FOLKLORE SUBJECTS (continued 2)

“Mother never talked much about slavery other than I have told you. She said during of the War women split and sawed rails and laid fences all winter like men. Food got scarce. They sent milk to the soldiers. Meat was scarce. After she was free she went on like she had been living at John McAlway’s. She said she didn’t know how to start doing for herself.

“Some of our young generation is all right and some of them is too thoughtless. Times is too fast. Folks is shortening their days by fast living. Hurting their own bodies. Forty years ago folks lived like we ought to be living now.”

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Pauline Howell Nickname Pearl Brinkley, Arkansas Age: 65 or 70?

“I was born in Paris, Tennessee and come to Arkansas when I was a child. I don’t know how old I am but my mama knowed ’bout when I was born. It warnt long after the war. I past sixty-five and it is nearer seventy from what she said. She ain’t been dead long. She was about a hundred years old. I. C. switch killed her. She was going cross there to Fisher Body and the switch engine struck her head. She dropped something and stooped to pick it up or the engine wouldn’t touched her. She lived in Memphis.

“She was born at Oaks, Tennessee. She took me down to see the cabin locks where she was born. They had rotted down and somebody lived in the big house. It had gone to rack then pretty bad. My father’s master was George Harris. He was Governor of Tennessee. My mother’s mistress at Oaks was Miss Ann LaGuion (or maybe Gwion). I never heard her husband’s name. They had several farms and on each farm was the cabin locks (little houses all in a row or two rows). The houses was exactly alike. Grandma cooked for the white folks and mama nursed. The baby was a big fat heavy sort, a boy, and it was so heavy she couldn’t hardly pick it up. She had to carry it around all day long. When night come she was wore out. There was several of them. When she go to their houses in Memphis they honor her. They take her down town and buy her shoes and dresses. Buy her whatever she say she want. They say they was proud of her. She was a little black guinea woman (low and stocky). Not long go Mr. (white man) in Brinkley asked me when my ma coming back here. Said he ain’t seed her for so long. I tole him she was dead. He said he have to go tell Mrs. ____ (his wife). She come out here and stay and piece quilts. She sewed so nice. Made pretty little stitches. She’d take the most time and pains fixing the pieces together to look pretty. She’d set there and sew and me over there and tell me bout how she was raised and I’d cry. Cry cause she had so hard a time when she was a girl.

“The old master sent my father to Liverpool, England to bury his money. He was his own son anyhow. Sent him with his money to keep the Yankees from taking it. My aunt, my father and Uncle Jesse all his own children. Course old mistress love them little children like her own. She couldn’t help herself.

“Mariah Steed went in Governor Harrises name after freedom. So did Randall Travis Harris.

“My mama said she was never sold but her sister and her children were. She was put upon the auction stile and all her little children. A man in Mobile, Alabama bought her. They never did see nor hear tell of her no more. The reason they sold her was she killed two men overseers. They couldn’t manage her. The last one was whipping her with a black snake whip and she grabbed him. Grabbed his privates and pulled ’em out by the roots. That the way she killed both the overseers. Cause she knowed that was show death. My mama said that was the nicest little soft man—the last man she killed. She said he just clum the walls in so much misery that night.

“She said they would whisper after they go to bed. They used pine torches for lights. They had to cover up the fire—cover up fire in the ashes so it be coals to kindle a fire in the morning—put out the light pretty early. Old master come stand round outside see if they all gone to bed.

“When freedom—my mama said old master called all of ’em to his house and he said: ‘You all free, we ain’t got nothing to do wid you no more. Go on away. We don’t whoop you no more, go on your way.’ My mama said they go on off then they come back and stand around jess lookin’ at him an’ old mistress. They give ’em something to eat and he say: ‘Go on away, you don’t belong to us no more you been freed.’

“They go way and they kept coming back. They didn’t have no place to go and nothing to eat. From what she said they had a terrible time. She said it was bad times. Some took sick and had no ’tention and died. Seemed like it was four or five years before they got to places they could live. They all got scattered.

“She said they did expect something from freedom but the only thing old master give Jesse was a horse and bridle and saddle. It was new. Old master every time they go back say: ‘You all go on away. You been set free. You have to look out for your selves now.’

“The only way I know this is I remembers from hearin’ my dear old mama tell me when she come here to see me. I was too little. I guess I wasn’t born till two or three years, maybe longer than that, after freedom.

“After my son died here I get $2.50 a month, just my house rent. I work out when I can get something to do. Work is so scarce I hardly get a living.

“If you could see my brother in Little Rock he could tell you a heap he remembers. He is white headed, keeps his hair cut close and goes dressed up all the time. They say he is a good old man. He does public work in Little Rock. Henry Travis is his son. His phone is 4–5353. His street is 3106 Arch. My brother is really born a slave, I ain’t. Ask for E. K. Travis, that is his name. He can tell you bout all you want to know.”

JAN 29 1938 Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Molly Hudgens DeValls Bluff, Arkansas Age: Born in 1868

“I was born in Clarendon in 1868. My mother was sold to Judge Allen at Bihalia, N. C. and brought to Arkansas. The Cunninghams brought father from Tennessee when they moved to this State. His mother died when he was three months old and the white mistress had a baby three weeks older en him so she raised my father. She nursed him with Gus Cunningham. My father had us call them Grandma, Aunt Indiana, and Aunt Imogene.

“When I was seven or eight years old I went to see them at Roe. When I first come to know how things was, father had bought a place—home and piece of land west of Clarendon and across the river. I don’t know if the Cunninghams ever give him some land or a mule or cow or not. He never said. His owner was Moster John Henry Cunningham.

“My father was a medium light man but not as light as I am. My mother was lighter than I am. I heard her say her mother did the sewing for all on her owner’s place in North Carolina. My mother was a house girl. The reason she was put up to be sold she was hired out and they put her in the field to work. A dispute rose over her some way so her owner sold her when she was eighteen years old. Her mother was crying and begging them not to sell her but it didn’t do no good she said. After the war was over she got somebody to write back and ask about her people. She got word about her sister and aunt and uncle. She never seen none of them after she was sold. Never did see a one of her people again. She was sold to Judge Allen for a house girl. His wife was dead. My mother sewed at Judge Allen’s and raised two little colored children he bought somewhere cheap. He had a nephew that lived with him.

“Mr. Felix Allen and some other of his kin folks, one of them made me call him ‘Tuscumby Bob.’ I said it funny and they would laugh at me. Judge Allen went to Memphis and come home and took smallpox and died. I heard my mother say she seen him crying, sitting out under a tree. He said he recken he would give smallpox to all the colored folks on his place. Some of them took smallpox.

“We have been good living colored folks, had a right smart. I farmed, cooked, sewed a little along. I washed. I been living in DeValls Bluff 38 years. I got down and they put me on the relief. Seems I can’t get back to going agin.

“Don’t get me started on this young generation. I don’t want to start talking about how they do. Times is right smartly changed somehow. Everybody is in a hurry to do something and it turns out they don’t do nuthin’. Times is all in a stir it seem like to me.

“I don’t vote. I get $8 and demodities and I make the rest of my keepin’.”

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Charlie Huff Brinkley, Arkansas Age: Born 1864

“I was born close to Charlotte, North Carolina. Alex Huff owned my parents and me. My pa was a dark man. He was named Alex Huff too. Ma was named Sarah Huff. She was ginger cake color they called it. Both her parents was part Creek Indian. I seen the block at Richmond, Virginia where they sold pa. They kept him three weeks away from me before he was sold. They sold him at the last of slavery for $1,500. Ma never seen him no more. After freedom she brought me and immigrated to Arkansas. My sister wouldn’t come, she was fixing to marry. We come on the train, paid our own way. We heard it was a fine country and ma heard somebody out here bought pa. We kept inquiring till after she died. I heard where he was. I went to see him. He told me what I told you. He was sold and brought to Louisiana. He was a cross-eyed man and named Alex the best way I found him. My ma never was sold as she remembered.

“Master Alex Huff owned a turpentine factory and pa worked at it. Ma washed and cooked. Master Alex Huff raised Palmer Christy beans. I think he sold the seed to keep moles out of the land. Moles was bad in new cleared land. When they found a mole hill they opened it and put in a few beans so the mole would eat them and die. He sold the beans.

“The Ku Klux never bothered us.

“We come to Arkansas as soon as we could after freedom. We wanted to find pa. When we first come I worked on a steamboat, then I mined at Pratt City, Tennessee—coal mines—a year and a half. Then for forty-five years I worked on the railroad section as a hand. I made two crops in all my life. The first year I did fine and not so bad the next. But since three years ago I had these two strokes. I am here and not able to work. My wife draws $12 from the Welfare Order.

“It has been a long time since I voted. I voted last time for President McKinley. I didn’t like the strict franchise laws.”

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: Louvenia Huff Brinkley, Arkansas Age: 64

“I was born third year after the surrender. There was thirteen children in my family when I was a child. We was different sizes and the grown children helped look after the little ones. My parents was field hands. My parents belong to Dr. Hatch. He lived in Aberdeen, Mississippi. We lived in the country on his place. He had five or six children. Ben and Needham come out to the farm. He was an old man and we stayed on the son’s place—same place—till I come to Arkansas. We come in 1885. We heard it was a better country and open stock range. Dr. Hatch was very good to my folks.

“I don’t think the Ku Klux bothered my folks but we was afraid of them.

“My father voted a Republican ticket. I never voted.

“My grandmother was real light skin. Mother was mixed with white. She told us she was sold away from her mother when she was a little bitter of a girl and never seen her no more till she was the mother of six children. They didn’t know one another when they met. Her mother knowed who bought her and after freedom she kept asking about her and finally heard where she was and come to her. There was no selling place at Aberdeen so I don’t know where she was bought. Dr. Hatch lived to be an old man. He owned a lot of slaves and lots of land.

“Father’s old master was Whitfield. He sold him to Dr. Hatch when he was a young man. Father was a driver in the Civil War. He hauled soldiers and dumped them in the river. The Union soldiers wouldn’t give them time to bury the other side. He took rations all but the times he hauled dead soldiers. He got shot in his arm above the wrist. He died before they give him a pension. He was a Union soldier. He talked a lot but that is all I can tell straight. I don’t know if he mustered out or not.

“I worked in the field, wash, iron, and cooked. We get $12 from the Welfare. My husband had two strokes. He has been sick three years.

“My parents’ name Simpson Hatch and Jacob Hatch. They had thirteen children.”

Interviewer: Mary D. Hudgins Person Interviewed: Mrs. Anna Huggins Home: Pleasant at John Street.

“Miss Huggins? (pronounced hew–gins) Yes, ma’am she lives here. Oh Miss Huggins, Miss Huggins. They’s somebody to see you.”

The interviewer had approached an open door of an “L” kitchen attached to a “shot gun house”. Thru the dining room and a bed room she was conducted to the front bedroom. This was furnished simply but with a good deal of elaboration. The bed was gay with brightly colored pillows. Most of them had petal pillow tops made from brilliant crepe paper touched with silver and guilt. The room was evidently not occupied by Mrs. Huggins herself for late in the interview a colored girl entered the room. “Do you want your room now?” Mrs. Huggins inquired. “No indeed, there’s lots of time,” the girl replied politely. But the interviewer managed to terminate the interview quickly.

“So you knew Fanny McCarty. Well, well, so you knew Fanny. I don’t know when I’ve heard anybody speak about her. She’s not so much on looks, but Fanny is a good little woman, a mighty good little woman. She’s up in Michigan. You know she worked at one of the big hotels here—the Eastman it was. When they closed in the summer they sent her up to the big hotel on Mackinac. For a while she was here in the winter and up there for the summer season. Then she stayed on up there.

“You say she worked for you when you were a little girl? Before the fire of 1913? Now, I remember, you were just a little girl and you used to come over to my house sometimes with her. I remember.” (A delighted smile.) “Now I remember.

“No, I don’t remember very much about the war. It is mostly what I heard the older ones say. My grandmother used to tell me a lot about it. I was just a little thing in my mother’s arms when the war was over. Guess I was about four years old. We lived in St. Francis County and as soon as we were free pappa sent for us. He sent for us to come by boat to where he was. We went to Helena. I remember they were all lined up—the colored soldiers were. But I knew pappa. They all wondered how, hadn’t seen him in a long time. But I picked him out of all the line of men and I said, ‘There’s my pappa.’ Yes, my pappa was a soldier in the war. He was gone from home most of the time. I only saw him once in a while.

“My grandmother told me lots of things about slavery. She was born a free girl. But when she was just a little girl somebody stole her and brought her to Arkansas and sold her. No, from the things they told me—especially grandmother—they weren’t very good to them. Lots of times I’ve gone down on my knees to my grandmother to hear her tell about how mean they were to them.

“I’d say to her, ‘Grandmother, why didn’t you fight back?’ ‘You couldn’t fight back,’ she said, ‘you just had to take it.’ ‘I wouldn’t,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t take it.’ Guess there’s too much Indian blood in me. A white person never struck me but once. I was a girl—not so very big and I was taking care of a white lady’s little girl. She and a friend of hers were talking and I sneaked up to the door and tried to listen to what they were saying. She caught me and she scolded me—she struck at me with her fan—it was just a light tap, but it made me mad. I fought her and I ran off home, she came to get me too. I never would have gone back otherways. She said she never did see a girl better with children.

“I remember my grandmother telling about once when she was cooking in the kitchen, her back was turned and an old hound dog got in and started to take the chicken which was on the table. He had even got part of it in his mouth. But she turned and saw him—she choked the dog—and choked him until she choked the chicken out of him. You can see she must have been pretty scared to be afraid to let them know the chicken had been tampered with. Then we always thought my mother’s death was caused by her being beat by an overseer—she caused that overseer’s death, she got him while he was beating her. They had to hide her out to save her life—but a long time afterwards she died—we always laid it to that hard beating.

“We lived in Helena after the war. My father was the marrying kind. He was a wild marrying man. He had lots of wives. But Mother and grandmother wouldn’t let us call them Mother—she made us call them Aunt. It really was my grandmother who reared me. She was a good cook, had good jobs all the time.

“When I grew up I married. Mr. Huggins was a bar tender in a saloon. He made good money. We had a good home and I took care of the home. I had it mighty easy. Then one day he fell in the floor paralyzed. I brought him to Hot Springs. That was back in 1905. We stayed on and he lived for 18 years.

“I got a house there and I kept roomers. That was where Fanny stayed with me. It was at 311 Pleasant. You remember the place, tho. When I was young, I had it easy. But now I’m old and I don’t have it so well. A few years ago I was out in California on a visit. There was a man shining up to me and I wrote my niece ‘What would you think if your aunty married?’ ‘Law,’ she wrote back to me, ‘you’ve lived by yourself so long now, you couldn’t stand a man.’ Maybe she was right.”

(At this point the girl passed into the room.) “Look Maggie! three pretty handkerchiefs. Miss Hudgins brought them. And I was just writing to my sister—my half sister today, I didn’t even expect to much as a handkerchief for Christmas. And my initials embroidered on them two. One with A on it and two with H. I’m really proud of them.

“I’m going to write to Fanny to tell her about your coming to see me. She’ll be so glad to know about you. I’ll tell her about the handkerchiefs. You know, for a while Fanny had it pretty hard while she was here. She stayed at my house and I kept her for a long time without pay. I knew Fanny was a good girl and that when she got work she would pay me back. Do you know what Fanny has done? When she heard I was hard up she wrote me and told me to come up to Michigan to her and she would take care of me just as I had taken care of her. But I didn’t want to go. Wasn’t it nice of her, though?

“Yes, when I was young I had it easy. I had my home and took care of it. If I needed more money, I mortgaged my home and paid it back. Then I’d mortgage it and pay it back. But I mortgaged it once too often. That time I couldn’t pay it back. I lost it.

“Well, I’m so glad you came to see me. I remember the pretty little girl who used to come to my house with Fanny. Be sure to write to her, she’ll appreciate it, and thank you for the handkerchiefs.”

Interviewer: Mrs. Annie L. LaCotts Person interviewed: Margret Hulm, Humphrey, Arkansas Age: 97 (Story of Abraham Lincoln as a spy)

In the west edge of Humphrey in a small house beneath huge old trees lives an aged Negro woman with her boy (61 years old) and his wife. This woman is Margret Hulm who says she was born March 5, 1840 in Hardeman County, Tennessee. When asked if she remembered anything about the war and slavery days she said:

“Oh yes mam. I was 24 years old when the slaves were set free. My folks belonged to Master Jimmie Pruitt, who owned lots of other slaves. When they told him his niggers were free, he let them go or let them stay on with him and he’d give them a place to live and some of the crops. I guess that’s what folks call a share crop now. I was what folks called a house girl. I didn’t work in the field like some of the other slaves. I waited on my mistress and her chillun, answered the door, waited on de table and done things like that. I remember Mr. Lincoln. He came one day to our house (I mean my white folks’ house). They told me to answer the door and when I opened it there stood a big man with a gray blanket around him for a cape. He had a string tied around his neck to hold it on. A part of it was turned down over the string like a ghost cape. How was he dressed beneath the blanket? Well, he had on jeans pants and big mud boots and a big black hat kinda like men wear now. He stayed all night. We treated him nice like we did everybody when they come to our house. We heard after he was gone that he was Abraham Lincoln and he was a spy. That was before the war. Oh, yes, I remember lots about the war. I remember dark days what we called the black days. It would be so dark you couldn’t see the sun even. That was from the smoke from the fighting. You could just hear the big guns going b-o-o-m, boom, all day. Yes, I do remember seeing the Yankees. I saw ’em running fast one day past our house going back away from the fighting place. And once they hung our master. They told him they wanted his money. He said he didn’t have but one dollar. They said ‘we know better than that.’ Then they took a big rope off of one de Yankee’s saddle and took de master down in de horse lot and hung him to a big tree. The rope must a been old, for it broke. Our master was a big man though. Then they hung him again. He told ’em he didn’t have but one dollar and they let him down and said ‘Well, old man, maybe you haven’t got any more money.’ So they let him go when the mistress and her little chillun come down there. He didn’t have but one dollar in his pockets but had lots buried about the place in two or three places.”

While Margret was giving this information she was busily sewing together what looked like little square pads. When examined they proved to be tobacco sacks stuffed with cotton and then sewed together which would make a quilt already quilted when she got enough of them sewed together to cover a bed.

Interviewer: S. S. Taylor Person interviewed: John Hunter 3200 W. 17th Street, Little Rock, Arkansas Age: 74

Biographical

John Hunter claims to be only seventy-four years old, but when he is talking he has the manner of an eye-witness to the things he relates. In this connection, many of the ex-slaves seem to be sensitive concerning oldness.

Hunter is blind. He lives with Mrs. Alston, herself the widow of an old ex-slave. His relation to her is simply that of a renter, although where he gets the rent from I don’t know.

His father fought in the Confederate army until disabled by disease.

Hunter was born in North Carolina but has lived in this state something like fifty years.

Houses

“Slave houses were old log huts. Some made log houses and some made tent harbors. Just any sort of way on dirt. Some of them didn’t have any floors.

“One with a floor was built with one room. Cooked and et and everything in that one room. About 16 × 16. One window. No glass panes in it. Shutter window. Some niggers just built up a log house and dobbed it with dirt to keep the air from coming through.

“Food was kept in an old chest. There weren’t no such things as trunks and cupboards. I brought one from North Carolina with me—old-fashioned chest. Bed was homemade and nailed to the side of the wall. Some of them had railings on both sides when they were trying to make it look nice. Mattress was made out of straw or shucks. You could hear it rattling like a hog getting in his bed at night. I have slept on ’em many a time. Those with floors and those without were made alike. A box or anything was used for a table. If his master would give him anything he would make it out of a plank. Make it at night. Boxes and homemade stools were used for chairs. No chairs like there is now. People are blessed now. Didn’t go asking for no chairs then. They’d give you a chair—over your head.

“They et anything—any way they could get it,—in pans, old wooden trays, pots, anything. Fed you just like little pigs. Poured it all out in something and give them an old wooden spoon and telled them to get down and eat. Sometimes get down on your belly and eat. No dishes for niggers like now. No dishes till after freedom, and often none then.”

Tent Harbors

“Sometimes they’d have a great long place with walls in it with logs and planks and divided into stalls just like a man would have a great long place for mules and divide it into stalls. They were called stockades. You can see them in Tensas Parish in Louisiana. Now, each man would take his family and live in his stall. No doors between the rooms. Each room had a door leading into the open. They called ’em ‘tent harbors’ because they were built more like a tent. Some of them were covered with boards. People would go into the woods and rive out boards with a fro. A fro is a piece of iron about a foot and a half long with an eye in it and a wooden handle in the eye. You would drive it into the log and then work it along until you rived out the board.

“Slave quarters were built right straight on down so that the master could look right down the avenue when he would walk out. Little houses one right after the other.”

Food

“The niggers had anything to eat that the master give ’em. He would give plenty such as it was. Certain days they would go up and get it. Give it to ’em just like they go draw rations now. But they’d give it to you not you say what you wanted. So much meal and so much meat, and so on. Some of ’em raised flour. You had to take whatever you could get.”

Father and Mother

“My father was a soldier (Confederate). He got sick with the scrofula and they sent him back to his old master, Dr. Harris, in Enfield, North Carolina. He was a field hand at first, but after he come back with the scrofula, they just made him a carriage driver. That’s how I came to be born in 1864. My father married Betsy Judge right after he came back. They didn’t marry then as they do now. Just jumped over the broom.”

Patrollers

“A slave couldn’t go nowhere without a pass. If they caught you out without a pass, they’d whip you. Jus’ like if I wanted to go to a girl’s house, my master would hand me a pass. If he didn’t, they’d ketch me and whip me if I got out and wasn’t able to run away from them.”

What the Freedmen Expected

“When the slave was freed, he was looking to get a home. They were goin’ to do this and goin’ to do that but they didn’t do nothin’. They let us stay on the place until we made the crop, told us we was free to go wherever we wanted to go. That is all they give us and all we got. Some said, ‘You promised to give us a home’, and they said to them, ‘Well, you can stay here as long as you live.’”

How Freedom Came

“The old master called them together and told them they was free. ‘Peace declared. You all have to go for yourselves. Won’t whip no more now. You are all free.’”

Runaways and Mean Masters

“My father’s master was right smart mean to him. It was partly my father’s fault. He wouldn’t take no whipping much. If they would get after him he would run off. Whenever there was anything they wanted him to do and he didn’t go and do it just that minute, they wanted to whip him. Jus’ like a child, you know. He had to move when he was told. If he didn’t do it then he got a whipping. He would run away in the woods and stay a week or two before he’d come back. Sometimes some of the boys would see him and they would say to him, ‘Old master says for you to come back home; he ain’t goin’ to do nothin’ to you.’ Nobody would go in the woods and hunt him. Some of them would go in there and get hurt.

“There was some masters that would go in the woods hunting their niggers. Sometimes they’d carry bloodhounds with them. They never did run my father with the bloodhounds though.

“My mother’s master and mistress was good to her. They never drove her around. Old man Judge died and left her mistress and she lived a widow the balance of her life. But she never gave my mother no trouble.”

Sales and Separations

“There was plenty of slaves being put up on the block and sold. My mother was sold. Her father was a Cooper and she was sold to Judge. He bought my mother’s mother and her both, so that made her a Judge. He bought her and she had to go in his name. Her husband was left with the Coopers. She was put up on the block. ‘Who will give me a bid on this woman?’ The old man was bid back. The Coopers bid him back.”

School

“My mother didn’t get no schooling no more’n what I learned her after freedom. She never went to school in her life. Still she saw she could read the Bible, the hymn-book, and such things like that as she wanted to before she died.”

What the Slaves Got

“They said that the President and the Governor was going to give land to the niggers—going to take it off the owners that they worked for. But they never did get it.”

Ku Klux Klan

“I heered talk of the Ku Klux. I can remember once when they come through there (Enfield). That was eight or ten years after the War. They would ketch some of the niggers and whip them. The young niggers got their guns and rigged up a plan to kill them and laid out in a place for them, but they got wind of it and stopped coming.”

Mother’s Occupation

“My mother was a great weaver. She would weave cloth for the hands on the place. Some days she would work around the house and some other days she’d go out and weave. When they wasn’t any weaving or spinning to be done, she’d go out in the field. The weaving and the spinning was right in the white folks’ house.”

Own Occupation

“I used to be a preacher. Don’t do much of nothin’ now. Ain’t able. Get a little help from the Welfare—a little groceries sometimes. Don’t get any pension. You see, I can’t do much on account of my blindness.”

Opinions of Young People

“I can’t tell you what I think of the young people. Times have got to be so fast. It is just terrible to think how this life is. So much change from forty to fifty years ago. Just as much difference on both sides, white and colored, as there is between chalk and cheese.”

Praying Under Pots

“When they’d go to have a church meeting, they turn up the pot so that the noise wouldn’t come out. They could go to the white folks’ church. But the spirit would come on them sometimes to have service themselves. Then they’d go down to the house at night and turn up those big old iron pots and master never would hear. They wouldn’t put the washpot flat on the ground. They’d put sticks under it and raise it up about a foot from the ground. If they’d put it flat on the ground the ground would carry the sound.”

Voting

“There weren’t no voting at all in slavery times (in his locality—ed.) that is, far as the niggers were concerned. But after everybody was free you could vote up until they stopped the people from voting. They kept a Republican ticket in then. There wasn’t no Democrat. None like they is now. I don’t know how this thing got mixed up like it is now.

“I remember once in North Carolina a man named Bryant got away with a lot of votes in the boxes. He was seen to go out with two boxes under his arms. And when they counted up the votes, the Democrats was ahead. In them days, they counted up the votes before they left the polls. They wanted to kill him. They sent him to the penitentiary to stay five years. When he went in he was a young man, and when he came back he was gray.

“There was some fighting down there that night. My father was a constable. It was the white folks got to fighting each other. They got to ’resting them and they filled the calaboose full that night. Didn’t have but one jail and that was in Halifax. The penitentiary was in Raleigh. Raleigh was about 85 miles from Halifax, and Halifax about 75 from Enfield. The jail was twelve miles from Enfield.”

Mulattoes

“There were mixed bloods then just like there are now. Them came by the old master, you know. They treated the mulatto a little better than they did the other slaves. You know you would have more respect for your own blood. My Aunt Rena was half-sister to my father. They had the same mother but different fathers and they always gave her a little better treatment than they give him. They didn’t sell her. When slavery broke she was still with her master, Old Tom Hollis. The old lady (her mother) was there too. They hadn’t sold her neither. But they never give none of them nothin’ when they was freed.

“My father was a field hand at first. But after he went to war and come back with the scrofula, they just made him a carriage driver. But he wasn’t no mulatto though.”

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person interviewed: William Hunter, Brinkley, Arkansas Age: 70

“John McBride was my mother’s last owner. His wife died in slavery. I never heard her name called. My mother come from Abbeville, South Carolina, a Negro trading point. When she was put on the block my father went to McBride and asked him to buy that woman for him a wife. He said she was a mighty pretty young woman. McBride bought her. I don’t know how they got to Carroll County, Mississippi but that is where I was born. My mother raised Walter and Johnny McBride (white). She nursed one of them along with my brother May—May McBride was his name. That was at Asme, Alabama before I was born. I heard my mother say she never worked in the field but two years in her whole life. It must have been just after the war, for I have seen a ditch she and another woman cut. When they cut it, it was 4 ft. × 4 ft. I don’t know the length. When I seed it, it was a creek 100 ft. wide. I don’t know how deep. I recollect hearing my father talk about clearing land before freedom but I don’t know if he was in Alabama or Mississippi then.

“My mother was mixed with the white race. She was a bright woman. My father was a real dark man. He was a South Carolina gutchen—soft water folks, get mad and can’t talk. He was crazy about yellow folks.

“McBride died fifty-one years ago. When I was a boy he carried me with him—right in the buggy or oxcart with him till I was up nineteen years old. He went to the saloon to get a dram. I got one too. When he went to a big hotel to eat something he sent out the kitchen door to me out to our buggy or wagon. We camped sometimes when we went to town. It took so long to go over the roads.

“When freedom was declared McBride called up all his slaves and told em they was free; they could go or stay on. My father moved off two years after freedom and then he moved back and we stayed till the old man died. Then my father went to Varden, Mississippi and worked peoples gardens. He was old then too.

“I never seen a ‘white cap’ (Ku Klux). I heard a heap of talk about em. The people in Mississippi had respect for colored worship.

“I farmed till we went to Varden, Mississippi. I started working on the section. I was brakeman on the train out from Water Valley. Then I come to Wheatley, Arkansas. I worked on the section. All told, I worked forty years on the section. I worked on a log wagon, with a tire company, at the oil mill and in the cotton mill. I had a home till it went in the Home Loan. I have to pay $2.70 a month payments. I get commodities, no money, from the Welfare. My wife is dead now.”

MAY 11 1938 Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor Person interviewed: Ida Blackshear Hutchinson 2620 Orange Street, North Little Rock, Arkansas Age: 73

Birth

“I was born in 1865 in Alabama in Sumter County on Sam Scale’s place near the little town called Brushville (?).

Parents and Grandparents

“My father’s name was Isom Blackshear. Some people call it Blackshire, but we call it Blackshear. His master was named Uriah Blackshear. I have heard him say so many times the year he was born. He died (Isom) in 1905 and was in his eighty-first year then. That would make him born in 1824. His birth was on the fourth day of May. People back in them days lived longer than we do now. My grandfather, Jordan Martin, lived to be one hundred sixteen years old. Grandpa died about nine years ago in Sumter County, Alabama. He was my grandfather on my mother’s side.

“My grandfather on my father’s side was Luke Blackshear. He was born in Alabama too, and I suppose in Sumter County too. He died in Sumter County. He died about five years before the Civil War.

“My mother was born in North Carolina. Her name was Sylvia Martin before she married my father. She was a Blackshear when she died. She died in 1885. The white people went out in North Carolina and bought her, her mother, Nancy, and her father, Jordan, and brought them to Sumter County, Alabama. My mother’s mother was an Indian; her hair came down to her waist.”

Luke Blackshear (Breeder)

“My grandfather on my father’s side, Luke Blackshear, was a ‘stock’ Negro.

“Isom Blackshear, his son, was a great talker. He said Luke was six feet four inches tall and near two hundred fifty pounds in weight. He was what they called a double-jointed man. He was a mechanic,—built houses, made keys, and did all other blacksmith work and shoemaking. He did anything in iron, wood or leather. Really he was an architect as well. He could take raw cowhide and make leather out of it and then make shoes out of the leather.

“Luke was the father of fifty-six children and was known as the GIANT BREEDER. He was bought and given to his young mistress in the same way you would give a mule or colt to a child.

“Although he was a stock Negro, he was whipped and drove just like the other Negroes. All of the other Negroes were driven on the farm. He had to labor but he didn’t have to work with the other slaves on the farm unless there was no mechanical work to do. He was given better work because he was a skilled mechanic. He taught Isom blacksmithing, brickmaking and bricklaying, shoemaking, carpentry, and other things. The ordinary blacksmith has to order plow points and put than on, but Luke made the points themselves, and he taught Isom to do it. And he taught him to make mats, chairs, and other weaving work. He died sometime before the War.”

Isom Blackshear

“Isom Blackshear, Luke’s son and my father, farmed until he was eighteen years old, and was a general mechanic as mentioned when I was telling about my grandfather Luke, for sixty odd years. Up to within seven months of his death, he was making chairs and baskets and other things. He never was in bed in his life until his last sickness. That was his first and his last. Never did he have a doctor’s bill to pay or for his master to pay,—until he died. He worked on the batteries at Vicksburg during the War.

“Isom ran away three times. He was a field hand up to eighteen years. The overseer wanted to whip him. Isom would help his wife in the field because she couldn’t keep up with the others and he would help her to keep the overseer from whipping her. He’d take her beside him and row his row and hers too. He was the fastest worker on the place. The overseer told him to not do that. But Isom just kept on doing it anyway. Then the overseer asked Isom for his shirt. When they whipped you them days they didn’t whip you on your clothes because they didn’t want to wear them out. Isom said he was not going to take off his shirt because his mistress gave it to him and he wasn’t going to give it to anybody else. Then the overseer stepped ’round in front of him to stop him, because Isom had just kept on hoeing. Isom just caught the overseer’s feet in his hoe and dumped him down on the ground and went on hoeing his own row and his wife’s. He called his hoe ‘One Eyed Aggie.’

“The overseer said, ‘You think you done something smart’ and he went for his master. The overseer was named Mack Hainey. His master came out the next morning and caught Isom. Isom has often told us about it.

“‘First thing I knowed, he had his feet on my hoe and he said, “Isom, they tell me you can’t be whipped.” “I’d be willing to be whipped if I’d done anything.” “Huh!” said my master, “Right or wrong, if my overseer asked you for your shirt give it to him.”’

“He held a pistol on him. They made him pull off his shirt and tied him up to a gin post. The overseer hit him five times and kept him there till noon trying to get him to say that he would give his shirt to him the next time. Finally Isom promised and the overseer untied him. When the overseer untied him, Isom took his shirt in one hand and the overseer’s whip in the other and whipped him almost all the way to the big house. Then he ran away and stayed in the woods for three or four days until his old master sent word for him to come on back and he wouldn’t do nothing to him.

“When he went back, his master took him off the farm because he and my father was nursed together and he didn’t want Isom killed. So from that time on, my father never worked as a field hand any more. And they put Isom’s wife as a cook. She couldn’t chop cotton fast enough and they couldn’t handle Isom as long as she was in the field; so they put her to washing, and ironing, and cooking, and milking.

“The second time father ran away was once when they missed some groceries out of the storeroom. Master asked him if he took them because he made the keys to the place and not a person on the place but him could know anything about getting in there. He didn’t own it, so they tied him up and whipped him two days. When night come they took him and tied him in his house and told his wife that if he got loose they would put the portion on her. He didn’t try to get loose because he knowed if he did they would whip her, so he stayed. At noon time when they went to get the dinner they poured three buckets of water in his face and almost drowned him. Then after dinner they came back and whipped him again. Finally he said, ‘I didn’t do it but nothing will suit you but for me to say I did, so I will say I did it.’ So he owned up to it.

“A few days later Mr. Horn who owned the adjoining plantation came over and asked him if he had missed anything,—any rations he said. Old master told him ‘Yes’ and went on to explain what had been taken and what he had done about it. Then Mr. Horn took Mr. Blackshear over to his house and showed him the rations and they were the one he had whipped my old father about. Then Blackshear came back and told my father that he was sorry, that he never had known him to steal anything. He turned him loose and apologized to him but he made him work with the bloody shirt that they whipped him in sticking to his back.

“The third time he ran off he was in the army working on the batteries at Vicksburg. He worked there till he got to thinking about his wife and children, and then he ran off. He got tired and hungry and he went to Mopilis and give himself up. The jailer written to his master, that is to his mistress, about it, and she got her father to go and see about him and bring him home. They’d had a big storm. The houses were in bad shape. The fences was blown down. The plows was broken or dull and needed fixin’. And they were so glad to see Isom that they didn’t whip him nor nothin’ for runnin’ away.

“Isom’s mother was named Winnie Blackshear. She was Luke’s wife. She was a light brownskin woman and weighed about one hundred fifty pounds. I have seen her, but Luke was dead before I was born. Grandmother Winnie has been dead about twenty years now. She labored in the field.

“My mother’s mother was named Nancy Martin and her father was named Jordan Martin. We kept a Jordan in the family all the way down. Both of them farmed. They were slaves.

“There were fourteen children of us,—eleven sisters and three brothers. The brothers were Jordan, Prince, and John. The sisters were Margaret, Eliza, Nancy, Tempy, Bell, Abbie, Caroline, Frances, Dosia, Mattie, Lucy, Louisa, Ida.”

Suicide

“They say Negroes won’t commit suicide, but Isom told us of a girl that committed suicide. There was a girl named Lu who used to run off and go to the dances. The patrollers would try to catch her but they couldn’t because she was too fast on her feet. One day they got after her in the daytime. She had always outran them at night. She ran to the cabin and got her quarter which she had hid. She put the quarter in her mouth. The white folks didn’t allow the slaves to handle no money. The quarter got stuck in her throat, and she went on down to the slough and drowned herself rather than let them beat her, and mark her up. Then patrollers sure would get you and beat you up. If they couldn’t catch you when you were running away from them, they would come on your master’s place and get you and beat you. The master would allow them to do it. They didn’t let the patrollers come on the Blackshear place, but this gal was so hard-headed ’bout goin’ out that they made a ’ception to her. And they intended to make her an example to the rest of the slaves. But they didn’t get Lucy.”

Death of Sixty Babies

“Once on the Blackshear place, they took all the fine looking boys and girls that was thirteen years old or older and put them in a big barn after they had stripped them naked. They used to strip them naked and put them in a big barn every Sunday and leave them there until Monday morning. Out of that came sixty babies.

“They was too many babies to leave in the quarters for some one to take care of during the day. When the young mothers went to work Blackshear had them take their babies with them to the field, and it was two or three miles from the house to the field. He didn’t want them to lose time walking backward and forward nursing. They built a long old trough like a great long old cradle and put all these babies in it every morning when the mother come out to the field. It was set at the end of the rows under a big old cottonwood tree.

“When they were at the other end of the row, all at once a cloud no bigger than a small spot came up, and it grew fast, and it thundered and lightened as if the world were coming to an end, and the rain just came down in great sheets. And when it got so they could go to the other end of the field, that trough was filled with water and every baby in it was floating ’round in the water drownded. They never got nary a lick of labor and nary a red penny for ary one of them babies.”

Experiences just after the War

“Mother had been a cook and she just kept on cooking, for the same people. My father he went to farming.”

Patrollers

“My father said that the patrollers would run you and ketch you and whip you if you didn’t have a pass, when you was away from the pass. But they didn’t bother you if you had a pass. The patrollers were mean white people who called themselves making the niggers stay home. I think they were hired. They called their selves making the niggers stay home. They went all through the community looking for people, and whipping them when they’d leave home without a pass. They said you wasn’t submissive when you left home without a pass. They hounded Lucy to death. She wouldn’t let ’em get her, and she wouldn’t let ’em get her quarter.”

Ku Klux Klan

“I have seen the Ku Klux. I have washed their regalia and ironed it for them. They wouldn’t let just anybody wash and iron it because they couldn’t do it right. My son’s wife had a job washing and ironing for them and I used to go down and help her. I never did take a job of any kind myself because my husband didn’t let me. The regalia was white. They were made near like these singing robes the church choirs have. But they were long—come way down to the shoe tops. That was along in the nineties,—about 1890. It was when they revived the Ku Klux the last time before the World War. In the old days the patrollers used to whip them for being out without a pass but the Ku Klux used to whip them for disorderly living.

“Way back yonder when I was in Alabama, too, I can remember the Ku Klux riding. I was a little child then. The Republicans and Democrats were at war with each other then and they was killing everybody. My brother was one of them they run. He could come out in the daytime, but in the night he would have to hide. They never got him. He dodged them. That was ’round in 1874. In 1875, him and my uncle left Alabama and went to Louisiana. They called him a stump speaker. They wanted to kill him. They killed Tom Ivory. He was the leader of the Republicans—he was a colored man. His father was white but his mother was a Negro. His father educated him in slavery time. He had been up North and was coming back. They knew he was coming back, so they went up the creek and waited for him—his train. They flagged it down, and some one on the train commenced hollering, ‘Look yonder.’ Ivory stepped out on the platform to see what they were hollering about, and all them guns started popping and Ivory fell over the end of the platform and down on the ground. He was already leaning over the gate when they fired. Then they come up and cut his tongue out before he died. They said if they got him that would stop all the rest of the niggers. You see, he was a leader.

“Niggers was voting the Republican ticket ’long about that time. They just went in gangs riding every night—the Ku Klux did. Ku Kluxing and killing them they got hold of.

“The police arrested all the men that had anything to do with Tom Ivory’s killing. The leader of the killers was a white man they called Captain Hess. I never knowed how the trial came out because we left there while they was still in jail.”

How Freedom Came

“I heard my mother say that when the Refugees came through Sumter County, Alabama, she wasn’t free but was ‘sot’ free later. The refugees came through along in February. Then the papers was struck and it went out that the niggers all was free. Mother’s master and my oldest brother who had stayed in the War with his master four years came home. The refugees was in there when he got home. They went on through. They didn’t tarry long there. Then the papers came out and the next day, master called all the hands up to the big house and told them they was free. Mother was set free in the latter part of February and I was born June 5, 1865, so I was born free.”

Leaving Alabama

“We left Alabama in the same year Tom Ivory got killed. More than fifty colored people left on the train and come off when we did. People was leaving Alabama something terrible. I never did know what happened to Tom’s killers. I heard afterwards that Alabama got broke, they had to pay for so many men they killed.”

Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden Person interviewed: Cornelia Ishmon 3319 W. Second Avenue Pine Bluff, Arkansas Age: 78

“I was born in Mississippi and I can member seein’ the Yankees goin’ by. I was a little bit of a girl and Betsy Hardy, that was old Miss, she kep’ the Yankees from gettin’ me. She told me many a time if it hadn’t been for her I’d a had my brains beat out against a tree. When I didn’t do to suit her, she’d tell me bout dat. I stayed right in the house.

“I member when they was lookin’ for Johnson’s brigade and when they saw it was the Yankees they just flew. The Yankees was goin’ through there doin’ what they wanted.

“I never got no further than the third grade.”