girls would pick me and I would tell them what they talked about after they went to bed.

"When the War come on, the boys and Jep Davis dug a hole in the henhouse, put the guns in a box and buried them. They was there when the War ended. They had some jewelry. I don't know where they kept it. They sent all of the niggers fifteen miles on the river away from the Yankees. Not a one of us ever run off. Not a one ever went to the War or the Yankees. Jep Davis had been to get his mail on his horse. A Yankee come up at the gate walking and took it. He asked for the bridle and saddle but the Yankee laughed in his face. We never seen our horse no more. 'Babe' we called her. She was a pretty horse and so gentle we could ride her bare back.

"Jep Davis was religious. They had preaching at his church, the Baptist church at Nuna, for white folks in the morning and a white preacher preach for the niggers at the same church in the evening. He'd go to prayer meeting on Wednesday night and Thursday night he would come to the boys' house and read the Bible to his own niggers. We would sing and pray. He never cared how much we would sing and pray but he never better ketch 'em dancing. He'd whoop every one of 'em.

"I learned same of the ABC's in playing ball with the white children. We never had a book. I never went to school in my life. The boys not married but up grown lived in a house to their own selves. They got cooked fer up at Jep Davises house till they got a house built for them and give them a wife. Maybe they would see a woman on another plantation and claim her. Then the master had to talk that over.

Freedom

"Jep Davis had been to town. He got a notice to free his niggers. He had the farm bell rung. We all went out up to his house. He said, 'You are free. Go. If you can't get along come back and do like you been.' They left. Went hog wild. I was the last one to go. He said, 'Mattie, come back if you find you can't make it.' I had a hard time for a fact. I had a sister married in Atlanta. I went with them in 1866. I married to better my living. We quit. I met a man come to Arkansas and sent back for me when he got the money. I was in Atlanta thirty years. I was married in Arkansas in 1895. Been here ever since 'ceptin' visits back in Georgia. My husband was a good farmer and a good shoemaker. He left me six good rent houses and this house here when he died." (She has an income of forty dollars per month--rent on houses.) "He was a hard worker.

"I'd go to see my white folks after freedom. I loved 'em all.

"Jep Davis died out of the church. Him and Jack (Robertson, Robson, Robinson?) was deacons together in the Baptist church and their farms j'ined. Jack had two boys, John and Ed. Ed was killed by Hinton Right over his sister Mollie. Then she married Hinton Right. The quarrel started at La Grange but they had a duel during preaching on the church yard at the Baptist church at Nuna, Georgia. Jack was mean. He had a lot of Negroes and a big farm. He had two boys and four girls. Jennie died. Florence and Lula, old maids; John and Ed and Mollie.

"Jack caused Jep Davis to be put out of the church 'cause he said after freedom he didn't believe in slavery. He always thought they ought to be free but owned some to be like all the other folks and to have a living easy. He was afraid to own that, fear somebody kill him before freedom. When Jack was sick, Jep went to see him. He wouldn't let Jep come in to see him and he died.

"I worked in the field, washed and ironed. I never cooked but a little. In Atlanta when my first baby could stand in a cracker box I started cooking for a woman. She was upstairs. Had a small baby a few days old. I didn't have time to do the work and nurse and get my baby to sleep. It cried and fretted till I got dinner done. I took it and got it to sleep. She sent word for me to leave my baby at home, she wasn't going to have a nigger baby crying in her kitchen and messing it up. She was a Yankee woman. I left and I never cooked out no more.

"I never had no dealings with the Ku Klux. I was in Atlanta then. I heard my mother say they killed and beat up a lot of colored people in the country where she was. Seem like they was mad 'cause they was free.

"Times was hard after freedom. Times is hard now for some folks. Times running away with the white and black races both. They stop thinking. The thing what they call education done ruined this country. The folks quit work and living on education. I learned to work. My husband was a good shoemaker. We laid up all we could. I got seven houses renting around here. I gets about forty or forty-five dollars a month rent. It do very well, I reckon."

Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor Person Interviewed: Robert Farmer 1612 Battery Street, Little Rock, Arkansas Age: 84

[HW: Tale of a "Nigger Ruler"]

"I was born in North Carolina. I can't tell when. Our names are in the Bible, and it was burnt up. My old master died and my young master was to go to the war, the Civil War, in the next draft. I remember that they said, 'If them others had shot right, I wouldn't have had to go.'

"He talked like they were standing up on a table or something shooting at the Yankees. Of course it wasn't that way. But he said that they didn't shoot right and that he would have to do it for them. They all came back, and none of them had shot right. One sick (he died after he got home); the other two come back all right.

"When my old master died, the son that drawed me stayed home for a little while. When he left he said about me, 'Don't let anybody whip him while I am gone. If they do, I'll bury them when I come back.' He was a good man and a good master.

Brutal Beating

"There were some that weren't so good. One of his brothers was a real bad man. They called him a nigger ruler. He used to go from place to place and handle niggers. He carried his cowhide with him when he went. My master said, 'A man is a damn fool to have a valuable slave and butcher him up.' He said, 'If they need a whipping, whip them, but don't beat them so they can't work.' He never whipped his slaves. No man ever hit me a lick but my father. No man. I ain't got no scar on me nowhere.

"My young master was named Wiley Grave Sharpe. He drawed me when my old master, Teed Sharpe, Sr., died. He's been dead a long time. Teed Sharpe, Jr., Gibb Sharpe, and Sam Sharpe were brothers to Wiley Grave Sharpe. Teed Sharpe, Jr. was the brutal one. He was the nigger ruler that did the beating up and the killing of Negroes.

"He beat my brother Peter once till Peter dropped dead. Wiley Graves who drawed me said, 'My brother shouldn't have done that.' But my brother didn't belong to Wiley and he couldn't do nothing about it. That was Teed, Jr.'s name. He got big money and was called a nigger ruler. Teed had said he was going to make Peter do as much work as my sister did. She was a young girl--but grown and stout and strong. In the olden time, you could see women stout and strong like that. They don't grow that way now. Peter couldn't keep up with her. He wasn't old enough nor strong enough then. He would be later, but he hadn't reached his growth and my sister had. Every time that Peter would fall behind my sister, Teed would take him out and buckle him down to a log with a leather strap and stand 'way back and then he would lay that long cowhide down, up and down his back. He would split it open with every stroke and the blood would run down. The last time he turned Peter loose, Peter went to my sister and asked her for a rag. She thought he just wanted to wipe the blood out of his face and eyes, but when she gave it to him, he fell down dead across the potato ridges.

Family

"Mary Farmer was my mother. William Farmer was my father. I never knowed any of my father's 'lations except one sister. She would come to see us sometimes.

"My father's master was Isaac Farmer. My mother didn't 'long to him. She 'longed to the Sharpes. Just what her master's name was I don't recollect. She lived five miles from my father. He went to see her every Thursday night. That was his regular night to go. He would go Saturday night; if he went any other time and the pateroles could catch him, they would whip him just the same as though he belonged to them. But they never did whip my father because they never could catch him. He was one of those who ran.

"My father and mother had ten children. I don't know whether any of them is living now or not besides myself.

How Freedom Came

"Freedom was a singsong every which way when I knowed anything. My father's master, Isaac Farmer, had a big farm and a whole world of land. He told the slaves all of them were free. He told his brother's slaves, 'After you have made this crop, bring your wives and children here because I am able to take care of them.' He had a smokehouse full of meat and other things. He told my father that after this crop is gathered, to fetch his wife and children to him (Isaac Farmer), because Sharpe might not be able to feed and shelter and take care of them all. So my father brought us to Isaac Farmer's farm.

"I never did anything but devilment the whole second year of freedom. I was large enough to take water in the field but I didn't have to do that. There were so many of them there that one could do what he pleased. The next year I worked because they had thinned out. The first year come during the surrender. They cared for Sharpe's crop. The next year they took Isaac Farmer's invitation and stayed with him. The third year many of them went other places, but my father and my mother and brothers and sisters stayed with Isaac Farmer for awhile.

"As time went on, I farmed with success myself.

"I stayed in North Carolina a long time. I had a wife and children in North Carolina. Later on, I went to Louisiana and stayed there one year and made one crop. Then I came here with my wife and children. I don't know how long I been here. We came up here when the high water was. That was the biggest high water they had. I worked on the levee and farmed. The first year we came here, we farmed. I lived out in the country then.

Occupation

"While I was able to work, I stayed on the farm. I had forty acres. But after my children left me and my wife died, I thought it would be better to sell out and pay my debts. Pay your honest debts and everything will be lovely. Now I manages to pay my rent by taking care of this yard and I get help from the government. I can't read and I can't write.

"I went down yonder to get help from the county. At last they taken me on and I got groceries three times. After that I couldn't get nothin' no more. They said my papers were made out incorrectly. I asked the worker to make it out correctly because I couldn't read and write. She said she wasn't supposed to do that but she would do it. She made it out for me. A short time later, the postman brought me a letter. I handed it to a lady to read for me, and she said, 'This is your old age check.' You don't know how much help that thing's been to me.

Ku Klux

"The Ku Klux never bothered me and they never bothered any of my people.

Opinions

"The young people pass by me and I don't know nothing about 'em. I know they are quite indifferent from what I was. When I come old enough to want a wife, I knowed what sort of wife I wanted. God blessed me and I happened to run up on the kind of woman I wanted. I made an engagement with her, and I didn't have a dollar. I was engaged to marry for three years before I married. I knowed it wouldn't do for me to marry her the way she was raised and I didn't have nothing. It looked curious for me to want that woman. I wanted her, and I had sense. I had sense enough to know how I must carry myself to get her. Now it looks like a young man wants all the women and ain't satisfied with nary one.

"My youngest son had a fine wife and was satisfied. He took up with what I call a whiskey head. He's been swapping horses ever since. That is the baby boy of mine. You know good and well a man couldn't get along that way.

"These young men will keep this one over here for a few days, and then that one over there for a few days. It shows like he wants them all.

Voting

"I have voted. I don't now. Since I lost out, I ain't voted.

Slave Houses

"You might say slave houses was nothing. Log houses, made out of logs and chinked up with sticks and mud in the cracks. Chimneys made with sticks and mud. Two rooms in our house. No windows, just cracks. All furniture was homemade. Take a two by four and bore a hole in it and put a cross piece in it and you had a bed.

"They made stools for chairs and made tables too. Food was kept in the smokehouse. For rations, they would give so much meat, so much molasses, and so much meal. No sugar and no coffee. They used to make tea out of sage, and out of sassafras, and that was the coffee.

Marriages

"I been married twice. The first time was out in North Carolina. The last time was in this city. I didn't stay with that last woman but four days. It took me just that long to find out who and who. She didn't want me; she wanted my money, and she thought I had more of it than I did. She got all I had though. I had just fifty dollars and she got that. I am going to get me a good woman, though, as soon as I can get divorced.

Memories of Work on Plantation

"My mother used to milk and I used to rope the calves and hold them so that they couldn't get to the cow. I had to keep the horses in the canebrake so they could eat. That was to keep the soldiers from getting a fine black horse the master had.

Soldiers

"But they got him just the same. The Yankees used to come in blue uniforms and come right on in without asking anything. They would take your horse and ask nothing. They would go into the smokehouse and take out shoulders, hams, and side meat, and they would take all the wine and brandy that was there.

Dances After Freedom

"Two sisters stayed in North Carolina in a two-room house in Wilson County. There was a big drove of us and we all went to town in the evening to get whiskey. There was one man who had a wife with us, but all the rest were single. We cut the pigeon wing, waltzed, and quadrilled. We danced all night until we burned up all the wood. Then we went down into the swamp and brought back each one as long a log as he could carry. We chopped this up and piled it in the room. Then we went on 'cross the swamp to another plantation and danced there.

"When we got through dancing, I looked at my feet and the bottom of them was plumb naked. I had just bought new boots, and had danced the bottoms clean out of them.

"I belong to the Primitive Baptist Church. I stay with Dr. Cope and clean up the back yard for my rent."

Interviewer: Mary D. Hudgins. Person Interviewed: Mrs. Lou Fergusson Aged: 91 Home: With daughter Mrs. Peach Sinclair, Wade Street. [Jan 29 1938]

Zig-zaging across better than a mile of increasingly less thickly settled territory went the interviewer. The terrain was rolling--to put it mildly. During most of the walk her feet met the soft resistance of winter-packed earth. Sidewalks were the exception rather than the rule.

Wade Street, she had been told was "somewhere over in the Boulevard". Holding to a general direction she kept her course. "The Boulevard", known on the tax books of Hot Springs as Boulevard Addition, sprawls over a wide area. Houses vary in size and construction with startling frequency. Few of them are pretentious. Many appear well planned, are in excellent state of repair and front on yards, scrupulously neat, sometimes patterned with flower beds. Occasionally a building leans with age, roof caving and windows and doors yawning voids--long since abandoned by owners to wind and weather.

Up one hill, down another went the interviewer. Given a proper steer here and there by colored men and women--even children along the way, she finally found hereself in front of "that green house" belonging to Peach Sinclair.

Two colored women, middle aged, sat basking in the mild January sunlight on a back porch. "I beg your pardon," said the interviewer, approaching the step, "is this the home of Peach Sinclair, and will I find Mrs. Lou Fergusson here?"

"It sure is," the voice was cheerful. "My mother is in the house. Come around to the front," (the interviewer couldn't have reached the back steps, even if she had wanted to--the back yard was fenced from the front) "she's in the parlor."

Mrs. Lou turned out to be an incredibly black, unbelievably plump-cheeked, wide smiling "motherly" person. She seemed an Aunt Jemimah grown suddenly old, and even more mellow. "Mamma, this young lady's come to see you. She wants to talk to you and ask you some questions, about when--about before the war." (The situation is always delicate when an ex-slave is asked for details. Somehow both interviewer and interviewee avoid the ugly word whenever possible. The skillful interviewer can generally manage to pass it by completely, as well as any variant of the word negro. The informant is usually less squeamish. "Black folks," "colored folks", "black people", "Master's people", "us" are all encountered frequently.)

Five minutes of pleasant chatter preceeded the formal interview. Both Mrs. Sinclair and her guest (unintroduced) sat in on the conference and made comments frequently. "Law, child, we bought this place from your father. He was a mighty fine man." Mrs. Sinclair was delighted to find her guest to be "Jack Hudgins daughter." And later in the chat, "You done lost everything? Even your home--that's going? Too bad. But then I guess at that you're better off than we are. I've been trying for nearly a year to get my mother on the old age pension. They say she has passed. That was way along last March. Here it is January and she hasn't got a penny. No, I know you can't help. Yes, I see what you're doing. But if ever you does get on the pensions work--I'm going to 'hant'[A] you." (a wide grin) [Footnote A: "Hant" was an intentional barbarism.]

The old woman rocked and smiled. "Yes, ma'am. I'm her oldest, alive. She had 17 and 15 of them lived to grow up. But I'm about as old as she is, looks like. She never did have glasses--and today she can thread the finest needle. She can make as pretty a quilt as you'd hope to see. Makes fine stitches too. Seems like they made them stronger in her day." A nod of delighted approval from Mrs. Fergusson.

"I was born in Hempstead County, right here in this state. The town we were nearest was Columbus. I lived around there all of my life until I come here to be with my daughter. That was 15 years ago. Yes, I was born on a farm. From what I know, I'm over ninety. I was around 20 when the war ceaseted.

The man what owned us was named Ed Johnson. Yes, ma'am he had lots of folks. Was he good to us? Well, he was and he wasn't. He was good himself, wouldn't never have whipped us--but he had a mean wife. She'd dog him, and dog him until he'd tie us down and whip us for the least little thing. Then they put overseers over us. They was most generally mean. They'd run us out way fore day--even in the sleet--run us out to the field.

Was the life hard--well it was and it wasn't. No, ma'am, I didn't get much learning. Some folks wouldn't let their black folks learn at all. Then there was some which would let their children teach the colored children what they learned at school. We never learned very much.

You see, Master didn't live on the place. He lived bout as far as from here to town" (fully two miles) "The overseer looked after us mostly. No, ma'am I don't remember much about the war. You see, they was afraid that the fighting was going to get down there so they run us off to Texas. We settled down and made a crop there. How'd we get the land? Master rented it.

We made a crop down there and later we come back. No, ma'am we didn't stay with Mr. Johnson more than a month after there was peace. We come on in to Washington. No, ma'am, I never heard tell that Washington had been the Capitol of Arkansas for a while during the War. No, I never did hear that. Guess it was when we was in Texas. Then we folks didn't hear so much anyway.

We stayed in Washington most a year. Was I with my Mother? No, ma'am I was married--married before the war was thru. Married--does you know how we folks married in them days? Well the man asked your mother. Then you both asked your master. He built you a house. You moved in and there you was. You was married. I did some washing and cooking when I was in Washington. Then we moved onto a farm. I sort of liked Washington, but I was born on a farm and I sort of liked farm life.

We didn't move around very much--just two or three places. We raised cotton, corn, vegetables, peas, watermelons and lots of those sort of things. No ma'am, didn't nobody think of raising watermelons to ship way off like they does in Hempstead county now. Cotton was our cash crop. We rented thirds and fourths. Didn't move but three times. One place I stayed 15 years.

I been a widow 40 years. Yes, ma'am. I farmed myself, and my children helped me. Me and the owners got along well. Made good crops, me and the children. I managed to take good care of them. Made out to raise 15 out of the 17 to be grown. There's only 5 of them alive now.

Hard on a woman to run a farm by herself. Well now, I don't know. I made out. I raised my children and raised them healthy. I got along well with the farm owner. You might know when I was let to stay on one place for 15 years. You know I must have treated the land right and worked it fair.

Yes ma'am I remembers lots. Seems like women folks remembers better than men. I've got a good daughter. I'm still strong and can get about good. Guess the Lord has been good to me."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Jennie Ferrell, West Memphis, Arkansas Age: 65

"I was born in Yellowbush County, Mississippi close to Grenada. Grandmother come from North Carolina. They wouldn't sell grandpa. He was owned by Laston. They never met again. She brought two boys with her. She was a Pernell. Her master brought her away and would have brought her husband but they wouldn't sell. She said durin' her forty years in slavery she never got a whoopin'. She was a field hand. After she come to Mississippi they was so good to her they called her free. She was a midwife. She doctored the rich white and colored. She rode horseback, she said, far and near. In Grenada after freedom she walked. They called her free her master was so good to her. I don't know how she learned to be a midwife. Her master was Henry Pernell. He owned a small place twelve miles from Grenada and another place in the Mississippi bottoms. My folks become renters after freedom. I don't know if they rented from him but I guess they did.

"The Ku Klux never bothered them that I ever heard them mention."

Interviewer: Pernella Anderson Person interviewed: Frank Fikes, El Dorado, Arkansas Age: About 88

"My name is Frank Fikes. I live between El Dorado and Strong and I am 79 years old if I make no mistake. I know my mama told me years ago that I was born in watermelon time. She said she ate the first watermelon that got ripe on the place that year and it made her sick. She thought she had the colic. Said she went and ate a piece of calamus root for the pain and after eating the root for the pain behold I was born. So if I live and nothing happens to me in watermelon time I will be eighty this year. I was a boy at surrender about the age of fourteen or fifteen.

"My work was very easy when I was a little slave. Something got wrong with my foot when I first started to walking and I was crippled. I could not get around like the other children, so my work was to nurse all of the time. Sometimes, as fast as I got one baby to sleep I would have to nurse another one to sleep. We belonged to Mars Colonel Williams and he had I guess a hundred families on his place and nearly every family had a baby, so I had a big job after all. The rest of the children carried water, pine, drove up cows and held the calves off and made fires at old mar's house.

"I had to keep a heap fire so the boys wouldn't have to beat fire out of rocks and iron. Old miss did the cooking while all of the slaves worked. The slaves stood around the long back porch and ate. They ate out of wooden bowls and wooden spoons. They ate greens and peas and bread. And old miss fed all of us children in a large trough. She fed us on what we called the licker from the greens and peas with bread mashed in it. We children did not use spoons. We picked the bread out with our fingers and got down on our all fours and sipped the licker with our mouth. We all had a very easy time we thought because we did not know any better then.

"I never went to church until after surrender. Neither did we go to school but the white children taught me to read and count.

"I recollect as well today as if it had been yesterday the soldiers passing our house going to Vicksburg to fight. The reason I recollect it so well they all was dressed in blue suits with pretty gold buttons down the front. They passed a whole day and we watched them all day.

"Old miss and mars was not mean to us at all until after surrender and we were freed. We did not have a hard time until after we were freed. They got mad at us because we was free and they let us go without a crumb of anything and without a penny and nothing but what we had on our backs. We wandered around and around for a long time. Then they hired us to work on halves and man, we had a hard time then and I've been having a hard time ever since.

"Before the War we lived in log cabins. There was a row of log cabins a quarter of a mile long. No windows and no floor. We had grass to sit on. Our beds was made of pine poles nailed to the wall and we slept on hay beds. My mama and other slaves pulled grass and let it dry to make the beds with. Our cover was made from our old worn out clothes.

"On Sunday evenings we played. We put on clean clothes once a week. In summer we bathed in the branch. We did not bathe at all in winter. I went in my shirt tail until I was eleven or twelve years old. Back in slavery time boys did not wear britches. They wore shirts and our hair was long. The slaves say if you cut a child's hair before he or she was ten or twelve years old they won't talk plain until they are that old."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: J.E. Filer, Marianna, Arkansas Age: 76

"I was born in Washington, Georgia. I come here in 1866. There was three stores in Marianna. My parents name Betsy and Bob Filer. My mother belong to Collins in Georgia. She come to this state with Colonel Woods. She worked in the field in Georgia and here too. Mama said they always had some work on hand. Work never played out. When it was cold and raining they would shuck corn to send to mill. The men would be under a shelter making boards or down at the blacksmith shop sharpening up the tools so they could work.

"Since we come to this state I've seen them make oak boards and pile them up in pens to dry out straight. I don't recollect that in Georgia. I was so little when we come here. I can recollect that but not much else. My brother was older. He might tell all about it."

[TR: Next section crossed out] Interviewer's Comment

I didn't get to see his brother. I went twice more but he was at work on a farm somewhere.

Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor Subject: Ex-slavery [May 11 1938]

Person Interviewed: Orleans Finger [TR: In text of interview, Orleana] Negro (Apparently octoroon or quadroon) Address: 2804 West Fifteenth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas. Occupation: Formerly field hand and housekeeper Age: 79 [TR: Personal information moved from bottom of first page.]

Birth, Family, and Master

"I was born in Mississippi in Tippa County not far from the edge of Tennessee. I wasn't raised in Arkansas, but all my children was raised here. I really don't know just where in Tippa county I was born. My mother's name was Ann Toler. Toler was my step father. My real father, I don't know. My mother never told me nothin' bout him and I don't know that; I can't tell what I don't know.

"My grandfather on my mother's side was Captain Ellis. That is the one come after me when I was small to carry me back to my folks. I didn't know him, and I said 'I don't want to go 'way with them strange Niggers'. He's dead now. They're all dead long ago. I have got children over fifty years old myself. I am the mother of nine children--three of them living. One of the living ones is Arthur Finger. He lives in St. Louis. I expected to hear from him today, but didn't. Cornelius Finger. (He is a brownskin boy, spare made), lives in Palestine, Arkansas, near Forrest City. Arthur is my baby boy. Elmira was my baby girl. She's the one you met. She's married and has children of her own.

"Captain Ellis' wife was named Minerva. She was my mother's mother. She's been dead years. I got children older than she was when she died. She died in Mississippi. I got a cousin named Molly Spight. She's dead. My mother's sister was named Emmaline; she is dead now too.

"My mother was colored. I don't know nothin' about my father, and my mother never taught me nothin' 'bout him.

"My step father and mother were both field hands. They worked in the field.

"I don't know just when I was born, but I am just sure that it was before the war. I remember hearing people talk about things in the war.

"My mother's master was named Whitely, I think, because she was named Whitley before she married.

"I have been married three times. The first man I married was 'Lijah Gibbs. The second time I married, I married Joe Finger. The third time I married Will Reese. He warn't no husband at all. They're all dead. Folks always called me Finger after my second husband died, because I didn't live with my third husband long.

House

"They had log houses. You would never see no brick chimney nor nothing of that kind. The logs were notched down and kinda kivered flat--no roof like now. They might have rafters on them, but the top was almost flat. Wouldn't be any steep like they is now. In them times they wouldn't have many rooms. Sometimes they would have two. They wouldn't have so many windows. Just old dirt chimneys. They'd take and dig a hole and stick sticks up in it. Then they'd make up the dirt and put water in it and pull grass and mix it in the dirt. They'd build a frame on the sticks and then put the mud on. The chimney couldn't catch fire till the house got old and the mud would fall off. When it got old and the mud got to fallin off, then they would be a fire. I've seen that since I been in Arkansas.

"Sometimes they would get big rocks and put them inside the fireplace to take the place of bricks. You could get rocks in the forest.

Furniture

"Used to have ropes and they would cord the bed stead. The cords would act in place of springs. When you move you would have a heap of trouble because all that would have to be undone and done up again. You have to take the cords out and them put it together again. The cords would be run through the sides of the bed and stuck in with pegs.

"They used to have spinning wheels and looms. They made clothes and they made the cloth for the clothes and they spun the thread they made the cloth our of. They'd card and spin the thread. There's lots of other things I can't remember.

War Memories

"The Yankess used to come in and have the people cook for them. They'd kill chickens and geese and things. The old people used to take their horses out and tie them out in the woods--hiding them out to keep the Yankees from getting them. The Yankees would ride up, take a good horse and leave the old worn-out one.

"There never was any fighting round where I lived. None of my folks was soldiers in the war.

Right After the War

"I don't remember just what my folks did right after the war. They were field hands and I guess they did that. My mother worked in the field that's all I know.

Life Since the War

"I have been in Arkansas a long time. I have been here ever since I left Mississippi. My first marriage was in Mississippi. The second and last ones was in Arkansas--Forrest City. My second husband had been dead since 1921. I don't know that I count Reese. We married in June and separated in September. He's dead now, and I don't hold nothin' against him.

"I am not able to work now. I do a little 'round the house and dig a little in the garden. I haven't worked in the field since way before 1921. I don't get no help at all from the Welfare. My daughter does what she can for me. I always have lived before I ever heard about the old age pension and I suppose God will take care of me yet somehow.

Cured by Prayer

"I'm puny and no'count. Aint able to do much. But I was crippled. I had a hurting in my leg and I couldn't walk without a stick. Finally, one day I went to go out and pick some turnips. I was visiting my son in Palestine. My leg hurt so bad that I talked to the Lord about it. And it seemed to me, he said 'Put down your stick.' I put it down and I aint used it since. I put it down right thar and I aint used it since. God is a momentary God. God knowed what I wanted and he said, 'Put down that sick,' and I aint been crippled since. It done me so much good. Looks like to me when I get to talking about the Lord, aint nobody a stranger to me.

"I know I been converted but that made me stronger. My son is a siner. He knowed about how I was crippled. He said you ought use your stick. He didn't know what to think about it. Young folks don't believe because they aint had no experience with prayer and they don't know what can happen.

"I done told you all I know. I don't want to tell you anything I don't know. If you don't know nothing, it is best to say you don't."

Everything which Orleana Finger states has the earmarks of being true. There are a great many things which she does not state which I believe that she could state if she wished. She evidently has a long list of things which she things should be unmentioned. She has two magic phrases with which she dismisses all subjects which she does not wich to discuss:

"I don't remember that."

"I better quit talking now before I start lying."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Molly Finley, Honey Creek 3-1/2 miles from Mesa, Arkansas Age: Born 1865

"My master was Captain Baker Jones and his pa was John Jones. Miss Mariah was Baker Jones' wife. I believe the old man's wife was dead.

"My parents' name was Henry ("Clay") Harris and Harriett Harris. They had nine children. We lived close to the Post (Arkansas Post). Our nearest trading post was Pine Bluff. And the old man made trips to Memphis and had barrels sent out by ship. We lived around Hanniberry Creek. It was a pretty lake of water. Some folks called it Hanniberry Lake. We fished and waded and washed. We got our water out of two springs further up. I used to tote one bucket on my head and one in each hand. You never see that no more. Mama was a nurse and house woman and field woman if she was needed. I made fires around the pots and 'tended to mama's children.

"We lived on the Jones place years after freedom. I was born after freedom. We finally left. I cried and cried to let's go back. Only place ever seem like home to me yet. We went to the Cummings farm. They worked free labor then. Then we went to the hills. Then we seen hard times. We knowed we was free niggers pretty soon back in them poor hills.

"I was more educated than some white folks up in them hills. I went to school on the river. My teacher was a white man named Mr. Van Sang.

"Mama belong to the Garretts in Mississippi. She was sold when she was about four years old she tole me. There had been a death and old mistress bought her in. Master Garrett died. Then she give her to her daughter. She was her young mistress then. Old mistress didn't want her to bring her but she said she might well have her as any rest of the children. Mama never set eyes on none of her folks no more. Her father, she said, was light and part Enjun (Indian).

"John Prior owned papa in Kentucky. He sold him, brother and his mother to a nigger trader's gang. Captain Jones bought all three in Tennessee. He come brought them on to Arkansas. He was a field hand. He said they worked from daylight till after dark.

"They took their slaves to close to Houston, Texas to save them. Captain Jones said he didn't want the Yankees to scatter them and make soldiers of them. He brought them back on his place like he expected to do. Mama said they was out there three years. She had a baby three months old and the trip was hard on her and the baby but they stood it. I was her next baby after that. Freedom done been declared. Mama said they went in wagons and camped along the roadside at night.

"Before they left, the Yankees come. Old Master Jones treated them so nice, give them a big dinner, and opened up everything and offered some for them to take along that they didn't bother his stock nor meat. Then he had them (the slaves) set out with stock and supplies to Texas.

"Mama and papa said the Jones treated them pretty well. They wouldn't allow the overseers to beat up his slaves.

"The two Jones men put two barrels of money in a big iron chest. They said it weighed two hundred pounds. Four men took it out there in barrels and eight men lowered it. They took it to the family graveyard down past the orchard. They leveled it up like it was a grave. Yankees didn't get Jones money! Then he sent the slaves to Texas.

"Captain Jones had a home in Tennessee and one in Arkansas. Papa said he cleared out land along the river where there was panther, bears, and wild cats. They worked in huddles and the overseers had guns to shoot varmints. He said their breakfast and dinner was sent to the field, them that had wives had supper with their families once a day, on Sundays three times. The women left the fields to go fix supper and see after their cabins and children. They hauled their water in barrels and put it under the trees. They cooked washpots full of chicken and give them a big picnic dinner after they lay by crops and at Christmas. They had gourd banjos. Mama said they had good times.

"They had preaching one Sunday for white folks and one Sunday for black folks. They used the same preacher there but some colored preachers would come on the place at times and preach under the trees down at the quarters. They said the white preacher would say, 'You may get to the kitchen of heaven if you obey your master, if you don't steal, if you tell no stories, etc.'

"Captain Jones was a good doctor. If a doctor was had you know somebody was right low. They seldom had a doctor. Mama said her coat tail froze and her working. But they wore warm clothes next to their bodies.

"Captain Jones said, 'You all can go back on my place that want to go back and stay. You will have to learn to look after your own selves now but I will advise you and help you best I can. You will have to work hard as us have done b'fore. But I will pay you.' My folks was ready to 'board the wagons back to Jones' farm then. That is the way mama tole me it was at freedom! It was a long time I kept wondering what is freedom? I took to noticing what they said it was in slavery times and I caught on. I found out times had changed just b'fore I got into this world.

"Some things seem all right and some don't. Times seem good now but wait till dis winter. Folks will go cold and hungry again. Some folks good and some worse than in times b'fore."

Interviewer's Comment

Gets a pension check.

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Fanny Finney, Brinkley, Arkansas Age: 74 plus

"I was born in Marshall County, Mississippi. Born during slavery. I b'long to Master John Rook. He died during the Civil War. Miss Patsy Rook raised me. I put on her shoes, made up her bed, fetched her water and kindling wood.

"My parents named Catherine and Humphrey Rook. They had three children.

"When Master John Rook died they divided us. They give me to Rodie Briggs. John and Lizzie was Master John's other two children. He had three children too same as ma. My young master was a ball player. I'd hear them talk. Ma was a good house girl. They thought we'd all be like 'er. When I was three years old, I was the baby. They took ma and pa off keep the Yankees from stealing then. Miss Patsy took keer me. When ma and pa come home I didn't know them a tall. They say when they come back they went to Louziana, then 'bout close to Monticello in dis state, then last year they run 'em to Texas.

"Pa was jus' a farmer. Gran'ma lived down in the quarters and kept my sisters. I'd start to see 'em. Old gander run me. Sometimes the geese get me down and flog me wid their wings. One day I climbed up and peeped through a crack. I seen a lot of folks chopping cotton. It looked so easy. They was singing.

"Betsy done the milking. I'd sit or stand 'round till the butter come. She ax me which I wanted, milk or butter. I'd tell her. She put a little sugar on my buttered bread. It was so good I thought Sometimes she'd fill my cup up with fresh churned milk.

"I et in the kitchen; the white folks et in the dining-room. I slep' in granny's house, in granny's bed, in the back yard. Granny's name was 'Aunt' Hannah. She was real old and the boss cook on our place. She learnt all the girls on our place how to cook. Kept one or two helping her all the time. It was her part to make them wash their faces every morning soon as they started a fire and keep their hands clean all the time er cooking. Granny wore her white apron around her waist all time. Betty would make them help her milk. They had to wash the cows udder before they ever milked a drop. Miss Patsy learnt her black folks to be clean. Every one of them neat as a pin sure as you born.

"I was so little I couldn't think they got whoopings. I never heard of a woman on the place being whooped. They all had their work to do. Grandma cut out and made pants for all the men on the whole farm.

"Old man Rook raised near 'bout all his niggers. He bought whiskey by the barrel. On cold mornings they come by our shop to get their sacks. I heard them say they all got a drink of whiskey. His hands got to the field whooping and singing. The overseers handed it out to them. The women didn't get none as I knowed of.

"The paddyrollers run 'em in a heap but Master John Rook never let them whoop his colored folks.

"We lived six miles from Holly Springs on the big road to Memphis. Seem like every regiment of Yankee and rebel soldiers stopped at our house. They made a rake-off every time. They cleaned us out of something to eat. They took the watches and silverware. The Yankees rode up on our porch and one time one rode in the hall and in a room. Miss Patsy done run an' hid. I stood about. I had no sense. They done a lot every time they come. I watched see what all they would do. They burnt a lot of houses.

"A little white boy said, 'I tell you something if you give me a watermelon.' The black man give the boy a big watermelon. He had a big patch. The boy said, 'My papa coming take all your money away from you some night.' He fixed and sure 'nough he come dressed like a Ku Klux. He had some money but they didn't find it. One of the Ku Kluxes run off and left his spurs. The colored folks killed some and they run off and leave their horses. They come around and say they could drink three hundred fifteen buckets of water. They throw turpentine balls in the houses to make a light. They took a ball of cotton and dip it in turpentine, light it, throw it in a house to make a light so they could see who in there. A lot of black folks was killed and whooped. Their money was took from them.

"The third year after the War ma and pa come and got me. They made a crop for a third. That was our first year off of Rook's place. I love them Rook's girls so good right now. Wish I could see them or knowd where to write. I had to learn my folks. I played with my sisters all my life but I never had lived with them. When pa come for me they had my basket full of dresses and warm underclothes, clean and ironed. They sent ma some sweet potatoes and two big cakes. One of them was mine. Miss Patsy said, 'Let Fannie come back to see my girls.' I went back and visited. Granny lived in her house and cooked till she died. I had a place with granny at her house. We went back often and we helped them after freedom. They was good white folks as ever breathed. There was good folks and bad folks then and still is.

"Times is hard. I was raised in the field. I made seven crops here--near Brinkley--with my son. I had two girls. One teaches in Brinkley, fourth or fifth grade; one girl works for a family in New York. My son fell off a tall building he was working on and bursted his head. He was in Detroit. Times is hard now. The young folks is going at too fast a gait. They are faster than the old generation. No time to sit and talk. On the go all the time. Hurrying and worrying through time. Hard to make a living."

Interviewer: Zillah Cross Peel Information given by: "Gate-eye" Fisher Residence: Washington County, Arkansas

"I was jes' a baby crawlin' 'round on the floor when War come" said "Gate-eye" Fisher, who lives in a log house covered with scraps of old tin, on what is known as the old Bullington farm near Lincoln. His one room log cabin is "down in the bresh" back of the barn and when new renters come on the place, they just take it for granted that "Gate-eye" just belongs. He bothers no one. No floors, no windows just a door, a bed, stove and a table. Yes and a lantern and a chair.

"Yes mam, my mother, Caroline, belonged to the Mister Dave Moore family. His wife, Miss Pleanie, was a Reagan. Yes mam, they was good folks. When the War come, my pa, Harrison Fisher and my ma stayed on the place, Mister Moore had lots of land and stock--and he and his folks went to Texas, nearly everybody did 'round here, and he took some of his fine stock with him but he called my pa and ma in and told them he wanted them to stay on the place and take care of all the things. Pa was boss over all the slaves. I guess mos' all my white folks is dead. Mos' of them all buried down yan way to Ft. Smith. One of Mister Moore's daughters, Miss Mary, married Dr. Davenport and Miss Sinth (Cynthia) went to live with her."

(The Moores came from Kentucky and Tennessee and settled at Cane Hill, Washington County, about 1829. The Reagans came about the same time. The first schools in the county were at Cane Hill).

"Yes mam, I guess all the colored folks that belonged to Mister Moore, but me, is dead. I guess. My mother, Caroline, stayed in the house nearly all the time and took care of Missy's children, and when they come home from school she'd hear them learn their ABC's. That's how come I can read and write. My ma taught me, out of an old Blue Back Speller. Yes mam, I learned to read and can't write much, jes my own name. Yes mam, I kinda believe in signs that's how come I wear this leather strap 'round my wrist it keeps me from havin' rheumatism, neuralgia. Yes mam, it helps. I used to believe in signs a lot and I used to believe in wishes. I used to wish a lot of bad wishes on folks till one day I read a piece from New York and it said the bad wishes that you made would come back to you wosser than you wished, so I don't wish no more. I got scared and don't wish nothin' to no body."

"After the War Ole Mister and Ole Missey called in my ma and pa and asked them if they wanted to still stay on the place or go somewhere. 'Bout ten of us stayed. Then a while after Mister Moore asked my pa if he wanted to go up on the Tilley place--600 acres and farm it for what he could make. We, my pa and my ma and my sister Mandy, stayed there a long time. Then Mister Moore sold off a little here and a little there and we moved up on the mountain with my sister and her husband, Peter Doss, where my ma died. Then I went down to Mister Oscar Moore's place--he was my Missey' boy."

"Yes mam, I did have a wife. I had a mos' worrysome time. It is a worrysome time when a man comes to takes your wife right away from you. No'm, I don't ever want her to come back."

"Yes'm, I do my own cooking, and I've put up some fruit. I have a little mite of meat, a little mite of taters, a little mite of beans and peas. I get a little pension too."

"These darkies today nearly all get wild. You can't tell What they are going to do tomorrow. They's jes like everybody--some awful good and some awful bad."

And in the tiny one room shack, of logs and tin, no window, a swing door held by a leather strap, "Gate-eye" does his cooking on a small wood stove. A long bench holds a lantern with a shingly clean globe, a lot of canned fruit, dried beans and peas. The bed is a series of old bed springs. But "Gate-eye" just belongs to the neighborhood, and every one feels kindly toward him. He says he is seventy-one years, past.

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person Interviewed: Ellen Fitzgerald Brinkley, Ark. Age: 74

"Mama was named Anna Noles. Papa named Milias Noles. She belong to the Whitakers and he belong to Gibbs. Noles bought them both. They was both sold. Mother was born in Athens, papa somewhere in Kentucky. Their owners, the Noles, come to Aberdeen, Mississippi.

"Grandma, papa's mama, was killed with a battling stick. She was a slender woman, very tall and pretty, papa told me. She was at the spring, washing. They cut a tree off and make a smooth stump. They used a big tree stump for battling. They had paddles, wide as this (two hands wide--eight or ten inches) with rounded-off handle, smoothed so slick. They wet and soap the clothes, put em on that block-tree stump and beat em. Rub boards was not heard of in them days. They soaked the clothes, boiled and rinsed a heap. They done good washing. I heard em say the clothes come white as snow from the lye soap they used. They made the soap. They had hard soap and soft soap, made from ashes dripped and meat skins. They used tallow and mutton suet too. I don't know what was said, but I recken she didn't please her mistress--Mrs. Callie Gibbs. She struck her in the small part of her back and broke it. She left her at the spring. Somebody went to get water and seen her there. They took her to the house but she finally died. Grandpa was dead then. I recken they got scared to keep papa round then and sold him.

"I was born first year of the surrender. Moster Noles told them they was free. They didn't give them a thing. They was glad they was free. They didn't want to be in slavery; it was too tied down to suit em. They lived about places, do little work where they found it.

"We dodged the Ku Klux. One night they was huntin' a man and come to the wrong house. They nearly broke mama's arm pullin' her outen our house. They give us some trouble coming round. We was scared of em. We dodged em all the time.

"I was married and had a child eight years old fore I come to Arkansas. I come to Brinkley first. I was writing to friends. They had immigrated, so we immigrated here and been here ever since. When I come here there was two big stores and a little one. A big sawmill--nothing but woods and wild animals. It wasn't no hard times then. We had a plenty to live on.

"My husband was a saw mill hand and a railroad builder. He worked on the section. I nursed, washed, ironed, cooked, cleaned folks houses. We done about right smart. I could do right smart now if white folks hire me.

"The night my husband died somebody stole nearly every chicken I had. He died last week. We found out it was two colored men. I ain't needed no support till now. My husband made us a good living long as he was able to go. We raised a family. He was a tolerably dark sort of man. My girls bout his color."

The two grown girls were "scouring" the floor. Both of them said they were married and lived somewhere else.

Interviewer: Mary D. Hudgins Person Interviewed: Henry Fitzhugh Aged: 90 Home: Rooms at 209 Walnut Street

Several "colored" districts are scattered throughout Hot springs. On Whittington, within a block of the First Presbyterian Church and St. Joseph's Infirmary stand the Roanok Baptist and the Haven Methodist (both for colored). Architecturally they compare favorably with similar edifices for whites. Their choirs have become nationally famous. Sunday afternoon concerts are frequent. Mid-week ones are not uncommon. At such times special sections are reserved for whites, and are usually filled. Visitors to the resort enjoy them immensely.

Across the street a one-time convent school has been converted into a negro apartment house. A couple of blocks up Whittington, Walnut veers to the right. It is paved for several blocks. Fronting on concrete sidewalks are houses, well painted and boasting yards which indicate pride in possession. Some are private homes, some rooming houses and some apartments. Porch flower boxes and urns are mostly of concrete studded with crystals.

Finding Henry Fitzhugh wasn't easy. The delivery boy at the corner chain store "knows everybody in the neighborhood" according to a passer-by. He offered the address _209_. That number turned out to be an old, but substantial and well cared for two story house. Ringing the bell repeatedly brought no response.

A couple of women in the yard next door announced that to find Fitzhugh one had to "go around back and knock on the last door on the back porch." This procedure too brought no results. Another backyard observer offered the suggestion that Fitzhugh was probably down at the restaurant eating.

School had just been dismissed. Two well dressed negro children walked along together, swinging their books. "Can you tell me where the restaurant is?" asked the interviewer, stopping them. "Do you mean the colored restaurant?" one of the tots asked, not a whit of embarrassment in her manner, no servility, no resentment--just an ordinary question. "It's right over there."

The restaurant proved to be large, well lighted, scrupulously clean. Tables were well spaced and quite a distance from the counter. Sunshine streamed in from two directions. Fitzhugh was sitting just outside talking to the boot-black.

"Yes, ma'am, I's Henry Fitzhugh. Can't work no more since I got hit by an automoble. Before that I had a shoe-shine place myself. But I can't work no more. Yes 'um I gets the pension. I gets $10 a month. It's not much, but I sort of get by. I's got my room up at 209 and I gets my meals down here at the restaurant. Yes ma'am, pensions seem to be coming in pretty regular now.

Been in Hot Springs a long, long time. Come here in 1876. I remembers lots of the old families here. What yo say your name was? Your Mother was a Dengler? Sure, I remembers the Denglers. Mr. Dengler had a soda-water shop. I remembers him.

When I first come, soon as I was able, I cleaned up for Captain Mallard. Cleaned up all along Central in that block he was in.

How'd I come to Hot springs? I was sick. I had rheumatism. Was down with it so bad the doctor had done give me up. He'd stopped giving me medicine. But the lady I was working for, she run a hotel in Poplar Bluff. They put me on a stretcher and they put me in the baggage car and they brought me clean on in to Hot Springs. They bathed me at the free bath house. I started getting better right away. 'Twasn't long before I was well and able to work. I stayed right on here in Hot Springs.

Yes, ma'am I's all Arkansas. I was born near Little Rock. Ain't never been out of the state but twice. Then I didn't stay long.

I worked on a farm that belonged to Mr. J.B. Henderson. He was an uncle to Mr. Jerome Henderson what was in the bank and Mr. Jethro Henderson what was a Judge.

No, the war didn't bother us none. We wasn't afraid. We heard the shots, but it seemed just like a whole lot of fire crackers to us. Guess we just didn't have sense enough to be afraid. Fighting we did [HW: hear was] near Pine Bluff--the Baxter-Ware trouble. We seen the soldiers when they come through Mt. Pleasant, right smart bunch of them. They was Confederates. We didn't see none of the Yankees.

My father was killed during the war. Went off to help and never came back. My mother, she died when I was a baby. She was lying down in her cabin before the fire--lying on the hearth, letting me nurse. The door was open and a gust of wind blew her dress in the fire. She dropped me and she screamed and run out into the yard. Old Miss saw her from the house. She grabbed a quilt and started out. She got to my mother and she wrapped her in the quilt to smother out the fire. But my mother done swallowed fire. She died. That's the story they tell me. I was too little to know.

I guess I was about eleven when I went into the fields. What's that, pretty young? I didn't go because they made me. I went because I wanted to be with the men. Wasn't nobody around to play with. We was the only family on the farm. It was a pretty good sized farm and they had lots of children. There was Miss Sally and Miss Fanny and Miss Ella and Miss Myrtle and Miss Hattie. Then there was four boys.

Stayed on with the folks three years after the surrender. They treated me good and gave me what I wanted. Treated me nice--very nice--my white folks.

Then I went on down to Marshall--way down in Texas. There I worked for the high sheriff. Drove his carriage for him and cleaned up around the yard. I worked for him a whole year then I went back to Arkansas and then went up in Missouri. Wasn't there long before I got sick. I was working for a woman who had a hotel. She was good to me. Mighty good she was.

Yes ma'am. There has been lost chances I has had to do more than I has. But I's sort of satisfied. There's been lots of changes in Hot Springs since I come. I used to know all the white folks and all the colored folks too. Can't do that today. Place has got too big.

Joe Golden? Yes, I does--I knows Joe. He used to have a butcher shop over on Malvern. Quite a man, Joe was. I hasn't seen him in a long time. How is he? Pretty good? That's fine.

"I remembers Mc--McLeod's Happy Hollow." (Hot Spring nearest approach to a Coney Island in the earlier days). "I remembers that they used to have the old stage coach there what the James and Younger brothers held up. Sort of broken down it was, but it was there.

Law, law, them was the times. I'll never forget when Allen Roane brought in the news. Allen drove a sort of a hack. He come on into town and he whipped up his horse and he run all over town telling about the hold-up. Allen lived just next door to where I does now."

Down the street passed a colored woman, her head held high. Passing the porch where the aged negro man and the young white woman sat talking she paused and gave what was suspiciously like a sniff. Fitzhugh grinned. "She's sanctified," he explained.

"Did you ever hear of Tucky-Nubby? He was an Indian. Bob Hurley used to bring him to Hot Springs every year. What medicine shows they used to have here. Ain't seen nothing like it lately, everybody knowed Tucky-Nubby. Lots of those medicine shows--free shows, used to come here. But Bob Hurley and Tucky-Nubby was the most liked.

Yes, ma'am, I'm all alone now. My sister married a man a long, long time ago. She didn't live but a couple of years. I's had four children. One of them died when it was born. One died when it was three. One lived until it was seven. One son he lived to be grown. He went to the war. Got as far as camp. One day I got a word saying that he was sick. I went but before I could get there he had died. That left me alone.

What's that? Been married once? I been married _eleven_ times. But it was ten times too many. Besides they is all dead, so you might say that I's been married only once.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you ma'am. The quarter will come in powerful handy. When you tries to make out on $10 a month a little extra comes in powerful handy. Thank you ma'am. I enjoyed talking to you, ma'am."

Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden Person interviewed: Mary Flagg 1601 Georgia Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas Age: 89

"Yes'm, I was here in Civil War days. I was bout twelve years old when Lincoln was elected. I remember when he was elected. I was big enough to weave and knit for the soldiers. I remember when the war started. Yes ma'm--oh I remember so much. Saw all the soldiers and shook hands with em. Why I waited on the table when General Lee stopped there for dinner on his way from Mobile to meet Sherman. That was in Winchester, Mississippi where I was born. I worked in a hotel, yes ma'm. I was raised up in a hotel, called em taverns in those days. I was born right in Winchester, Mississippi. Used to see the soldiers drill every day. If I could remember, I could tell you a heap of things.

"My mistress' name was Mrs. Shaw. She took me away from my mother when I was four years old--taken me for her body servant. She learned me how to do housework and all kinds of sewin'--cuttin' and makin'. I done all the sewin' for her family.

"I never went to no school but Mrs. Shaw tried to teach me and she slapped my jaws many a day bout my book.

"I married when I was fifteen just fore the war ended and I forgot everything I ever learned--yes ma'm! I been married four times and they're all dead. I never married when any of em was livin' like a heap of colored folks did.

"The Yankees come within fifty miles of where we was livin' and then they burned the bridge and turned back. White folks never told us what the war was for but a old German man used to read the paper at the table--every battle they'd fight and when the Yankees would whip. Oh them was times then. If I could remember I could tell you a heap of things but my mind's gone from me.

"Old master had about a hundred head of hands and old mistress had a cousin had five hundred.

"White folks was good to me. My father was the carriage driver and old mistress used to carry me to church with her every Sunday.

"I never seen no Ku Klux but I lived where they was, in Mississippi. That was a Ku Klux state. Yes ma'm.

"I remember when General Lee come to Winchester you could hear the horses' feet a mile away, it so cold.

"My great grandfather was a full blooded Indian. I've lived among the Indians in Mississippi and bought baskets from em. They lived all around us. Yes ma'm, I'm acquainted with em. Oh, I been through a little bit.

"I started sewin' and weavin' when I was just big enough to reach the treadles. Used to sew for Mrs. Hulburt in Bolivar County, Mississippi. I remember she started to the Mardi Gras on a boat called the Mary Bell. It got burned and she had to turn back. I used to do a heap a sewin'.

"Everythings changed now. People is so treacherous now. Chile, ain't nothin' to this younger generation. Now I'm tellin' you the truth. They ain't studyin' nothin' good. Sin and corruption all you see now.

"Last man I married was Elder Flagg. He was a preacher in the Baptist church and as good a preacher as I ever heard. They don't preach the Gospel now.

"Well, I wish I could remember more to tell you, but it's been a long time. I'll be ninety if I live till the 4th of next May."

Interviewer: Mrs. Zillah Cross Peel Person interviewed: Doc Flowers Age: 85? Home: Lincoln, Arkansas

Everybody calls him Uncle Doc. His name is Doc Flowers, and he lives in the last house on a street that is just part of a road in the town of Lincoln, Arkansas.

When you stop in front of the house you will find there is no path. One has to watch his step owing to the fact that there is a zigzaggy branch hidden by the tangle of weeds.

If old Aunt Jinney is on the porch she will say, "Sorry, honey, but de path done growed up."

Uncle Doc is six feet two and as strong as a lion. Whether he is 80 or if he is 90, he is young-looking for his age.

"No'm lady, I'se jes' don' know how old I is. Back in dem days didn't keep up with our ages. No record of the born. Yes'm I was a pretty good chunk of a boy when de war started."

Doc belonged to Edward Choate, who lived on Barron Forks, near Dutch Mills in the Southwest corner of Washington County. Barron Forks is made up from Fly Creek and the River Jordan Creek.

About 1849 Edward Choate came from Tennessee to Arkansas, where he had bought Aunt Marie [TR: 'a slave' marked out here] and her three sons, Doc, Abe, and Dave.

"Yes'm, we had a 100 acres or better all along the banks of de river and good valley land where we raised corn, potatoes, wheat, oats, an' 'bacco. Master Choate had three sons, I recollect, Jack, Sam, and Win. He had a lot of slaves. Some of dem was good, some was bad. An' old Mister Choate had a cat-a-nine-tails. He never did have to whup me, some of dem darkies did get whupped. Dar was one who was always dressing up in wimmins clothes and go walking down by de river.

"My mother was Maria. She worked part time in de kitchen and part time in de field. My mother had three boys and I 'member one of my sisters was sold as a slave. We darkies had cabins all along de river bank.

"During de War we all jes' stayed on de place. Mister Choate and Old Missy stayed too. After peace was made my mother and all of we went up to Prairie Grove to live.

"Yes'm, I voted every chance I got. I voted for Harrison for President. No'm, I don't know which Harrison. Yes'm, I vote Republican.

"I can't say much for these young darkies these times.

"I ben 'roun' some. I went to Caldwell, Kansas, two times. Farming is my occupation. Now we jes' live. I get $10 a month from the state. Yes'm, that there Jinney is my wife. Her mother Celia and she belonged to the Ballards of Cincinnati.

"No'm, I jes' can' tell how old I is. I know I was quite a chunk of a boy when de War started. Me and Mister Win, one of Mister Choate's boys, was 'bout de same age." (Winston Choate died in the spring of 1935 at the age of 94 years, according to a niece.)

The Choate place down on Barron Forks is still owned by one of the Choates, a grandson of the first owner, Edward Choate.

A granddaughter of Mr. Choate lives in Fayetteville and said that there are four or five graves on the old place where Negro slaves who belonged to her grandfather were buried, and the children on the place would never go near these graves. They thought they were haunted.

So when one asks Uncle Doc how old he is he will say, "I know I was jes' a chunk of a boy when de War started so I mus' be 'bout 83 nex' spring."

Aunt Jinney, his wife, sat on the porch and just rocked back and forth while Uncle Doc was talking. She didn't speak while Doc was speaking.

"Law, honey, I had good white folks. None of dem never struck their colored folks. No'm. Me an' my mother Celia belonged to Mister Ballard at Cincinnati. Old Missey's name was Miss Liza, an' she kept my ma in de house wid her to wait on her. Yes'm all de white folks always kept a little darkey in de house to wait on all of dem. Dem was good times 'fo' de War. Yes'm good times--plenty to eat. Good times. I was jes' a baby crawling on de flo' when de War come."

The interviewer didn't ask Uncle Doc when and why he went to Caldwell, Kansas the two times. She knew that Uncle Doc, big and strong, took another Negro's wife away from him and ran off with her to Kansas and there left her. Later he brought her to Arkansas. Jinney was his wife and took Uncle Doc back, but Gate-eye didn't take his wife back. Nor did the interviewer tell Uncle Doc that she had been to see old Gate-eye Fisher and had heard the long ago story of Uncle Doc taking his wife, and what a worrysome time he had. In an old record marked "Miscellaneous" in the Washington County Courthouse at Fayetteville, Arkansas, one can find this Emancipation paper:

"For and in consideration of the love and affection of my wife for my little Negro girl (a slave) named Celia, about two years old, I do by these presents henceforth and forever give to said Celia her liberty and freedom, and through fear of some mistake, mishap or accident, I now hereby firmly bind myself, heirs and representatives forever in accordance with this indenture of emancipation.

"In testimony whereof witness my hand and seal this 26th day of January 1846.

Signed: Thomas B. Ballard

Witnesses: Charles Baylor Sumet Mussett"

Jinney, wife of Doc Flowers, is the daughter of the said Celia. "Yes'm," said Jinney, "Miss Liza, my old Missy, always had my mother right by her side all the time to wait on her. She were always good to all her colored folks. No'm she'd never let anybody be mean to her colored folks."

Jinney must have learned the art of house keeping from Miss Liza, for her little three-room home that she and Doc rent for $4 a month is spotless. Maybe the "path is growed up with weeds," but one just can't blame that on Jinney.

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Frances Fluker, Edmondson, Arkansas Age: 77 [May 11 1938]

"I was born the 25th day of December 1860 in Marshall County, Mississippi. Our owners was Dr. George Wilson and Mistress Mary. They had one son I knowed, Dr. Wilson at Coldwater, Mississippi. My parents was Viney Perry and Dock Bradley.

"I never seen my pa. I heard about him since I been grown. He left when the War was going on and never went back. Mama had ten children and I am all that's living now. Old mistress set my name and age down in her Bible. I sent back and my niece just cut it out and sent it to me so I could get my pension. I pasted it in the front of my Bible. I was never sold. It was freedom when I first recollect.

"Ma was the cook for the white folks. Grandma Perry come from North Carolina I heard 'em say. She was a widow woman. When company come they would send us out to play. They never talked to us children, no ma'am, not 'fore us neither. I come a woman 'fore I knowed what it was. My sisters knowed better than tell me. They didn't tell me nothin'.

"When it wasn't company at ma's they was at work and singing. At night we was all tired and went to bed 'cause we had to be up by daybreak--children and all. They said it caused children's j'ints to be stiff sleeping up in the day. All old folks could tell you that.

"This young set ain't got no strength neither. Ma cooked and washed and raised five children up grown. The slaves didn't get nary thing give 'em in the way of land nor stock. They got what clothes they had and some provisions.

"Ma was ginger cake. They said pa was black. I don't know. Grandma was reddish and lighter still than ma. They said she was part Cherokee Indian. Her hair was smooth and pretty. She combed her hair with the fine comb to bring the oil out on it and make it slick. I recollect her combing her hair. It was long about on her shoulders.

"I heard about the Ku Klux but I never seed none of 'em. Ma said her owners was good to her. Ma never had but one husband.

"I come to Arkansas 1921. Mr. Passler in Coldwater, Mississippi had bought a farm at Onida. We had worked for him at Lula, Mississippi. Me and my husband come here. My husband died the first year. I cooked some in my younger days but field work and washing was my work mostly. I like' field work long as I was able to go.

"My first husband cleared up eighty acres of land. He and myself done it, we had help. We got in debt and lost it. He bought the place. That was in Pinola County close to Sardis. I had four children. One daughter living.

"What I think it was give me rheumatism was I picked cotton, broke it off frozen two weeks on the sleet. I picked two hundred pounds a day. I got numb and fell and they come by and got a doctor. He said it was from overwork. I got over that but I had rheumatism ever since.

"I learned to read. I went to Shiloah School--and church too--several terms. Mr. Will Dunlap was my first teacher. He was a white man. He run the school a good while but I don't know how long. My name is Frances Christiana Fluker. I been farming all my life, nothin' but farmin'. Never thought 'bout gettin' sick 'cause I knowed I couldn't.

"I jus' get $6 and that is all. It cost more to send get the commodities than it do to buy them. We don't get much of them. I needs clothes--union suits. 'Course I wears 'em all summer. If they would give me yarn and needles I could knit my socks. 'Course I can see and ain't doing nothing else. I needs a dress. I ain't got but this one dress."

NOTE: The two old beds were filthy with slick dirt. They had two chairs and a short bench around the stove and a trunk in which she kept the little yellow torn to pieces Bible tied around the back with a string. The large board door was kept wide open for light I suppose. There were no windows to the room.

I heard the reason she gets only $6 was because her daughter lives there and keeps two of her son's children and they try to get the young grandson work and help out and support his children and mother at least.

Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden Person interviewed: Ida May Fluker Route 6, Box 80, Pine Bluff, Arkansas Age: 83

"I was born in slavery times in Clark County, Alabama. Clover Hill was the county seat.

"Elias Campbell was old master. I know the first time I ever saw any plums, old master brought 'em. I 'member that same as yesterday.

"I 'member the same as if 'twas yesterday when the Yankees come. We chillun would hide behind the door. Had on blue suits with brass buttons. So you see I'm no baby.

"I 'member my mother and the other folks would go up to the big house and help make molasses. Didn't 'low us chillun to go but we'd slip up there anyway.

"Old missis' name Miss Annis. She was good to us.

"I didn't do nothin' but play around in the yard and tote wood. Used to tote water from the Wood Spring. Had a spring called Wood Spring.

"My mother was the cook and my grandma was the spinner. I used to weave after freedom.

"I know the Yankees come in there and got a lot of fodder. They was drivin' a lot of cows. We chillun would be scared of 'em--mama would be at the big house.

"Mama belonged to the Campbells and papa belonged to Davis Solomon, and I know every Christmas they let him come to see mama, and he'd bring me and my sister a red dress buttoned in the back. I 'member it same as if 'twas yesterday 'cause I was crazy 'bout them red dresses.

"I used to hear the folks talkin' 'bout patrollers. Yes ma'am, I heered that song

'Run nigger run Paddyrollers will ketch you Jes' 'fore day.'

I know you've heered that song.

"I heered papa talk about how he was sold. He say the overseer so mean he run off in the woods and eat blackberries for a week.

"I guess we had plenty to eat. I know mama used to fetch us somethin' to eat from the house. Old missis give it to her. I know I was glad to get it.

"When the people was freed they was so glad they went from house to house and prayed and give thanks to the Lord.

"Our folks stayed right there and worked on the shares.

"I never went to school but about two weeks. My papa was hard workin'. Other folks would let their chillun rest but he wouldn't let his chillun rest. He sure did work us hard.

"You know in them days people moved 'round so much they didn't have time to keep up no remembrance 'bout their ages. We didn't have no time to see 'bout no ages--had to work. That's the truth."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Wash Ford, Des Arc, Arkansas Age: 73 or 75?

"I was born close to Des Arc and Hickory Plains, seems like about half way. Mama's master was named Powell. Papa's master was Frank Ford. My parents was Fannie and Henry Ford. I was the oldest child. There was 6 boys, 4 girls of us.

"They didn't get anything after freedom. They kept on farming. They started working on shares. That was all they could do. If they expected anything I never heard it.

"I heard my mother say when I was small Papa was bouncing me up and down. He was lying on the floor playing like wid me. She looked up the road or 'cross the field one, and said, 'Yonder come some soldiers. What they coming here for?' Papa put me down and run. He hid. They didn't find him. It was soldiers from De Valls Bluff I judge. They made the colored men go wait on them and fight too, if they run up on one. That is what I heard.

"My father voted. He voted a Republican ticket. I do cause he did I reckon. I still vote. If the colored man could vote in the Primary it wouldn't be no better. They know better who to put in office, to run the offices right. I think it is right for a woman to vote.

"I been farming all my life. I was a section hand much as six months in all my life. I work at the veneer mills but they never run no more. I am having a hard time. I have high blood pressure. I can't pick cotton. I can't even get a mess of turnip greens. The Social Welfare helps me a little and I am janitor up town in two offices. They hand me a little pocket change. It amount to maybe $2 a month. I had that job four years. If I could work I would be on the farm. I could make a living there. I always did. I had plenty on the farm.

"Young folks don't take on no manners. The young folks take care of themselves. It is the old ones seeing a hard time now."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Wash Ford, Des Arc, Ark. Age: 75?

"One thing I remembers hearin' my folks talk bout. They had a leader hoeing cotton. His name was John. He was a fast hand. He hoe one row a piece and reach over and hoe the other. He'd get way ahead of the other hands. If they didn't keep up they get a whoopin. So he rest till they ketch up. Once he hoed up to a tree--big shade tree out in the field. He stuck his hoe in the root of the tree and a moccasin bit him bout that time. It bit him right on the toe. They took him up to the house but he died.

"I was born close to Des Arc and Hickory Plains. My parents was Henry and Fannie Ford. Her master was named Powell and his master was named Frank Ford. I was the oldest 'mong six boys and four girls. My folks didn't git nuthing. I don't think they expected freedom much. They heard they goiner be free and knowed they was fightin'. They didn't know what freedom be like. When they was set free at DeValls Bluff they signed up. They went back and went on farmin' lack nothin' ever happened. That what I heard em say when I was small boy.

"I voted--Republican ticket, I believe. If I vote that what I vote. I reckon the women ought to vote. I still vote that is if I sees fit to vote.

"My father run from the soldiers. He didn't go to the war as I ever knowd of.

"I been farmin' all my life till I got so nocount I ain't able to do nothin' no more. I worked on the section bout six months. I worked some off an on at the veneer mill till it shut down. I does a little janitor work now and the Welfare help me a little.

"The present conditions good if a fellow able to pick cotton but if they run through with it times be hard in the heart of the winter cause they cain't git no credit. Times is hard for old folks."

Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor Person interviewed: Judia Fortenberry 712 Arch Street, Little Rock, Arkansas Age: 75 Occupation: Field hand [May 21 1938]

[HW: Slaves Allowed to Visit]

"I was born three miles west of Hamburg in Ashley County, Arkansas, in the year 1859, in the month of October. I don't know just what day of the month it was.

"My mother was named Indiana Simms and my father was named Burrell Simms. My father's mother was named Ony Simms, and my mother's mother was named Maria Young. I don't know what the names of their parents was.

"My mother's master was named Robert Tucker. My father's master was named Hartwell Simms. Their plantations were pretty close together, but I don't know how my father and my mother got together. I guess they just happened to meet up with each other. The slaves from the two plantations were allowed to visit one another. After their marriage, the two continued to belong to different masters. Every Sunday, they would visit one another. My father used to come to visit his wife every Sunday and through the week at night.

"My mother had ten children.

Houses

"I was born in a log house with one room. It was built with a stick and dirt chimney. It had plank floors. They didn't have nothin' much in the way of furniture--homemade beds, stools, tables. We had common pans and tin plates and tin cans to use for dishes. The cabin had one window and one door.

Patrollers

"I have heard my mother and father tell many a story of the pateroles. But I can't remember them. My father said they used to go into the slave cabins and take folks out and whip them. They'd go at night and get 'em out and whip 'em.

How Freedom Came

"I was so little that I don't know much about how freedom came. I just know he took us all and went somewheres and made him a crop. Went to another man. Didn't stay on the place where he was a slave. He never got anything when he was freed. I never heard of any of the slaves getting anything.

Schooling

"I went to free school after the War. I just went along during the vacation when they weren't doing any farming. That is all the education I got. I can't tell how many seasons I went--four or five, I reckon. I never did go any whole season. I never had much chance to go to school. People didn't send their children to school much in those days. I went to school in Monticello, but most of my schooling was in country schools.

Occupation

"When I first went to work, I picked cotton. That is at a place out near Hamburg. I picked cotton about ten or fifteen years. Then I went to town--Monticello. I washed and ironed. About forty-five years ago, I came to Little Rock, and have been here every since. Washing and ironing has been my support. I have sometimes cooked.

Opinions

"I don't know what I think about the young people. Seems to me they coming to nothing. Lot of them do wrong just because they got a chance to do it. I'm a christian. I belong to the A.M.E.'s. You know how they do.

Song

1

I belong to the band That good old Christian band Thank God I belong to the band.

Chorus

Steal away home to Jesus I ain't got long to stay here.

2

There'll I'll meet my mother, My good old christian mother, Mother, how do you do; Thank God I belong to the band.

I can't remember the music. But that's on old song we used to sing 'way back yonder. I can't remember any more of the verses. You got enough anyhow."

Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden Person interviewed: Emma Foster 1200 N. Magnolia, Pine Bluff, Arkansas Age: 80

"Yes'm, I was born in time of slavery--seven years before surrender. No'm, I wasn't born in Arkansas. Born in Claiborne Parish, Louisiana.

"I remember hearin' the big guns shoot. I was small and I didn't know what it was only by what they told me.

"My parents belonged to the Harts. My mother run off and left me, a year-old baby.

"I remember better when I was young than I do now.

"After I got big enough--you know, a little old nasty somethin' runnin' around in the yard--after I got big enough, they took me in the house to rock the cradle, and I stayed there till I was twenty-three. I would a stayed longer but they was so cruel to me.

"I didn't know nothin'. I run off and stayed with a colored preacher and his family not far away. You know I was crazy. One day the preacher said some of his members was objectin' to me stayin' there and he was goin' to tell my white folks where I was. And sure enough, he did, and one morning I was out in the field and I saw the son-in-law comin'. So I went back and worked for him and his wife.

"Me? All I did do was farmin' when I was young.

"Oh, I been in Arkansas 'bout fifty years. My oldest boy was fourteen when I come here and he is sixty-four now.

"No, honey, I can't cook now. I'd burn it up. I used to cook. It's a poor dog that won't wag its own tail.

"All I know is I had a hard time, I been married three times. My last husband was a preacher and he was so mean I left him. I told him if all preachers was like him, hell was full of 'em.

"I went to Chicago and lived with my son a while but I didn't like it, so I come back here and I been here right in the yard with Mrs. O'Neal eight years washin' and ironin'--anything come to hand.

"Now if there's goin' to be a death in my family, I can see that 'fore it happens. I was out in the potato patch one day and it started to rain and I come in and somethin' just bore down on me and I started to cry. I didn't know why. I thought, 'Oh, Lord, is somethin' goin' to happen to my son?' But instead it was my grandson. He got killed that evenin'."

Name of interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden Subject: Birthmarks Story:--Information

This information given by: Emma Foster (C) Place of residence: 1200 N. Magnolia Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas Occupation: Laundress Age: 80 [TR: Personal information moved from bottom of first page.]

"I know I marked one of my babies with beer. It was 'cause I wanted some beer and couldn't get it. And when it was born it had a place on the back of its neck looked like beer and she just foamed at the mouth. And when she was about a week old I got some beer and give it to her with a teaspoon and she quit foamin'.

"And another time there was a boy on the place had a finger that the doctor had done took the bone out. He and I used to love to rassle (wrestle) and one day he said, 'Oh, Emma, you hurt my finger.' And like a fool, you know I took his hand and just rubbed that finger. And do you know, when my baby was born it had six fingers on each hand."

Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden Person interviewed: Ira Foster 2000 W. Eureka Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas Age: 76

"I was born in slavery because when the people come back from the War I was a pretty good sized yellin' boy when freedom come.

"I heerd 'em tellin' 'bout my young master comin' back from the War.

"Yes ma'am, I was sure born in Arkansas; I won't tell no lie 'bout that.

"My mother's old master was named Foster and after she married she belonged to Hezekiah Bursey.

"She was born in Alabama and she said she was pretty badly treated.

"She was the cook and then she was the weaver and the spinner.

"I never have been to school. Never did learn nothin'. My father put me to work soon as I was big enough.

"I always done farm work all my life till 'bout twenty years ago as near as I can come at it. I went to saw millin' and I didn't do nothin' but manufacture lumber. I worked for the Camden Lumber Company eighteen years and never caused 'em a minute's trouble.

"If I just had enough to live on I wouldn't do a thing but just sit around 'cause I think I done worked my share. Why, some of the white folks say, 'Foster, you ought to have a pension of thirty or forty dollars a month.' And I say, 'Why?' And they say, 'Cause you look just like a darky that has worked hard in this world.'

"I suffers with the rheumatism in my right leg clear up and down. Seems like sometimes I can't hardly get around."

FOLKLORE SUBJECTS Name of interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden Subject: Songs of Pre-War Days Story:--Information

This information given by: Ira Foster Place of residence: 2000 W. Eureka, Pine Bluff, Arkansas Occupation: None Age: 76 [TR: Personal information moved from bottom of first page.]

"'You may call me Raggedy Pat 'Cause I wear this raggedy hat, And you may think I'm a workin' But I ain't.'

I used to hear my uncle sing that. That's all the words I can remember."

Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor Person interviewed: Leonard Franklin Temporary: 301 Ridgeway, Little Rock, Arkansas Permanent: Warren, Arkansas Age: 70

[HW: Mother Whipped Overseer]

"I don't know exactly the year I was born. But my father told me I was born since the Civil War. I am seventy years old. They always tell me when my birthday come 'round it will be in January--the eighteenth of January.

"My father's name was Abe Franklin and my mother's name was Lucy Franklin. I know my father's mother but I didn't ever know his father. His mother's name was Maria Franklin. My mother's father was Harris Pennington. I never did see her mother and never did see her.

"I was born in Warren, Arkansas. My mother and father were born in Warren. That is on the outer edge of Warren. My mother's slavery farm was on what they called Big Creek. It is named Franklin Creek. Two or three miles of it ran through Franklin's Farm.

"My father's master was Al Franklin. And my mother's master's name was Hill Pennington. One of Hill Pennington's sons was named Fountain Pennington. He lives about five miles from Warren now on the south highway.

"My mother had about three masters before she got free. She was a terrible working woman. Her boss went off deer hunting once for a few weeks. While he was gone, the overseer tried to whip her. She knocked him down and tore his face up so that the doctor had to 'tend to him. When Pennington came back, he noticed his face all patched up and asked him what was the matter with it. The overseer told him that he went down in the field to whip the hands and that he just thought he would hit Lucy a few licks to show the slaves that he was impartial, but she jumped on me and like to tore me up. Old Pennington said to him, 'Well, if that is the best you could do with her, damned if you won't just have to take it.'

"Then they sold her to another man named Jim Bernard. Bernard did a lot of big talk to her one morning. He said, 'Look out there and mind you do what you told around her and step lively. If you don't, you'll get that bull whip.' She said to him, 'Yes, and we'll both be gittin' it.' He had heard about her; so he sold her to another man named Cleary. He was good to her; so she wasn't sold no more after that.

"There wasn't many men could class up with her when it come to working. She could do more work than any two men. There wasn't no use for no one man to try to do nothin' with her. No overseer never downed her.

"They didn't kill niggers then--not in slavery times. Not 'round where my folks were. A nigger was money. Slaves were property. They'd paid money to git 'im and money to keep 'im and they couldn't 'ford to kill 'em up. When they couldn't manage them they sold them and got their money out of them.

"The white people started to Texas with the colored folks near the end of the war and got as far as El Dorado. Word come to 'em that freedom had come and they turned back.

"A paterole come in one night before freedom and asked for a drink of water. He said he was thirsty. He had a rubber thing on and drank two or three buckets of water. His rubber bag swelled up and made his head or the thing that looked like his head under the hood grow taller. Instead of gettin' 'fraid, mother threw a shovelful of hot ashes on him and I'll tell you he lit out from there and never did come back no more.

"Right after the war my folks went to work on the farm. They hired out by the month. [HW: My father] didn't never say how much he got. When they had a settlement at the end of the year, the boss said his wages didn't amount to nothing because his living took it up. Said he had ate it all up. After that, he took my mother's advice and took up part of his wages in a cow and so on, and then he'd always have something to show for his work at the end of the year when it come settling up time. It was ten years before he got a start. It was hard to get ahead then because the niggers had just got free and didn't have nothin' and didn't know nothin'. My father had two brothers that just stayed on with the white folks. They stayed on till they got too old to work, then they had to go. Couldn't do no good then. My father was always treated well by his master.

"I got my schooling at Warren. I went to the tenth grade. Could have gone farther but didn't want to. I was looking at something I thought was better than education. When I got of age, I come up here and just run about. I was what you might say pretty fine. I was looking so high I couldn't find nothing to suit me. I went 'round to a number of places and none of them suited me. So I went on back home and been there ever since.

"I married once in my life. My wife is still living. My wife is a good woman. No, if I got rid of this one, wouldn't do to take another one. I am the father of ten living children. I made a living by doing anything that come up--housework, gardening, anything.

"I don't get no government help. I don't want none yet. God has seen me this far. I think He'll see me to the end. He is good to me; He's given me such a good time I couldn't help but serve Him. Only been sick once in seventy years.

"I belong to the Baptist church. God is my boss now. He has brought me this far and He's able to carry me across"

Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden Person interviewed: Eliza Frazier 2003 Saracen Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas Age: 88?

"I don't know when I was born or 'zackly how old I is, but I was born in South Carolina and come here before the War.

"I belonged to Wiley Mosley and he brought me and my mother and my sister here to Arkansas. I don't 'member it at all 'cause I was a baby, but I know what Wiley Mosley and my mother told me.

"Settled in Redland Township. That's what they called it. He bought a plantation there. There was three brothers come to this country and they didn't live very far from each other.

"I 'member hearin' 'em talk 'bout the War and one time I heered the guns a poppin'. They said they was just passin' through. I was just a small girl but I 'member it. I seed the Yankees too. I 'member they'd come up in the yard on hosses and jump down and go in the smokehouse and take the meat and go to the dairy house and get the milk.

"Old master was gone to the War. I 'member when he was gwine and I 'member when he come back. Old missis said he was up in Missouri. Got shot right through the foot once. I know he come home and stayed 'til he was well, then he went back. I don't know how long he stayed but he went back--I know that. And he come back after the War--I 'member that.

"I 'member one time when I upset the cradle. Miss Jane wouldn't 'low me to take the baby up but I rocked the cradle. And one time I reckon I rocked it too hard and it turned over. Miss Jane heard it time it hit the floor and she come runnin'. I was under the house by that time but she called me out and whipped me and told me to get back in the house. I know I didn't turn it over no more.

"The Yankees never said nothin' to me--talked to my mother though, and old mis'.

"They said they was fightin' to free the niggers. There was a boy on the place and while old master was gone to war, he'd just go and come and get the news. He didn't do that when old master was home. I know he brought the news when peace declared. Patrollers got him one night.

"I 'member when peace declared ever'body went around shoutin' and hollerin', 'The niggers is free, the niggers is free!'

"Our folks stayed there on the place right smart while after freedom. I 'member I was gwine out to the field and Woodson, he was the baby I upset, he wanted to go along and wanted me to tote him and I know old master said, 'Put him down and let him walk.'

"They told me I was twenty when I was married--the white folks told me. I know my mother asked how old I was and they said I was 'bout twenty. I 'member it well enough.

"I never went to school but I knowed my ABC's and could read some in the first reader. I ain't forgot about it. I thinks about it sometimes.

"The biggest work I has done is farm work.

"I've had nine chillun and raised all of 'em but one."

NOTE:

Eliza lives with her son who is well educated and a retired city mail carrier and he is now sending three children to the A.M.& N. College here.

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Mary Frazier, near Biscoe, Arkansas Age: 60

"My parents was Neily and Amos Hamilton. They lived in Marshall County, about forty-eight miles from Memphis. They belong to people by that same name.

"I heard them all say how they come to be way out in Mississippi. The Thompsons owned Grandma Diana and her husband in South Carolina. Master Jefferies went there from Mississippi and bought grandma. They let all twelve of her children go in the sale some way but they didn't sell grandpa. He grieved so till the same man come back a long time afterward and bought him. Jefferies was good to them. I was born in Mississippi. Grandma cooked all the time. Mama and papa both worked in the field. I heard grandma say every one of her children was born in South Carolina. Mr. Jefferies, one of the younger set, lived in Clarendon, Arkansas. Since I come to this country I seen him. I lived over there pretty close by.

"I got no 'pinion worth telling about our young folks. They want to have a big time when they are young. All young folks is swift on foot that way. Times is funny. Funniest times ever been in my life. Is times right now? Ain't no credit no more. That one thing making times so hard. Money is the whole thing now'days."

El Dorado District FOLKLORE SUBJECTS Name of Interviewer: Pernella Anderson Subject: TALES OF SLAVERY DAYS Story:--Information [Feb 6 1937]

This information given by: Tyler Frazier Place of Residence: Ouachita County Occupation: Domestic Age: 75 [TR: Personal information moved from bottom of first page.]

Ah wus a young nigger bout nine or ten years ole when de slaves wus freed. Ah got freed in Texas. We went tuh Texas on a steamboat an dey wuz a lot uv people on de steamboat. We sho 'joyed dat trip. We went wid our mistress an moster. Dey wuz de Lides, Mistuh John Lide's parents. De Lides run one uv de bigges' stores in Camden now, if yo knows dem dey is de same Lides. One uv de boys wuz named Blackie Lide, one John Lide, one named Hugh Lide. Dem wuz granchillun. Hannah Lide, Minnie Watts now, dey wuz de granchillun. Now let me see, one Miss wuz named Emma Lide. Dem sho wuz good fokes. Ole miss died when we wuz on ouh way tuh dis country. An ole moster been daid since way back yondah. But when we got tuh dis country we settled bout seven or eight miles fum Camden in Ouachita County. Ole moster wuz named Peter Lide. We jes went tuh school nough tuh learn our A.B.C.'s cause we had tuh work in de fiel. We carried our meat tuh de fiel an cooked hot ash cake fuh dinnuh. We kep' spare ribs and backbone all de year roun'. We pickled de backbone an dem spareribs. We worked evah day. Wednesday night wuz wash night. Dat's when de women would do de washin. We'd go tuh de fiel way fo day.

Back in dem days we had er log church. Ah went in mah shirt-tail till ah wuz six. Mis Lide made mah fust pair uv britches. Ah membuhs one time ah went to Miss Lide's garden an stole watuh mellons. Ah put em in a sack an when ah want tuh come outn de garden ah got ovah de fence an got hung an moster caught me. Ah'm tellin de truth. Ah aint had no desire tuh steal since.

Moster Peter Lide's favorite song wus dis: "Hit's er long way tuh heaven." Ah kin mos heah him singin hit now. He wuz a Christian man. He wuz white and owned slaves but he wuz a good Christian. We didn' know bout no money. When we got sick dat's when we got biscuit. We didn' know bout Thanksgiving day and Christmas. We heard de white fokes tawkin bout hit but we didn' know whut hit meant.

When anybody would die dey made de coffin. Didn' have no funeral, no singin, no nothin' jes put dem in de groun. Dat wus all. Nebber stop work. We nevah plowed er hoss. We used oxen teams. We made good crops den. We raised all our sumpin tuh eat.

When ah wus a lil' bitsy boy Mrs. Lide use tuh tell us stories at night. She give us our fireside trainin. She tole us when anybody wuz a tawkin not tuh but in. Ah'm seventy five yers ole now an ah aint nevah fuhgot dat. We ole fokes aint got long tuh stay heah now. We lives in de days dats past. All we knows tuh tawk bout is what we use tuh do. When mah time is up ah is ready tuh go cause ah is done mah bes' fuh mah God, mah country and mah race.

Interviewer: Beulah Sherwood Hagg Person interviewed: Aunt Mittie Freeman Aged: 86 Home: 320 Elm St., North Little Rock. In home of granddaughter. [Aug 27 1937]

Story by Aunt Mittie Freeman

"Howdy, honey. Come on in and set down. It's awful hot, ain't it? What you come to see me for? You says old uncle Boss tell you I'se old slave lady? That's right, that's right. Us old war folks never fergits the others. Anything you wants to know, honey, jest go on and ax me. I got the bestest remembrance.

Orange county, Mississippi was where I was borned at but I been right here in Arkansas before sech thing as war gonna be. In slavery, it was, when my white folks done come to Camden. You know where that is?--Camden on the Ouachita? That's the place where we come. Yes Ma'am, it was long before the war when the doctor--I means Dr. Williams what owned my pappy and all us younguns--say he going to Arkansas. Theys rode in the fine carriages. Us slaves rode in ox wagons. Lord only knows how long it tuck a-coming. Every night we camped. I was jest a little tike then but I has a remembrance of everything. The biggest younguns had to walk till theys so tired theys couldn't hardly drag they feets; them what had been a-riding had to get out the ox wagon and walk a far piece; so it like this we go on.

Dr. Williams always wanted to keep his slaves together. He was sure good man. He didn't work his slaves hard like some. My pappy was a kind of a manager for Doctor. Doctor tended his business and pappy runned the plantation where we lived at. Our good master died before freedom. He willed us slaves to his chilrun. You know--passeled (parcelled) us out, some to this child, some to that. I went to his daughter, Miss Emma. Laws-a-Mercy, how I wishes I could see her face onct more afore I dies. I heerd she married rich. Unh-unh! I'd shore love to see her onct more.

After old master died, poor old pappy got sent to another plantation of the fam'ly. It had a overseer. He was a northerner man and the meanest devil ever put foot on a plantation. My father was a gentleman; yes ma'am, he was jest that. He had been brung up that-a-way. Old master teached us to never answer back to no white folks. But one day that overseer had my pappy whipped for sompin he never done, and pappy hit him.

So after that, he sent pappy down to New Orleans to be sold. He said he would liked to kill pappy, but he didn't dare 'cause he didn't owned him. Pappy was old. Every auction sale, all the young niggers be sold; everybody pass old pappy by. After a long time--oh, maybe five years--one day they ax pappy--"Are you got some white folks back in Arkansas?" He telled them the Williams white folks in Camden on the Ouachita. Theys white. After while theys send pappy home. Miss, I tells you, nobody never seen sech a home coming. Old Miss and the young white folks gathered round and hugged my old black pappy when he come home; they cry on his shoulder, so glad to git him back. That's what them Williams folks thought of their slaves. Yes ma'am.

Old Miss was name Miss 'liza. She skeered to stay by herself after old master died. I was took to be her companion. Every day she wanted me to bresh her long hair and bathe her feet in cool water; she said I was gentle and didn't never hurt her. One day I was a standing by the window and I seen smoke--blue smoke a rising over beyond a woods. I heerd cannons a-booming and axed her what was it. She say: "Run, Mittie, and hide yourself. It's the Yanks. Theys coming at last, Oh lordy!" I was all incited (excited) and told her I didn't want to hide, I wanted to see 'em. "No" she say, right firm. "Ain't I always told you Yankees has horns on their heads? They'll get you. Go on now, do like I tells you." So I runs out the room and went down by the big gate. A high wall was there and a tree put its branches right over the top. I clim up and hid under the leaves. They was coming, all a marching. The captain opened our big gate and marched them in. A soldier seen me and said "Come on down here; I want to see you." I told him I would, if he would take off his hat and show me his horns.

The day freedom came, I was fishing with pappy. My remembrance is sure good. All a-suddent cannons commence a-booming, it seem like everywhere. You know what that was, Miss? It was the fall of Richmond. Cannons was to roar every place when Richmond fell. Pappy jumps up, throws his pole and everything, and grabs my hand, and starts flying towards the house. "It's victory," he keep on saying. "It's freedom. Now we'es gwine be free." I didn't know what it all meant.

It seem like it tuck a long time fer freedom to come. Everything jest kept on like it was. We heard that lots of slaves was getting land and some mules to set up fer theirselves; I never knowed any what got land or mules nor nothing.

We all stayed right on the place till the Yankees came through. They was looking for slaves what was staying on. Now we was free and had to git off the plantation. They packed us in their big amulance ... you say it wasn't a amulance,--what was it? Well, then, their big covered army wagons, and tuck us to Little Rock. Did you ever know where the old penitentiary was? Well, right there is where the Yanks had a great big barracks. All chilluns and growd womens was put there in tents. Did you know that the fust real free school in Little Rock was opened by the govment for colored chullens? Yes ma'am, and I went to it, right from the day we got there.

They took pappy and put him to work in the big commissary; it was on the corner of Second and Main Street. He got $12.00 a month and all the grub we could eat. Unh, Unh! Didn't we live good? I sure got a good remembrance, honey. Can't you tell? Yes, Ma'am. They was plenty of other refugees living in them barracks, and the govment taking keer of all of 'em.

I was a purty big sized girl by then and had to go to work to help pappy. A man name Captain Hodge, a northerner, got a plantation down the river. He wanted to raise cotton but didn't know how and had to get colored folks to help him. A lot of us niggers from the barracks was sent to pick. We got $1.25 a hundred pounds. What did I do with my money? Is you asking me that? Bless your soul, honey, I never seen that money hardly long enough to git it home. In them days chilluns worked for their folks. I toted mine home to pappy and he got us what we had to have. That's the way it was. We picked cotton all fall and winter, and went to school after picking was over.

When I got nearly growd, we moved on this very ground you is a setting on. Pappy had a five year lease,--do you know what that was, I don't--but anyhow, they told him he could have all the ground he could clear and work for five years and it wouldn't cost him nothing. He built a log house and put in a orchard. Next year he had a big garden and sold vegables. Lord, miss, them white ladies wouldn't buy from nobody but pappy. They'd wait till he got there with his fresh beans and roasting ears. When he got more land broke out, he raised cotton and corn and made it right good. His name was Harry Williams. He was a stern man, and honest. He was named for his old master. When my brothers got growed they learned shoemakers trade and had right good business in Little Rock. But when pappy died, them boys give up that good business and tuck a farm--the old Lawson place--so to make a home for mammy and the little chilluns.

I married Freeman. Onliest husban ever I had. He died last summer. He was a slave too. We used to talk over them days before we met. The K.K.K. never bothered us. They was gathered together to bother niggers and whites what made trouble. If you tended to your own business, they's let you alone.

No ma'am, I never voted. My husband did. Yes ma'am, I can remember when they was colored men voted into office. Justice of Peace, county clerks, and, er--er--that fellow that comes running fast when somebody gets killed. What you call him? Coroner? Sure, that's him. I know that, 'cause I seen them a-setting in their offices.

We raised our fam'ly on a plantation. That's the bestest place for colored chilluns. Yes ma'am. My five boys stayed with me till they was grown. They heerd about the Railroad shops and was bound theys going there to work. Ben--that was my man--and me couldn't make it by ourselfs, so we come on back to this little place where we come soon after the war. He was taken with a tumor on his brains last summer and died in two weeks. He didn't know nothing all that time. My onliest boy what stayed here died jest two weeks after his pa. All them others went to Iowa after the big railroad strike here. They was out of work for many years; they didn't like no kind of work but railroad, after they been in the shops.

How I a-living now? You wants to know, honest? Say honey, is you a relief worker--one of them welfare folkses? Lor' God, how I needs help! Honey, last summer when my husband and son die they wasn't nothin' to put on 'em to bury in. I told the Welfare could I get something clean and whole to bury my dead; honey chile, it's the gospel truth, it was two weeks after they was buried when they brought me the close (clothes). Theys told me then I would get $10.00 a month, but in all this time now, I only had $5.00 one time. I lives with my daughter here in this house, but her man been outen work so long he couldn't keep up the payments and theys 'bout to loose it. Lordy, where'll we go? I made big garden in the spring of the year, and sold a heap. Hot summer burnt everything up, now. Yessum, that $5.00 the Reliefers give me--I bought my garden stuff with it.

I got the rheumatiz a-making the garden. It look like I'm done. I knowed a old potion. It made of pokeberry juice and whiskey. Good whiskey. Not old cheap corn likker. Yessum, you takes fine whiskey--'bout half bottle, and fills up with strained pokeberry juice. Tablespoon three times a day. Look-a-here, miss. Look at these old arms go up and down now. I kin do a washing along with the youngish womens.

Iffen you wants to know what I thinks of the young folks I tells you. Look at that grandchile a-setting there. She fourteen and know more right now than I knowed in my whole life. Yes ma'am! She can sew on a machine and make a dress in one day. She read in a book how to make sumthin to eat and go hatch it up. Theys fast, too. Ain't got no time for olds like me. Can't find no time to do nothin' for me. People now makes more money than in old days, but the way they makes it ain't honest. No'am, honey, it jest plain ain't. Old honest way was to bend the back and bear down on the hoe.

Did you ask somethin' 'bout old time songs? Sure did have purty music them days. It's so long, honey, I jest can't 'member the names, 'excusing one. It was "Hark, from the Tombs a Doleful Sound." It was a burying song; wagons a-walking slow like; all that stuff. It was the most onliest song they knowed. They was other music, though. Could they play the fiddle in them days, unh, unh! Lordy, iffen I could take you back and show you that handsome white lady what put me on the floor and learned me to dance the contillion!

I'm a-thinking we're a-living in the last days, honey, what does you think? Yes, Mam! We sure is living in the seventh seal. The days of tribulations is on us right now. Nothing make like it used to. I sure would be proud iffen I knowed I had a living for the balance of my days. I got a clean and a clear heart--a clean and clear heart. Be so to your neighbors and God will make it up to you. He sure will, honey."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Mattie Fritz, Clarendon, Arkansas Age: 79

"I was born at Duncan, Arkansas. Mother died when I was a baby. Old slavery black 'Mammy' raised me. I called her 'Mammy'. My father was born in the State of Mississippi. He got loose there at 'mancipation. His master Jack Oates got killed in battle. They brung him home and buried him in the garden. Down close to Duncan on the place. I played in the yard wid Mr. Jack Oates, Jr. when we was little fellars. Father's master in Tennessee was Bill Tyler. My uncle went back to Tennessee to them. His name was Tyler Oates. Mr. Jack Gates, Sr. used to pat me and call me his little nigger. We thought the world and all of our white folks. We sure did. Some of 'em 'round 'bout Helena they say now. Mr. Jack, Jr., he had two boys and he was a widower.

"My own dear mother was Jane. My father called hisself Bill Tyler. My stepmother was Liddy. The woman what raised me was 'Mammy' all I ever knowed. But her name was Luckadoo.

"Mr. Tyler got killed. Pa had to stay on take care of his mistress. He got sold. Then she died. Then mother died. Jack Oates went to my father and brung him to Mississippi, then to Arkansas.

"Master Jack Tyler hid out. The Yankees come at night and caught him there and shot him. His wife lived about two more years. She grieved about him. They took everything and searched the house. My pa was hid under the house. They rumbled down in the cellar and pretty nigh seen him once. He was a little bit er black fellar scroughed back in the dark. All what saved him he wore a black sorter coat. They couldn't see him so good. Way he said they would took him to wait on them and be in the fights too. Them Yankees took Massa Jack Tyler off and sont him back in a while. She had him buried in the garden. She didn't know it was him.

"'Mammy' was a slavery woman. She was sold first time from a neighbor man to a neighbor man. He was an old man. She ploughed and rolled logs. Then she was sold to Master Luckadoo close to Holly Grove. They named her Eloise, and she was a farm woman. She was so good to me. She was a worker and never took time to tell me about old times. She said Luckadoo never whooped her. A storm come and blowed a limb down killed her granddaughter and broke my leg. The same storm killed their mule. She raised a orphan boy too. She died from the change of life but she was old, gray headed. Since I'm older I think she had a tumor. 'Cause she was old when she took me on.

"I gets ten dollars from the Welfare. I ain't goiner say nothin' for 'em nor nothin' agin 'em. They's betwix' and between no 'count and good.

"Times too fast. I can't keep up wid them. 'Betwix' and between the fat and the lean.' Some do very well I reckon."