FOLKLORE SUBJECTS Little Rock District Name of Interviewer: Irene Robertson Subject: TALES , Superstitions and Charms Story--Information (If not enough space on this page add page)
When she was a child she remembered white children and colored playing “No Boogerman Tonight.” One would catch the others as they ran from behind big trees. Then whoever he caught would be the boogerman, till he caught somebody else.
They made ash cakes and put black walnuts in it. It was just as good as crackling bread which was made from rendering lard. They made molasses candy and pulled it at the Master’s house during Christmas.
Mothers combed their children’s hair Sunday and wrapped it, sometimes had dyed string.
The Master had a mule named Beck. Only one on the farm could tend old Beck. He would buck and kick. Sometimes he would run and he would lope if you “hitched” him to a buggy. When freedom came the master studied who would tend old Beck so he gave him to Jack. Jack felt so free as he rode from the farm out into the big world all his own and no place to go. In about a year Jack sent a letter back by somebody to the Master. “I want you to send me $2.00 of your own money. My wife has gone raving destracted. My mule is dead. I am pestered and bothered. I bound you.”
Will said there used to be witches when somebody got mad with somebody they would bewitch the cows. You couldn’t get the butter to come no matter how long you churned and sometimes a bewitched cow would come up and give bloody milk. If you keep plenty salt around in the troughs the witches wouldn’t come about so much.
If you carry a rabbit foot in your pocket it will bring you good luck. If you find anything pointed with point toward you, that is a sign of good luck. If you put your shirt or dress on wrong side out, don’t change it. Thats good luck for the day.
Don’t start to sew a piece of goods on Friday unless you are sure you can get it done before night for that is bad luck.
This information given by: Rachel Harris
Place of Residence: Green Grove, Hazen, Arkansas
Occupation: Field.—Lives with her daughter.
AGE: 80
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person Interviewed: William Harris
DeValls Bluff, Ark.
Age: 75 or 80
“I was born in Chetam County close to Nashville, Tennessee. Our master was named Joe Harris. His wife was Miss Sallie Harris. They had eight children. I knowed Newt, Tom and Kittie. My mother had nine children. Her name was Julia. My papa’s name was Isom Harris. I think they belong to the same family of white folks. Granny was old woman looked after white children. See if any of em got sick. She seen after little nigger children too. Mama was a field hand like papa. After war Plummer Harris went on off. He was cruel to his wife and grown folks but good to the children. We had good houses and plenty wood but the feed was light.
“I seen the Yankees riding through the country. They looked pretty, ’specially them on white horses. My papa and mama left. Mama died with pneumonia. Papa died, too. We had a mighty hard time after freedom and before too. Papa worked about on shares—hired out on jobs.
“When freedom come on we went on and they didn’t think to give us nothing. When the hands all left they had the land and nobody to work. They was land pore. It was tore up. Fences down, houses down, and nothing to be raised to eat in the winter.
“When I got bigger I helped build the North Western Railroad into Nashville. I made right smart of money. I was building up the track bed. I farmed, worked on the section. I delivered here till my feet got in bad fix.
“I got thirteen children in all. Some in Tennessee by my first wife and some here and some grandchildren.
“Folks won’t work like I used to work. It ain’t no use to be ’larmed bout the times—they been changing since the world started—still changing. If you able it is best to go hunt work and be at a job working.
“I heard about the Ku Klux, they never troubled us. I seen em. I was scared of em.
“I get commodities and a check for us three old folks. My wife washes and irons.
“I got a bunion on one foot and raw sores on top of my toes. It won’t cure up. Both feet in bad shape. My wife had both her legs broke. We doing very well.”
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: William H. Harrison
Forrest City, Arkansas
Age: Over 100
“I was born March 4, 1832 in Richmond, Virginia. Master Anderson Harrison was a cousin to Benjamin Harrison, the twenty-third President of the United States. Master Anderson Harrison was my owner. I was a personal attendant of his young son and when I reached manhood I was the carriage boy. I did all the driving on all the trips the young people of the family took. My memories of slave days was my easiest days. Slavery was pleasant for me. My owner’s wife was named Ann. The son was Gummel L. Harrison. I went with him to war. I was his servant in the battle-field till we fought at Gettysburg and Manassas Gap. Then I was captured at Bulls Gap and brought to Knoxville, Tennessee and made a soldier. I was in the War three and one half years. They had us going to school. They had Yankee teachers in the army. All the schooling I ever got. I was mustered out at Chattanooga, Tennessee.
“My parents was Julia Ann Hodge and Cairo Hodge. I don’t know my mother’s last owners. When I was about eight years old I was sold to Ben Cowen. When I was thirteen years old I was sold to Master Anderson Harrison. My brothers Sam and Washington never were sold. Me and Sam Hodge, my brother, was in the War together. We struck up and knowed one another. A man bought mama that lived at Selma, Alabama. I never seen her ag’in to know her. After I was mustered out I went to Birmingham where she was drove and sold in search of her. I heard she was taken to Selma. I went there. I give out hunting for her. It was about dusk. I saw a woman standing in the door. I asked her to tell me where I could stay. She said, ‘You can stay here tonight.’ I went in, hung my overcoat up. I started to the saloon. I met her husband with a basket on his arm coming home. I told him who I was. We went to get a drink. I offered him sherry but he took whiskey. I got a pint of brandy, two apples, two oranges, for his wife and two little boys. I spent two nights there and two and a half days there, with my own mother but neither of us knew it then.
“Fourteen years later Wash wrote to me giving me the address. I told him about this and he said it was mama. He told her about it. She jumped up and shouted and fell dead. I never seen her but that one time after I was sold the first time. I was about eight years old then. She had eighteen of us boys and one girl, Diana, and then the half-brothers I seen at Selma. I had eleven brothers took off in a drove at one time and sold. They was older than I was. I don’t know what become of them. I never seen my papa after I was sold. Diana died in Knoxville, Tennessee after freedom. I seen better times in slavery than I’ve ever seen since but I don’t believe in slave traffic—that being sold.
“I was with my young master till my capture. That was my part in freedom. I was forced to fight by the Yankees then in the Union army. I was with General Grant when Lee surrendered at Appomattox. That was freedom. After the War I come to Arkansas and settled at Madison. My hardships started. I got married the first thing.
“This is how good my owners was to me. He sent me to Hendersonville, North Carolina (Henderson?) to learn to fiddle. I was so afraid of the old colored teacher I learned in a month about all he could play. I played for parties in eight states in slavery. All up in the North. They trained children to dance then. I took Martha Jane, Easter Ann, Jane Daniel, my young mistresses and their mother’s sisters, Emma and Laura, to parties and dances all time. We went to Ashville, North Carolina to a big party. While they was having fine victuals after the dance they sent me out a plate of turnip greens and turnips, fat meat and corn bread. I took it and set it down. When Miss Martha Jane got in sight I took her to our carriage. She said, ‘Empty it to the dogs,’ and give me one dollar fifty cents and told me to go to town and buy my supper. I was treated same as kin folks. I et and drunk same as they had to use. After freedom I fixed up twice to move back to my young master. Once he sent me three hundred fifty dollars to move on. Betty fell off the porch and broke her thigh. That ended my hopes of going back. Betty was my first wife. I had seven children by her and one by my second wife and this wife ain’t had none. She’s been married twice though.
“I got one boy in Virginia seventy-three years old and one boy sixty-eight years old. My boys are scattered. One lives here. I don’t hear from them now.
“After the War I come to Madison. It was a thriving little river town surrounded on all sides by wilderness. There were thousands of Indians camped in the neighboring woods. There was nothing but wooded hills where Forrest City now stands.
“When General Nathan Bedford Forrest built the cut between Forrest City and Madison for the road, I was his cook and the first fireman to make the run through the cut. I used to drive a stagecoach over the Old Military Road through Pine Tree on the stage run from Memphis to Little Rock.
“Game was the nicest thing the country afforded. I killed bear and other wild game on sites where Marianna, Wynn, and Jonesboro now stand. Where this house now is was a lake then. (West part of town on north side of the railroad track.) They caught fish in it then.
“When I heard Benjamin Harrison had been elected President of the United States, I asked Mr. George Lewis to write to him for me. I was working for him then. I handled freight at the depot for him. He was dubious of me knowing such a person but wrote it to please me. A few weeks a reply come to our letter and a ticket.
“I got my fiddle and went and visited two weeks. I et at the same table with the President. I slept in the White House. We et out of skillets together when I was a little boy and drunk out of the same cups. Me and him and Gummel raised up together. I played for the President and his Cabinet.
“Twice more I went and it cost me nothing. I played for big balls. My young master sent me my gold name plate. (It is heart shaped with his name, birth and birthplace—ed.) I been wearing it on my watch chain a long time. It is my charm. Mr. Lewis was so glad when I got my letter and ticket. He was good to me.
“I have voted. I voted a Republican ticket because it hope the party out that freed my race. Some white men told me they burnt up a lot of our votes. I never seen it done. I can’t see to fool with voting.
“The colored folks are seeing a worse time now than in slavery times. There is two sides to it. The Bible say they get weaker and wiser. I did read before I got blind. I get a Federal pension of one hundred dollars a month. I’m thankful for it.”
Interviewer’s Comment
He has trouble talking. One lung is affected. He is deaf. He is blind. He said he was wounded caused his lung trouble. Seems to me old age. He isn’t very feeble in the house. Their house was clean and he and his wife, also born in slavery, looked clean.
Interviewer: Bernice Bowden
Person Interviewed: Laura Hart
Eleventh & Orange St., Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 85
“I just can’t tell you when I was born cause I don’t know. My mother said I was born on Christmas Eve morning. I’m a old woman. I was big enough to work in slave times.
“Yes ma’am. I member when the war started. I was born in Arkansas. I’m a Arkansas Hoosier. You know I had to have some age on me to work in slave times.
“I pulled corn, picked cotton and drive the mule at the gin. Just walked behind him all day. I’ve pulled fodder, pulled cotton stalks, chopped down corn stalks. I never worked in the house when I was a child while I was under the jurisdiction of the white folks.
“My old master was Sam Carson and his wife was named Phoebe Carson, boy named Andrew and a daughter named Mary and one named Rosie.
“We had plenty to eat and went to church on Sunday. After the white folks had their services we went in. The church was on his place right across the river. That’s where I was when freedom taken place.
“When the war started—I remember that all right—cause when they was gettin’ started old master sent a colored man to take his son’s place in the war.
“I was born up here at Fort Smith and brought here to Jefferson County and sold—my mother and three chillun.
“Now wait—I’m goin’ to give you the full history. My father’s mother was a white woman from the North and my father was a colored man. Her folks run her here to Arkansas and she stayed with her brother till my father was nine months old and then she went back North and my papa stayed with his uncle.
“When his uncle died he willed my papa his place. He had it recorded at the cotehouse in Little Rock that my papa was a free man. But he couldn’t stay in Arkansas free, so he just rambled ’till he found old man Carson and my mother. He offered to buy my mother but old master wouldn’t sell her so he stayed with old man Carson till they was all free.
“My white folks was tollable fair—they didn’t beat up the people.
“My mother was as bright as you are. She could sit on her hair. Her mother was a Creole and her father was a Frenchman. After freedom they would a killed my father if it hadn’t been for old Sam Carson, cause they thought my mother was a white woman, she was so bright.
“Ku Klux? The Lord have mercy! I remember them. They came and surrounded the house, hundreds of em. We had a loose plank in the floor and we’d hide under the floor with the dogs and stay there, too, till they’d gone.
“My father was a gambler. He gambled and farmed. My mother was a Christian woman. When I got big enough to know anything, she was a Christian woman.
“I married when I was fourteen. We lived at a place called ‘Wildcat.’ Didn’t have no school. Nothin’ up there but saloons and gambling.
“Then we moved to what they called the Earl Wright place. I had four chillun—three boys and one girl. Most of my work was in the field.
“I been here in Pine Bluff gwine on seventy-one years. You know—I knowed this town when they wasn’t but one store and two houses. I’m a old woman—I ain’t no baby.
“Honey, I even remember when the Indians was run out o’ this town!
“Well, I done telled you all I know. In my comin’ up, the colored people didn’t have time to study bout the chillun’s ages.”
#715
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Hatty Haskell
1416 W. Pullen, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 85
“Yes’m, I reckon I was about twelve when the Civil War ended. Oh, I could nurse a little.
“No ma’am, I wasn’t born in Arkansas. I was born in Tennessee, but I was brought here when I was a baby. Come here before the war. The old master had sold ’em.
“We was bought by Will Nichols. You ever hear of this here Dick Lake? Well, that’s the place.
“They taken my father and my sister to Texas and stayed till after freedom. My mother was sick and they didn’t carry her and I was too little, so they left me. They was pretty good to us as far as I know.
“I remember when the Yankees come through. Oh, yes’m, I was scared. I used to hide under the bed. I wouldn’t give ’em a chance to talk to me.
“Our folks stayed on the Nichols’ place about two years. Then they farmed on the shares till he got able to buy him a mule, then he rented.
“After the war the cholera disease come along. My mother and sister died with it.
“Somebody said if you would hang up some beef outdoors between the road and the house, it would stop the disease. I know old master hung up about a half a quarter and it seemed to work. The meat would turn green.
“The Yankees took things to eat but the Rebels would take the women’s clothes—and the men’s too. I guess they just took ’em ’cause they could.
“Biggest work I’ve done is farm work.
“My daddy said I was sixteen when I married. I had thirteen children but they ain’t all livin’.
“I remember when they said they was free. Some of the folks left the place and never come back and some of ’em stayed.
“Sometimes I had a pretty good time and sometimes pretty tough.
“I’m gettin’ along all right now. I stay here with my son part of the time and then I go to the country and stay with my daughter.”
#786
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Matilda Hatchett
424 W. Twenty-Fifth Street, North Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: Between 98 and 100
“I was born right here in Arkansas about nine miles from Dardanelles (Dardanelle) in Sevier County. I think it’s Sevier. No, it was Yell County. Yell County, that’s it. You put the Dardanelles there and if they get that they’ll get the Yell part. Can’t miss Yell if you get Dardanelles.
“I wish I could get holt of some of my old white folks. Maybe you can find ’em for me. There’s one big policeman here looks like them but I don’t know whether he is or not. The first white owners that I knowed was Jackie George in South Carolina. That is where I heard them talkin’ about him comin’ from. I wasn’t born there; I was born here. I wasn’t born when he come from South Carolina. His wife was named Nealie. He was just like a ole shoe. Never whipped me but one time in my life.
“I’ll tell you about it. This is what they whipped me for. Me and my brother, Sam, had to water the horses. I didn’t have to go with Sam, but I was big enough to do that. We had one ole horse named John—big ole horse. I would have to git up on a ten-rail fence to git on him. One day I was leading ole John back and I got tired of walking. So when I come to a ten-rail fence, I got up on ole John. I got up on ’im backwards and I didn’t have hold of no bridle nor nothin’ because I was lookin’ at his tail.
“The others got back there before they did. Ole master said to them, ‘Where’s Tillie?’
“They said to him, ‘She’s comin’, leadin’ ole John.’
“Atter a while they saw me comin’, an’ one of ’em said, ‘There’s Tillie now.’
“An’ ’nother one, ‘Man, she’s sittin’ on the horse backwards.’ And ole John was amblin’ along nippin’ the grass now an’ then with his bridle draggin’ and me sittin’ up on his back facin’ his tail and slippin’ and slidin’ with every step.
“Ole John was gentle. But they were scairt he would throw me off. Ole missis come out the gate and met him herself, ’cause she was ’fraid the others would ’cite him and make him throw me down. She gentled him and led him up to ole master. They was careful and gentle till they got me off that horse, and then ole master turned and lit into me and give me a brushin’.
“That’s the only whippin’ he ever give me. But that didn’t do me no good. Leastwise, it didn’t stop me from ridin’ horses. I rode ole John ever chance I could git. But I didn’t ride him backwards no more.”
Dresses
“We used to wear homespun dresses. I have spun a many a yard and wove it. Did you ever see a loom? I used to have a wheel, and my children tore it up some way or ’nother. I still have the cards. We done our own knittin’ and spun our own thread and knitted our socks and stockings.”
Houses
“The white folks lived in pretty good houses and we did too. They lived in big log houses. The white folks’ houses had piazzas between the rooms. That Haney didn’t build them houses. His daddy, Tim Haney, built ’em. The Haneys come in by Tim bein’ Thad’s father. Thad married Jackie George’s daughter—Louisa George. George was her daddy and Haney was her husband.
“There were four rooms besides the piazza. On one side, there was a big room built out of lumber. On the other side, there was a big room that a doctor lived in. There was a great big kitchen west of the piazza. The kitchen was about fifteen by fifteen. I know it was that large because we’d all eat at the same time. The old man, Tim, owned about thirty niggers. After he died they were all divided out among the boys. Every boy took his part of the land and his part of the niggers. But I wasn’t at his house then. I was livin’ with ole Jackie George. The white folks hadn’t moved together then.
“But I went to ole Tim Haney’s funeral. The old white woman fainted and they rubbed her with camphor and stuff and had her layin’ out there. I wasn’t old enough to cry over him and wouldn’t anyhow because I didn’t care nothin’ much about him. But I would have cried for my ole master though, because I really loved him.”
Soldiers
“I saw the soldiers when they come through our place. The first start of us noticin’ them was this. I was always up to the white folks’ house. Thad was goin’ back to the Rebel army. Ole master tole my dad to go git ’im a hat. He’d got ’im one and was ridin’ back with Thad’s hat on on top of his’n. Before he could git back, here come a man jus’ a ridin’.
“Thad was eatin’. He look out, and then he throwed his head back and said, ‘Them’s the Federals.’
“Thad finished his breakfast and then he ran on out and got with the Federals. He didn’t join ’em. He jus’ fooled ’em. The bridge was half a mile from our house and the Yankee army hadn’t near finished crossing it when the head of it reached us.
“While they were at the house, pa came ridin’ up with the two hats on his head. They took the hats and throwed pa’s on the ground and tried Thad’s on. They took the mare but they give it back.
“Them folks stood ’round there all day. Killed hogs and cooked them. Killed cows and cooked them. Took all kinds of sugar and preserves and things like that. Tore all the feathers out of the mattress looking for money. Then they put ole miss (Nealie Haney) and her daughter (Louisa Haney) in the kitchen to cookin’.
“Ma got scairt and went to bed. Dreckly the lieutenant come on down there and said, ‘Auntie, get up from there. We ain’t a goin’ to do you no hurt. We’re after helpin’ you. We are freein’ you. Aunt Dinah, you can do as you please now. You’re free.’
“She was free!
“They stayed ’round there all night cooking and eatin’ and carryin’ on. They sent some of the meat in there to us colored folks.
“Next mornin’ they all dropped off goin’ down to take Dardanelles. You could hear the cannons roarin’ next day. They was all night gettin’ away. They went on and took Dardanelles. Had all them white folks runnin’ and hidin’.
“The Secesh wouldn’t go far. They would just hide. One night there’d be a gang of Secesh, and the next one, there’d come along a gang of Yankees. Pa was ’fraid of both of ’em. Secesh said they’d kill ’im if he left his white folks. Yankees said they’d kill ’im if he didn’t leave ’em. He would hide out in the cotton patch and keep we children out there with him. Ole mis’ made him carry us.
“We was freed and went to a place that was full of people. We had to stay in a church with about twenty other people and two of the babies died there on account of the exposure. Two of my aunts died, too, on account of exposure then.
“The soldiers didn’t take anything that night but food. They left all the horses. What they took was what they could eat. But they couldn’t catch the turkeys. The lieutenant stayed around all the time to make the soldiers behave themselves. The meals he made my ole mis’ and her daughter cook was for the officers.
“Yes Lawd! I have been here so long I ain’t forgot nothin’. I can remember things way back. I can remember things happening when I was four years old. Things that happen now I can’t remember so well. But I can remember things that happened way back yonder.”
Schooling
“I learnt to read a little after peace was declared. A ole lady, Aunt Sarah Nunly, learnt us how to spell and then after that we went to school. I went to school three weeks. I never went to school much.
“Didn’t git no chance to learn nothin’ in slavery. Sometimes the children would teach the darkies ’round the house their ABC’s. I’ve heard of folks teachin’ their slaves to read the Bible. They didn’t teach us to read nothin’. I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never seen it, that some folks would cut off the first finger of a nigger that could write.”
Father’s Children Freed Before Emancipation
“My father had some children that were set free. They lived down on the river bottom. Their ole master was named ole Crow. He died and sot his niggers free. He had four slaves. He had five. If any of you know Philo Pointer, his father was one of ’em. They sot him free. His daughter—Crow’s daughter—wanted the niggers and they would break the ole man’s will. They furnished them a wagon and sot them free. They came by my father’s place and he killed his hog and fed them and they put the rest of it in the wagon and went on to the free state. I’ve got an old piece of a dish them boys give my mama. It’s done broke up to a piece now, but I saves that.
“Patsy Crow was the name of the girl that was freed, and one of the boys was named Joe Crow, and the others I don’t know what it was. I guess it was Jim. Their old master had left a will givin’ them the wagon and team because he knew it wouldn’t be possible for them to stay there after he died. He said he didn’t want his niggers to be under anybody after he died. Wills was wills in them days. His daughter wanted them niggers, but they didn’t give them to her. They sot them free and sont them off.”
Wants to See Her People
“I nursed three children for Thad Haney and Louisa, his wife. Them girls’ names was: the oldest was Julia; the next one was named Emma; and the youngest one was named Virginia. If I can find them and see them again, I’ll be so happy. I jus’ want to meet them one more time—some of them—all of them if they’re livin’; but I know they can’t all be living.
“Matilda Haney was my name then, and I nursed Thad’s children in slavery time.”
Age
“I think I’m between ninety-seven and ninety-eight years old. They had an old-age contest in Reverend Smith’s time. They had Reverend Coffee and another man here since Reverend Smith. The pastor we have now is Yates. Our church is Lee Chapel A.M.E. Church. The contest was in 1935 I think and the people all agreed that I was the oldest colored woman in North Little Rock. They said I was ninety-six years old then. That would make me about ninety-eight years old now. But I saw my children afterwards and they said I was a year older. I used to have my age in the family Bible and my husband’s too, but it got burnt up. Accordin’ to them I oughta be about ninety-nine or a hundred.”
Occupation
“My folks didn’t raise no cotton. They raised about two bales a year. Didn’t have nobody to raise it. Thirty slaves were not enough for that. And they didn’t care nothin’ about it nohow. They had forty-six acres of land in wheat and lots in corn and potatoes. They raised cows, hogs, horses, turkeys, chickens, and everything else. Even had peafowls. The geese used to run me ’round many a day.
“They ran a cotton gin and my father managed it. That was his job all the time before the War.
“After the War, my father farmed. He worked on shares. They never cheated him that he knew about. If they did, he didn’t know it. He owned his horses and cows.”
#657
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: John G. Hawkens
Biscoe, Arkansas
Age: 71
“I was born in Monroe County, Mississippi December 9, 1866. My parents was Frances Hawkens. She was a half white woman. I was told my daddy was a white man, Mr. Young. Mother was a cook and house woman. Grandmother was a field woman. She was dark but had some Indian blood in her. I believe they said it was part Choctaw Indian. I don’t remember a grandfather.
“Lamar County, Alabama was across the line from Monroe County, Mississippi. One of the Hawkens girls (white girl) married a man in Mississippi. The master had three boys and one or two girls. Grandmother was sold to the Hawkens and mother was born there in Alabama. There was another woman they owned called Mandy. They was all the slaves they owned that I knowd of.
“When the War come on, the old man Hawkens was dead. His widow had three sons but one was married and off from her home somewhere. All three boys went to war. Her married son died in the War.
“One son went to war but he didn’t want to go. He ask his mother if she rather free the Negroes or go to war. She said, ‘Go fight till you die, it won’t be nothing but a breakfast spell.’ He went but come back on a furlough. He spent the rest of the time in a cave he dug down back of the field. He’d slip out and come to the house a little while at night. It was in the back woods and not very near anybody else.
“Aunt Mandy, another old man, grandmother and my mother lived in a house in the yard, two of us was born in slavery. My sister Mandy was fifteen years old when slavery ended.
“The way we first heard about freedom, one of the boys come home to stay but no one knew that when he came. He told sister Mandy cook him a good supper and he would tell her something good. She cooked him a good supper and set the table. He set to eat and she ask him what it was. He told her, ‘All the slaves are free now.’ From that on it was talked. We left there. My mother and sister Mandy told me I wasn’t born. We went to Mississippi then. I was born over there. Some sharecropped and some worked as renters.
“Sister Mandy told so many times about carrying fire in a coffeepot—had a lid and handle—to the son in the cave. She’d go across there, a meadow like and a field, calling the sheep for a blind so if the cavalry spied her they would think she had a little feed for the sheep. The cavalry was close about. It was cold and the young master would nearly freeze in his cave.
“Mother said they was good to them. They never touched them to beat them but they all went from early till late. They all worked and the old mistress too.
“Two of mother’s children was slave born. Sister Mandy is dead but my brother George Hawkens is on 1114 Appenway, Little Rock. He can tell you more than I know. Two of us was born after slavery. We all had the same father—Mr. Young. He lived about two miles from Hawkens and had a white wife and family. I carried water to the field where he worked and talked a little with him. I saw him when he was sick. He had consumption. I heard when he died and was buried. He never did one thing for us children. Mr. Young and the Hawkens was partners some way in the farming. Mr. Young died young.
“When her son told my sister Mandy at supper table, ‘All the slaves are free now’, old mistress jumped up and said, ‘It’s not recorded! It’s not recorded!’
“Mr. Wolf was a man, old, old man on a big plantation. He had one hundred slaves. He didn’t know his slaves when he met one of them. He had overseers. He talked with his slaves when he met one about and they would tell him, ‘You’re my master.’ They said during the War the old man had cotton seed boiled down for his slaves to eat. The War was about to starve them all out. Oil mills were unheard of at that time.
“The War brought freedom and starvation both to the slaves. I heard old people say they died in piles from exposure and hunger. There was no let-up to their work after freedom.
“All my family came from Mississippi to Forrest City, Arkansas together. I married the first time there. My wife died. Then I married at Brinkley, Arkansas. We have one boy living in Lee County. He’s my only child.”
Interviewer’s Comment
J.G. Hawkens is the whitest Negro I have ever seen. He has blue eyes and straight hair. He was fishing two days I went to see him.
#656
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Lizzie Hawkens
Biscoe, Arkansas
Age: 65
“I was born close to Magnolia, Arkansas.
“My mother was Harriett Marshal. Her old mistress was a Marshal. She was a widow woman and had let all her slaves go out to her children but mama. Mama was her husband’s chile, what she tole mama. They come here from Atlanta, Georgia visiting her married daughter. They was the Joiners at Magnolia, Arkansas. She brought mama and on her way back home to Atlanta she died. Her daughter brought her back and buried her in Arkansas and kept mama.
“Mama said they was nice to her. They wouldn’t let her keep company with no black folks. She was about as white as white folks. She was white as my husband. Her mother was light or half white. My own papa was a black man.
“The Joiners and Scotts visited down at Magnolia among themselves but they didn’t want mama to marry in the Scott family (of Negroes). But the white folks was mighty good friends. Mama took care of the children. They was in the orchard one day. Papa spied mama. He picked up a plum and threw at her. She say, ‘Where that come from?’ He stooped down and seen her under the limbs. They was under another plum tree. Papa got to talk to her that day. The old mistress wouldn’t let her out of sight. Papa never could have got her if Mistress Marshal had lived.
“Mama had three or four sisters and brothers in Atlanta, and her mother was in Atlanta. Her parents were Bob and Lucindy Marshal. Bob was Lucindy’s master. Mama told old mistress to bring Harriett back and she promised she would. That was one thing made her watch after her so close. She never had been made a slave. She was to look after old mistress.
“After she died mama’s young mistress let papa have her. He mustered up courage to ax for her and she said, ‘Yes, L (for Elbert), you can have her.’ That was all the marrying they ever done. They never jumped over no broom she said. They was living together when she died. But in slavery times mama lived on at Judge Joiner’s and papa at Scott’s place. One family lived six miles east of Magnolia and the other six miles north of Magnolia. Papa went to see mama twelve miles. They cut through sometimes. It was dense woods. Mama had one boy before freedom. In all she had three boys and four girls.
“The Scott and Joiner white folks told the slaves about freedom. Papa homesteaded a place one mile of the courthouse square. The old home is standing there now.
“Papa said during the Civil War he hauled corn in an ox wagon. The cavalry met him more than once and took every ear and grain he had. He’d have to turn and go back.
“He said when freedom come, some of the people tole the slaves, ‘You have to root pig or die poor.’
“My great-grandpa was sold in South Carolina. He said he rather die than be sold. He went up in the mountains and found a den of rattlesnakes to bite him. They was under a stone. Said when he seen them he said, ‘Uhher! You can’t bite me.’ They commenced to rattle like dry butter-beans. He went on and dressed to be sold. Master Scott bought him and brought him on to Arkansas. He had to leave his wife. He never got back to see her.
“Grandpa had to come leave his wife. He married ag’in and had five sons and a girl. They was Glasco, Alex, Hilliard, Elbert, Bill, and Katherine. They belong to Spencers till the Scotts bought them but all these children was his Scott children.
“My uncle’s wife belong to white folks not Scotts. Scotts wouldn’t sell and her folks wouldn’t part from her. They moved down in Louisiana and took her and one chile. Uncle run away to see her. The Scotts put the hounds after him and run him two days and two nights. He was so tired he stopped to rest. The dogs come up around him. He took a pine knot and killed the lead dog, hit him in the head and put him in a rotten knot hole of a hollow tree been burned out and just flew. The dogs scattered and he heard the horns. He heard the dogs howl and the hoofs of the man’s horses. The old master was dead. He didn’t allow the boys to slash in among his niggers. After he died they was bossy. Uncle said he made his visit and come back. He didn’t ever tell them he killed the lead dog nor how close they come up on him. He said they was glad to see him when he come back. His wife was named Georgana.
“After freedom grandpa named himself Spencer Scott. He buried his money. He made a truck garden and had patches in slavery both in South Carolina and at Magnolia. He told me he had rusty dollars never been turned over since they made him came here. He left some money buried back there. We found his money on his place at Magnolia when he died. He tole us where it was.
“One night he was going across a bridge and taking a sack of melons to Magnolia to sell in slavery times. A bear met him. He jumped at the bear and said ‘boo’. The bear growled and run on its way. He said he was so scared he was stiff. They let them work some patches at night and sell some things to make a little money. The ole master give them some money if they went to the city. That was about twice a year papa said. He never seen a city till years after freedom. His pa and grandpa got to go every now and then. Magnolia was no city in them days.
“It is hard to raise children in this day and time. When I went on the Betzner place (near Biscoe, Arkansas) my son was eight years old. He growed up along side Brooks (Betzner). I purt nigh talked my tongue out of my head and Brooks’ (white boy) mother did the same thing. Every year when we would lay by, me and my husband (white Negro) would go on a camp. Brooks would ask me if he could go. We took the two of them. (The Hawkens boy is said to be a dark mulatto—ed.) He’s a smart boy, a good farmer down in Lee County now. He married when he was nineteen years old. It is hard to raise a boy now. There is boxing and prize fighting and pool halls and that’s not right! Times are not improving as I can see in that way. Worse than I have ever seen them.”
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Becky Hawkins
717 Louisiana Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 75
“Yes’m, I was born in slave times but my mammy was sucklin’ me. Don’t know much bout slavery but just come up free.
“My mammy’s old master was Calvin Goodloe in Alabama, Pulaski County, near Tuscumbia. I heered my uncle say old master favored his niggers.
“Mammy told me bout em gettin’ whippin’s, but she never let the overseer whip her—she’d go to old master.
“My grandmama’s hair was straight but she was black. She was mixed Indian. My mammy’s father was Indian and she say he fought in the Revolution. She had his pistol and rocks. When he died he was the oldest man around there.
“I tell you what I remember. I ’member my mammy had a son named Enoch and he nussed me in slave days when mammy was workin’ in the field. They didn’t low em to go to the house but three times a day—that was the women what had babies. But I was so sickly mammy had Enoch bring me to the fence so she could suckle me.
“I went to school down here in Arkansas in Lincoln County. I got so I could read in McGuffy’s Fourth Reader. I member that story bout the white man chunkin’ the boy down out of the apple tree.
“That was a government school on the railroad—notch house. Just had one door and one window. They took the nigger cabins and made a schoolhouse.
“After freedom my mammy stayed on old master’s place—he didn’t drive em away. My mammy spinned the raw cotton and took it to Tuscumbia and got it wove. Some of it she dyed. I know when I was a gal I wore a checked dress with a white apron. And my first Sunday dress was striped cotton. After she worked enough she bought me a red worsted dress and trimmed it and a sailor hat. We went to church and they led me by the hand. After church I had to take off my dress and hang it up till next Sunday. Had a apron made of cross barred muslin. Don’t see any of that now. It was made with a bodice and had ruffles round the neck. Wore brass toed shoes and balmoral stockin’s in my gal time. When my husband was courtin’ me, my dress was down to my shoe top. He never saw my leg!
“My fust work was nussin’. I went to Hot Springs with the white folks. I nussed babies till I got against nussin’ babies. I stayed right in the house and slep on a sofa with a baby in my arms. In my time they lowed you off half a day on Sunday.
“Chile, I washed and ironed and washed and ironed and washed and ironed till I married. I married when I was seventeen. My mother was dead and I’d rather been married than runnin’ loose—I might a stepped on a snake.
“My daddy was a ex-soldier. I don’t know what side he fought on but my mammy got bounty when he died. That’s what she bought that land with down here in Lincoln County from her old master Goodloe.
“I tell you—I’m a old christian and I think this younger generation is growin’ up like Christ said—they is gettin’ weaker and wiser.
“My mother’s sister, Patience Goodloe, lived in Pulaski County, Alabama and I went back there after I was married and stayed two months. I went up and down the fields where my daddy and mommy worked. I went out to the graveyard where my little brother was buried but they had cotton and corn planted on the old slavetime graveyard.
“I like that country lots better than this here Arkansas. Don’t have no springs or nothin’ here.”
#733
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: G.W. Hawkins
1114 Appianway, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 73
“I was born in Lamar County, Vernon, Alabama, January 1, 1865. I was a slave only four months.
“My father was Arter Hawkins and my mother was named Frances. My grandmother on my mother’s side was Malvina. I forget the name of my great-grandmother, but I believe it was Elizabeth. She was one hundred nine years old and I was twelve years old then. Her mind was just like a little sparrow floating in the air. That was my great-grandmother on my mother’s side. My grandfather on my father’s side was named Alec Young. My mother’s father was named Eliza Wright.
“My mother’s people were the Hawkins, and my father’s were the Yanceys.
“My father and mother were farmers, and ran whiskey stills. There wasn’t any revenue on whiskey then. The first revenue ever paid on whiskey was ten cents. The reason I remember that so well was that a fellow named John Hayman ran a still after the revenue was put on the stuff. Finally they caught him. They fined him.
“My folks farmed right after freedom and they farmed in slavery time. They didn’t raise no cotton. They raised corn and wheat and such as that in Alabama. Alabama is good for cotton, corn, wheat, tobacco, or anything you want to grow. It is the greatest fruit country in the world.
“Right after freedom, my folks continued to farm till they all played out.
Insert on P.9
“I came out here after I got grown. I just took a notion to go somewhere else. I have been in Arkansas forty-eight years. I first lived in Forrest City. Stayed there six years and did carpenter work. I have been a carpenter all my life—ever since I was about sixteen years old. I went to Barton, Arkansas and stayed there two years and then came here. I have supported myself by carpenter work ever since I came here. I helped build the Frisco Road from Potts Camp to the Alabama River. That is the other side of Jefferson County in Alabama.
“I haven’t asked for the old folks pension—can’t get no one to believe that I am old enough for one thing. Can’t get it nohow. It is for destitute people. I can’t get under the security because they say I am too old for that. I’m too much of a worker to get old age assistance and too old to be allowed to put up tax to become eligible for old age pension.
“I never went to school. I just got an old blue back speller and taught myself how to read and write with what I picked up here and there from people I watched. That’s one way a man never fails to learn—watching people. That’s the only way our forefathers had to learn. I learned arithmetic the same way. I never considered I was much at figuring but I took a contract from a man who had all kinds of education and that man said I could do arithmetic better than he could.
“I belong to the A.M.E. Church. I have been a member of it for forty-one years.
“I have three boys living and one stepdaughter. But she feels like she is my own. I don’t make any difference. I never have whipped my children. I had one child—a girl—that died when she was eight months old. I taught all my boys the carpenter trade, and they all work and stay right here at home with me.”
Living Conditions during and Immediately after Slavery
“There are two quarters that I used to visit with my grandmother when I was a little boy. The boss’s house was built so that he could stand on the porch of his house and see anything on the place, even in the slave quarters. The houses were all built out of logs. The roof was put on with what they called rib poles. They built the cable and cut each beam shorter than the other. They laid the boards across them and put a big log on top of them to weight them down, so that the wind couldn’t blow the planks off. They were home-made planks. They didn’t have no nails. They had nothing but dirt floors.
“Where the men folks were thrifty when they wanted to, they would go out at night and split the logs into slabs and then level them as much as they could and use those for floors. All the colored folks’ were split log floors if there were any floors at all. There was no lumber then. The planks were made with whipsaws and water-mills. I was a grown man before I ever saw a steam mill. The quarters that I saw were those that were built in slave time.
“If cracks were too big, they would put a pole in the crack and fill up the rest of it with mud—that is what they called chink and dob. The doors were hung on wooden hinges. They would bore a hole through the hinge and through the door and put a wooden pin in it in place of screws. There wasn’t a nail or a screw in the whole house when it was finished. They did mortise and tenon joints—all frame houses. Where we use nails now, if they had to, they would bore a hole and drive in a pin—wooden pin.”
Furniture
“The colored folks would put a post out from the corner and bore a hole and put the other end in it. They wouldn’t have any slats but would just lay boards across the side and put wheat or oat straw on the boards. The women made all the quilts. What I mean, they carded the rolls, spun the thread—spun it on an old hand-turned wheel—and then they would reel it off of the broach onto the reel and make hanks out of it. Then they would run it off on what they called quills. Then it would go ’round a big pin and come out with the threads separated. Then they would run through something like a comb and that would make the cloth.
“It was the rule in slave time to card one hundred rolls. Sometimes they would be up till after twelve o’clock at night. They carded that in one night and spun it the next night. Start with old cotton just like it come from the gin. Card it one night and spin it the next. Done wool and cotton the same way. One hundred rolls carded gave enough threads to make a yard of cloth.
“In them days they tasked everybody to the limit.”
Stoves
“For stoves they used an iron pot on a big fire. In the kitchen, they had a fireplace built ten feet wide. They had things they called pot racks hung down from the chimney, and they would hang pots on them. They put the pots on those hooks and not on the logs. When they baked bread they would use iron skillets—North Carolina people called them spiders. They would put an iron lid on them and put fire over the top and underneath the skillet and bake good bread. I mean that old-time bread was good bread. They baked the light bread the same way. They baked biscuits once a week. Sunday mornings was about the only time you ever got them.”
Food in General (Slaves)
“In slavery times they had all kinds of meat—more than they have now—, vegetables and fruits too. They raised them themselves. There wasn’t no food issued. Didn’t need to be. One cook cooked it all in one kitchen and they all sat around the same big old long table long as a house. All the hands ate at the same table and in the same room and at the same time.
“The way they fed the children, they took pot-liquor or bean soup or turnip liquor or the juice from anything they boiled and poured it out in a great big wooden bowl and let all the children get ’round it like so many cats and they would just tip their hands in it and eat what they wanted. Of course they had all the milk they wanted because everybody raised cows. I didn’t have to undergo this myself, but this was what they had to undergo at the places where my grandmother took me to visit.”
Clothes
“A colored boy had to be more than twelve years old before he wore a pair of pants. He wore nothing but a long shirt that come down to his knees. The hands in slave time wore homemade shirts. All clothes were homemade—pants and coats and dresses and stockings and everything. The shoes were made out of harness leather. Tanned and made right by hand at home. I have seen tanning vats and yards two blocks square.”
Patrollers
“You had to get a pass from owners to go out at night. If you had a pass and the pateroles found you, it was all right if you hadn’t overstayed the time that was written on it. If you didn’t have a pass or if you had overstayed your time, it was still all right if you could outrun the pateroles. That held before freedom and it held a long time after freedom. The pateroles were still operating when I was old enough to remember those old quarters. They didn’t break them up for a long time. I remember them myself. I don’t mean the Ku Klux. The Ku Klux was a different thing altogether. The Ku Klux didn’t exist before the War. I don’t know where they got the name from—I don’t know whether they give it to themselves or the people give it to them. But the Ku Klux came after the War and weren’t before it.”
Ku Klux Influence on Negroes
“The Ku Klux Klan weren’t just after Negroes. They got after white folks and Negroes both. I didn’t think they were so much after keeping the Negro from voting as some other things.
“There was one colored fellow in Alabama—I think his name was Egbert Bondman—that wasn’t influenced. He was a politician and they got after him one time. He lived about six miles south of Vernon in Lamar County, Alabama. He went down to the hole where they watered their horses and stretched an old cable wire across the road just high enough to trip up their horses. He hid in the woods and cut down on them with his shotgun when they came up. I hear there was one more scramble when those horses commenced stumbling, and those men started running through the forest to get away from that shot.
“I remember one night my mother woke me up, and I looked out and there was a lot of the Ku Klux riding down the road. They had on long white robes and looked like a flock of geese in the dark.
“The main thing the Ku Klux seemed to try to do, it seemed to me, was to try to keep the colored folks obedient to their former masters and to keep the white folks from giving them too much influence. And they wanted to stop the white men that ran after colored women.
“But they didn’t last long. They whipped a fellow named Huggins in the early seventies, and he was a government man. After that government men camped on their trail, and they didn’t amount to much.”
Slave Breeding
“The thing they were fighting began in slavery. There were slave men kept that forced slave women to do what they wanted to do. And if the slave women didn’t do it, the masters or the overseers whipped them till they did. The women were beat and made to go to them. They were big fine men, and the masters wanted the women to have children by them. And there were some white men, too, who forced the slave women to do what they wanted to. Some of them didn’t want to stop when slavery stopped.”
Slave Tasks and Hours of Work
“I’ve told you the slaves were tasked to the limit. The hours of the slave hands—if it was summer time—he must be in the field when the sun rose. And he must come home and eat his dinner and get back in the field and stay till the sun went down. In the winter time he must be out there by the time it was light enough to see the work and stay out till it was just too dark to see the work with just enough time out to stop and eat his dinner. This was just after slavery that I remember. But the hours were the same then. The average on cotton picking was two hundred pounds a day. Pulling fodder was a hundred bundles. Gathering corn and such as that was all they could do.”
Wages just after Freedom
“The average wage that a man got for twenty-six days’ work—twenty-six days were counted a working month—was eight dollars and board for the month. That was the average wage for work like that. That is the way they worked then.”
This Matter of Slave Clothes Again
“Clothes!!! They didn’t know nothing ’bout underclothes. They didn’t wear them just after the War, and I know they didn’t before the War—not in my part of Alabama. That’s the reason why they say the Negro is cold natured. He didn’t have anything on. I have seen many a boy picking and chopping cotton on a cold autumn day with nothing on but his shirt. In his bare feet too. He got one pair of shoes a year and he didn’t get no more. When he wore them out, he didn’t have any till the next year.
“When I was a boy I have seen many a young lady walk to church with her shoes flung over her shoulders and wait till she got nearly there before she would put them on. She didn’t want to wear them out too soon.
“I didn’t have to undergo this myself.
“When I was ten years old, my job was to drive a team twenty-six miles, and it took me two days to go and two days to come and one day to load and unload—five days. The team was loaded with cotton going and anything coming back. We used to get salt from some place near New Orleans. We would drive ox teams down there, put in on order, wait till they dipped the water out of the lake, boiled the salt out of it, and packed it up. There was no such thing as mining salt like they do now. It would take from August first till about the middle of September to get it. Ox team won’t make more than about twelve miles a day. The people would make up a wagon train and go and come together. People in those days didn’t believe a horse would pull anything but a buggy, so they used steers mostly for heavy pulling. They ran all gins and thrashers by horse power and the running gear was all made out of wood. A lot of people say you couldn’t make a wooden cotton press that would pack a bale of cotton. You can make a wooden press that will break a bale in two. Of course the gin was made out of metal. But they made the press out of wood.”
Slave Schooling
“The slaves were not allowed to learn anything. Sometimes one would be shrewd enough to get in with the white children and they would teach him his a-b-c’s, and after he learnet to spell he would steal books and get out and learn the rest for himself.”
How Freedom Came
“The way I heard it the owners called their slaves up and told them they was free. They give them their choice of leaving or staying. Most of them stayed.”
First Crop after Freedom
“In 1865, when the slaves were freed, they acknowledged they were free in May in Alabama. All that was free and would stay and help them make their crops, they give them one-tenth. That is, one-tenth went to all the hands put together. Of course if they had a lot of hands that wouldn’t be much. Then again, it might be a good deal. I know about that by hearing the old people talk about it.”
Opinions
“I’ll tell you my opinions some other time. I think the young people are beyond control. I don’t have any trouble with mine. I never have had any trouble with them.”
“On the fourth of August, my birthday, and directly after the colored people were set free, all the white people gave a great big dinner to the slaves. All the white people at my home came together and gave a big dinner to us. It was that way all over the United States. My mother told me I was four years old at that big dinner. They went to a great big book and throwed it open and found my birthday in it. I never will forget that. You can figure from that exactly how old I am. (Seventy-seven or seventy-eight—ed.)
“My mother’s name was Elizabeth Tuggle and my father’s name was Albert Tuggle. My mother was the mother of sixteen children. They were some of them born in freedom and some born in slavery. They are all dead but three. My mother was married twice.
“Old Tom Owens was my mother’s master. I just do remember him. My father’s master was named Tom Tuggle. My mother and my father got together by going different places and meeting. They went together till freedom and weren’t married except in the way they married in slavery. During slavery times, old master gave you to some one and that was all of it. My father asked my mother’s old master if he could go with my mother and old man Owens said yes. Then father went to her cabin to see her. When freedom came, he taken her to his place and married her accordin’ to the law.
“Aunt Mariny Tuggle was my father’s mother. I don’t know anything about his father. She has been dead! She died when I was young. I can remember her well, though.
“I can remember my mother’s mother. Her name was Eliza Whitelow. Her husband was named Jack Whitelow. They was my grandfather and my grandmother on my mother’s side. They old people. I can remember seeing them.
“I never saw my grandfather on my father’s side. That was way back in slavery time. I used to hear them say he was a guinea man. He was short. My own father was small too. But my father’s father was short as I am. I am about four and a half feet tall. (I stopped here and measured her, and she was exactly four feet six inches tall—ed.) I never heard nobody say where he came from. My father’s sisters were part Indian. Their hair was longer than that ruler you got in your hand there. It came down on their shoulders. They was a shade brighter than I am.
“My father’s mother was small too. His sisters were not whole sisters; their daddy was Indian.”
Occupation
“My father and his father and mother were all farmers. My mother and her mother were farmers too. All my people were long-lived. Grandpa, grandma, and all of them. I reckon there about a hundred children scattered back there in Tennessee. Brother’s children and sister’s children. I believe my folks would take care of me if they knew about my condition. These folks here are mean. Them folks would take care of me if I were home.”
Slave Houses
“The slaves lived in old log houses; just one room, one door, one window, one everything. They had any kind of furniture they could git. Some of them had old homemade beds and some of them one thing and another. You know the white folks wasn’t goin’ to give them no furniture.
“They had plenty of meat and bread and milk to eat. Coarse food—the commonest kind of food they could get ’hold of! When I knowed anything, I was in the big house eating the bes’ with the white folks. Some of them could live well then. My mama gave me to the Owenses—her old mistress. I was raised on a pallet in the house. I was in the house from the time I was large enough to be taken from my mother. I didn’t never do any work till I was married. Old mistress wouldn’t let me work. Just keep by her and hand her a drink of water, and on like that. She’s dead now—dead, dead, dead! They didn’t leave but two children, they was ’round in the country somewheres then I left there.
“After I married I went to her husband’s first wife’s child. She had about nine or ten boys and one girl. I raised part of them. But most of them was great big children—big enough for me to throw a glass of milk at their heads. I would fight. Sometimes they used to hear them hollering and come out, and I would be throwing a glass at one and jumping across the table at the other. But when them boys grew up, they loved me just the same as anybody. Nobody in town could touch me, right or wrong.”
Mean Masters
“My mother’s masters used to tie her down before the dairy door and have two men beat her. She has told me that they used to beat her till the blood ran down on the bricks. Some white people in slavery times was good to the niggers. But those were mean, that’s the reason I ain’t got no use for white folks. I’m glad I was not old in that time. I sure would have killed anybody that treated me that way. I don’t know that my father’s people beat him up. I think his people were kinder and sorter humored him because he was so small.”
Marriage
“They tell me some of them would have a big supper and then they would hug and kiss each other and jump over the broomstick and they were supposed to be married.”
Amusement and Recreation
“They used to go out and dance and carry on for amusement, and they would go to church too. It was just about like it is now. Dancing and going to church is about all they do now, isn’t it? They got a gambling game down there on the corner. They used to do some of that too, I guess.”
Breeders
“I have heard my mother say many times that a woman would be put up on the block and sold and bring good money because she was known to be a good and fast breeder.”
Ku Klux, Patrollers, Robbers
“I’ve heard of the pateroles and Ku Klux. I thought they said the Ku Klux was robbers. I think the Ku Klux came after the War. But there was some during the War that would come ’round and ask questions. ‘Where’s yo’ old master?’ ‘Where’s his money hid?’ ‘Where’s his silverware?’ And on like that. Then they would take all the money and silver and anything else loose that could be carried away. And some of them used to steal the niggers theirselves ’specially if they were little childrens. They was scared to leave the little children run ’round because of that.”
Opinions
“I don’t know. I better keep my ’pinions to myself. You just have to go on and be thankful and look to the Lord.”
Support and Later life
“I haven’t done a day’s work for seven years. I haven’t been able. I have a son, but he has a family of his own to support and can’t do nothin’ for me. I have another son but he is now out of work himself. He can’t get anything to do. I just have to git along on what little I can turn up myself, and what little I get from my friends.
“My husband died about seven years ago. I have lost two boys inside of seven years. After they died, I went right on down. I ain’t been no good since. The youngest one, Mose, got killed on a Sunday night. I felt it on Saturday night and screamed so that people had to come ’round me and hold me and comfort me. Then on Sunday night Mose got shot and I went crazy. He was my baby boy and he and his brother were my only support. My other boy got sick and died at the hospital. When the man stepped on the porch to tell me he was dead, I knew it when I heard him step up before he could say a word. I can’t git to see his wife now. She was the sweetest woman ever was. She was sure good to my son. She treated him like he was a baby. She was devoted to him and his last request to her was to see to me. I don’t know just where she is now, but she’s in the city somewheres. She would help me I know if I could get to her.
“My husband was a preacher. He pastored the St. John Baptist Church for fifteen years. He lived here over thirty years before he died. I left a good home in Brownsville, Tennessee. That’s where we were married. I have been married twice. I lived with my first husband, George Shaver, a year. I married him about 1876. I was single for two years. After that I married Rev. Hays. I lived with Rev. Hays about twenty-one years in Brownsville, Tennessee. We bought a house and lot there. We were gettin’ along fine when we decided to come here. He was a shoemaker then. He made shoes after he came here, too. I ran a restaurant in Brownsville. I guess we lived together more then fifty years in all. He died seven years ago.
“I rent these two rooms in this little shack. They won’t give me no help at the Welfare.”
— 1- 1937
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Tom Haynes
1110 W. Second Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:
“I was six years old when the war ended—the day we was set free. My old mistress, Miss Becky Franks, come in and say to my mother ‘Addie, you is free this morning’ and commenced cryin’. She give my mother some jerked beef for us.
“I know I run out in the yard where there was eighty Yankee soldiers and I pulled out my shirt tail and ran down the road kickin’ up the dust and sayin’, ‘I’m free, I’m free!’ My mother said, ‘You’d better come back here!’
“I never knew my mother to get but one whippin’. She put out her mouth against old mistress and she took her out and give her a breshin’.
“I can remember away back. I can remember when I was three years old. One day I was out in the yard eatin’ dirt and had dirt all over my face. Young master Henry come out and say ‘Stick out your tongue, I’m goin’ to cut it off.’ I was scared to death. He said ‘Now you think you can quit eatin’ that dirt?’ I said ‘Yes’ so he let me go.
“One time the Yankee soldiers took young Master Henry and hung him up by the thumbs and tried to make him tell where the money was. Master Henry’s little brother Jim and me run and hid. We thought they was goin’ to hang us too. We crawled under the house just like two frogs lookin’ out.
“Old master had about thirty-five hands but some of em run away to war. My father run away too, but the war ended before he could get into it.
“I went to school a little while, but my father died and my mother bound me out to a white man.
“When we was first freed I know those eighty soldiers took us colored folks to the county band in Monticello. There was forty soldiers in the back and forty in front and we was in the swing.
“I learned to read after I was grown. I worked for the railroad in the freight office fifteen years and learned to check baggage.
“I was a house mover when I was able, but I’m not able to work now. I own this house here and I’m livin’ on the relief.
“My father was a blacksmith and shoemaker—made all our shoes. I’ve lived in town all my life.
“The people are better off free if they had any sense. They need a leader. When they had a chance if they had bought property, but no—they wanted to get in office and when they got in they didn’t know how to act. And the young people don’t use their education to help themselves.”
#782
Interviewer: Bernice Bowden
Person Interviewed: Joe Haywood
2207 West Eleventh Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 76
“I was born the first day of January, 1862 Born in Mississippi, Yazoo County. My mother said I was a New Year’s present. A.M. Payne was our owner.
“I just do ’member seein’ the soldiers and that’s all. I ’member the brim of slavery and that’s all.
“I member Henry Dixon. He was a Klu Klux. He was Klu Klukin round breakin’ up the benevolent societies. He was a real bad man. He just went round with his crowd and broke ’em up. My owner was a good man—good man. They all give him a good name.
“Our folks stayed there till I was plumb grown.
“I’ve farmed, carpentered, and all kinds of work on the plantation. I’ve been a engineer in a gin and gettin’ out crops every year.
“After I left Mississippi I just roved around. Went through Louisiana to Texas. I lived in Texas. I reckon, from 1893 to ’96. Then I started to rove again. I roved from Texas back home to Mississippi in 1902. Stayed there till 1932, then I roved over here to Arkansas. I done got too old to rove now.
“School? Oh Lord, I went to school all my days till I was grown. They kep’ me in school. My mother kep’ me in till she died and then my stepmother kep’ me in. I got very near through the fifth grade. In my day the fifth grade was pretty good. Wilson’s Fifth Reader was a pretty good book. They took me out of Wilson’s Fifth Reader and put me in McGuffy’s and there’s where I quit. Studied the Blue Back Speller.
“I’ve had some narrow escapes in my life. I had a shot right through here in the breast bone—right over my heart. That was in ninety-six. Me and another fellow was projectin with a gun.
“Then I had a bad accident on the ninth of March, 1914. A 800-foot log came down on me. It near ’bout killed me. I was under a doctor ’bout six or eight months. That’s how come I’m crippled now. It broke my leg and it’s two inches shorter than the other one. I walked on crutches ’bout five years. Got my jawbone broke too. Couldn’t eat? I ain’t never stopped eatin’. Ain’t no way to stop me from eatin’ ’cept to not give it to me.
“I compressed after I got my leg broke. And I was a noble good bricklayer.
“I never have voted. Nobody ever pushed me up to it and I ain’t never been bothered ’bout anything like that. Everythin was a satisfaction to me. Just whatever way they went was a satisfaction to me.
“I have never heard my folks give my white folks no ‘down the hill’. My daddy was brought from Charleston, South Carolina. He was a ship carpenter. He did all of Payne’s carpenter work from my baby days up.
“The last of the Paynes died since I came here to Arkansas. He was a A.M. Payne, too.
“I can ’member the soldiers marchin’ by. They wore yellow shirts and navy blue coats. I know the coats had two little knobs right behind, just the color of the coat.
“I don’t know what to think of the younger generation. I don’t know why and what to think of ’em. Just don’t know how to take ’em. Ain’t comin’ like I did. Lay it to the parents. They have plenty of leaders outside the family.
“I’m lookin’ for a better time. God’s got His time set for ’em on that.
“I belong to St. James Methodist Episcopal Church.”
#737
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Marie E. Hervey
1520 Pulaski Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 62
“I have heard my father and mother talk over the War so many times. They would talk about how the white people would do the colored and how the Yankees would come in and tear up everything and take anything they could get their hands on. They would tell how the colored people would soon be free. My mama’s white folks went out and hid when the Yankees were coming through.
“My father’s white people were named Taylor’s—old Job Taylor’s folks. They lived in Tennessee.
“My mother said they had a block to put the colored people and their children on and they would tell them to tell people what they could do when the people asked them. It would just be a lot of lies. And some of them wouldn’t do it. One or two of the colored folks they would sell and they would carry the others back. When they got them back they would lock them up and they would have the overseers beat them, and bruise them, and knock them ’round and say, ‘Yes, you can’t talk, huh? You can’t tell people what you can do?’ But they got a beating for lying, and they would uh got one if they hadn’t lied, most likely.
“They used to take pregnant women and dig a hole in the ground and put their stomachs in it and whip them. They tried to do my grandma that way, but my grandpa got an ax and told them that if they did he would kill them.
“They never could do anything with him.
“My mother’s people were the Hess’s. They were pretty good to her. It was them that tried to whip my grandma though.
“You had to call everybody ‘Mis’’ and ‘Mars’ in those days. All the old people did it right after slavery. They did it in my time. But we children wouldn’t. They sent me and my sister up to the house once to get some meal. We said we weren’t goin’ to call them no ‘Mars’ and ‘Mis’.’ Two or three times we would get up to the house, and then we would turn ’round and go back. We couldn’t make up our minds how to get what we was sent after without sayin’ ‘Mars’ and ‘Mis’.’ Finally old man Nick noticed us and said, ‘What do you children want?’ And we said, ‘Grandma says she wants some meal.’ When we got back, grandma wanted to know why we took so long to go and come. We told her all about it.
“People back home still have those old ways. If they meet them on the street, you got to get off and let them by. An old lady just here a few years ago wouldn’t get off the sidewalk and they went to her house and beat her up that night. That is in Brownsville, Tennessee in Hayeard (Haywood) County. That’s an old rebel place.
“White people were pretty good to the old colored folks right after the War. The white folks were good to my grandfather. The Taylors were. They would give him a hog or something every Christmas. All the old slaves used to go to the big house every Christmas and they would give them a present.
“My husband ran off from his white people. They was in Helena. That’s where he taken the boat. He and a man and two women crossed the river on a plank. He pulled off his coat and got a plank and carried them across to the other side. He was goin’ to meet the soldiers. He had been told that they were to come through there on the boat at four o’clock that afternoon. The rebels had him and the others taking them some place to keep them from fallin’ into the hands of the Yankees, and they all ran off and hid. They laid in water in the swamp all that night. Their bosses were looking for them everywhere and the dogs bayed through the forest, but they didn’t find them. And they met some white folks that told them the boat would come through there at four o’clock and the white folks said, ‘When it comes through, you run and get on it, and when you do, you’ll be free. You’ll know when it’s comin’ by its blowin’ the whistle. You’ll be safe then, ’cause they are Yankees.’
“And he caught it. He had to cross the river to get over into Helena to the place where the boat would make its landin’. After that he got with the Yankees and went to a whole lot of places. When he was mustered out, they brought him back to Little Rock. The people were Burl Ishman and two women who had their children with them. I forget the names of the women. They followed my husband up when he ran off. My husband’s first name was Aaron.
“My husband had a place on his back I’ll remember long as I live. It was as long as your forearm. They had beat him and made it. He said they used to beat niggers and then put salt and pepper into their wounds. I used to tell daddy that ‘You’ll have to forget that if you want to go to heaven.’ I would be in the house working and daddy would be telling some white person how they ’bused the slaves, and sometimes he would be tellin’ some colored person ’bout slavery.
“They sold him from his mother. They sold his mother and two children and kept him. He went into the house crying and old mis’ gave him some biscuits and butter. You see, they didn’t give them biscuits then. That was the same as givin’ him candy. She said, ‘Old mis’ goin’ to give you some good biscuits and some butter.’ He never did hear from his mother until after freedom. Some thought about him and wrote him a letter for her. There was a man here who was from North Carolina and my husband got to talking with him and he was going back and he knew my husband’s mother and his brother and he said he would write to my husband if my husband would write him a letter and give it to him to give to his mother. He did it and his mother sent him an answer. He would have gone to see her but he didn’t have money enough then. The bank broke and he lost what little he had saved. He corresponded with her till he died. But he never did get to see her any more.
“Nothin’ slips up on me. I have a guide. I am warned of everything. Nothin’ happens to me that I don’t know it before. Follow your first mind. Conscience it is. It’s a great thing to have a conscience.
“I was born in Tennessee. I have been in Arkansas about forty-six years. I used to cook but I didn’t do it long. I never have worked out much only just my work in the house. My husband has been dead four years this last April. He was a good man. We were married forty years the eleventh of December and he died on the eighth of April.”
MAY 11 1938
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Phillis Hicks
Edmondson, Arkansas
Age: 71
“My mother’s owner was Master Priest Gates. He had a son in Memphis. I seen him not long ago. He is an insurance agent. They was rosy rich looking folks. Mama was a yellow woman. She had fourteen living children. Her name was Harriett Gates. Papa named Shade Huggins. They belong to different folks. They was announced married before the War and they didn’t have to remarry.
“She said the overseers was cruel to them. They had white men overseers. She was a field hand. I heard her say she was so tired when she come to the house she would take her baby in her arms to nurse and go to sleep on the steps or under a tree and never woke till they would be going to the field. She would get up and go on back. They et breakfast in the field many and many a time. Old people cooked and took care of the children. She never was sold. I don’t know if my father was. They come from Alabama to Mississippi and my mother had been brought from Georgia to Alabama.
“She picked geese till her fingers would bleed to make feather beds for old master I reckon. They picked geese jus’ so often. The Gates had several big quarters and lots of land. They come to be poor people after the War—land poor. Mother left Gates after the War. They didn’t get nothing but good freedom as I ever heard of. My father was a shoemaker at old age. He said he learned his trade in slavery times. He share cropped and rented after freedom.
“I heard ’em say the Ku Klux kept ’em run in home at night. So much stealing going on and it would be laid at the hands of the colored folks if they didn’t stay in place. Ku Klux made them work, said they would starve and starve white folks too if they didn’t work. They was share cropping then, yes ma’am, all of them. I know that they said they had no stock, no land, no rations, no houses to live in, their clothes was thin. They said it was squally times in slavery and worse after freedom. They wore the new clothes in winter. By summer they was wore thin and by next winter they had made some more cloth to make more new clothes. They wove one winter for the next winter. When they got to share croppin’ they had to keep a fire in the fireplace all night to warm by. The clothes and beds was rags. Corn bread and meat was all they had to eat. Maybe they had pumpkins, corn, and potatoes. They said it was squally times.
“I got a place. I rented it out to save it. My brother rents it. I can’t hardly pay taxes. I’d like to get some help. I could sew if they would let me on. I can see good. I’m going to chop cotton but it so long till then.
“I washed and ironed in Memphis till washing went out of style. Prices are so high now and cotton cheap. I’m counting on better times.
“Times is close. Young folks is like young folks always been. Some are smart and some lazy. None don’t look ahead. They don’t think about saving. Guess they don’t know how to save. Right smart spends it foolish. I’m a widow and done worked down.”
