Chapter XI: Part 11

"You ask does ah know erbout any hainted houses? No'm when ah fin's a house is hainted ah aint gwian in. No'm not ole Bill. But sumpin happened not long ergo that give me a big fright. Hit waz long bout dusk ah seed two women, white as anybody gwian down de road and when they got along thar they quit the road and come aroun the path. Ah said: 'Howdy' and they never even speak jus kep' a goin'. Ah say: 'Whar is you all a goin' and they nevah say a word. Then ah say to em: 'Won't you all come by and set with ole Bill a while.' An still they nevah say nothin. Jus kep' on a goin' roun' that house and down the road. Then ah got skeered and went in the house an ah doan set out late no moah. Efn them ghost had uh come in th house ah would a gone undah the house.

"You all chillun ain goin is you? Come back ter see ole Bill. Ah sholey hates to have mah white folks sit on the floor but mebby ole Bill's foot will be bettuh next time an she can git her white fokes some cheers."

Aunt _Sally Fields_ said to be 106 years old lived in Mack Quarters about two and a half or three miles south of El Dorado. She is blind and lives with Hattie Moseley. During slavery days she belonged to the Patterson family and came with them from Alabama to Louisiana and later to Caledonia where she was living at the close of the Civil War. Her mind was wandering to such an extent that we could not get very much from her and when asked about slavery times she said:

"Slavery time is gone. The stars are passed. The white folks that raised me said: 'I want you all to get up in the morning and tell me about the stars.' Oh Lordy! The stars fell. Ole Missus would come say: 'Ah want to be standing up behind the door. Ah don' want to be buried.' My ole missus was good to all the niggers.

"There was a big spring on marsters plantation. When we would start to the spring mistress would say: 'Don't go on the left hand side of the spring, go up the right hand side to the chinquapin tree.'"

It took Sally about twenty minutes to say that much so we didn't stay longer.

Interviewer: Carol Graham
Person Interviewed: Pinkie Howard (Add)
El Dorado, Ark.
Age: ?

"Mornin', honey! Here you is to see Aunt Pinkie again. What did you bring me? Didn't you bring old Aunt Pinkie somethin' good to eat?

"Lawsy, honey, its been so long I can't member much bout plantation days. But I members the children on the plantation would ring up and play ring games. And we used to have the best things to eat back in them days. We used to take taters and grate them and make tater pudding. Made it in ovens. Made corn bread and light bread in ovens too and I used to bake the best biscuits anybody ever et and I didn't put my scratchers in them neither. Old Miss taught me how. And we had lasses pone corn bread and them good old tater biscuits. We used to eat parched corn, and cornmeal dumplings was all the go back there.

"I worked all my life and hard, too, but I still is a pretty good old frame.

"He! He! He! Look at that black boy passing, will you? Them brichie legs is half way his thighs. He needs to put sugar in his shoes to sweet talk his brichie legs down. And did you notice he didn't speak to old Aunt Pinkie. Young folks ain't got no manners these days. Now when I was young back there on that plantation at Hillsboro old Miss Aiken taught all her niggers manners. She would say to us, 'Now, you all don' clean your noses, or years, or fingernails before folks; it's ill manners. And don' make no 'marks bout folks. Don' eat onions and go out in company, if you does, eat coffee to kill the taste. Don't talk with yo' mouth full of sumpin' to eat; that ill manners too. Don' eat too fast cause you is liable to git strangled. And don' wear yo' welcome out by staying too long.'

"Ain't it warm and nice today missy? Jus like a spring day. An see that bee after my flower? Wasn't it a bee? You know, bees used to swarm in the springtime back on the plantation. The way they would catch em was to ring a bell or beat on a old plow and keep beatin' and ringin' till they settled on a tree limb. Then they made a bee gum and covered it and left a hole at the bottom of the gum for them to go in and out, then they sawed the limb off and put the bees in the gum and put some sweetened water made from molasses so they can start to makin' honey. Sometimes the bees would sting some of us and we would put a little snuff on it and cure it right up."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Josephine Howell
Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 72

"My mother was Rebecca Jones. She was born in Nashville, Tennessee. Grandma was a cook and a breeding woman. The Jones thought she was very valuable. They prized her high. She was the mother of twenty-one children. Mother was more than half Indian. She was bright color. The Jones wanted to keep her, thought she would be a fine cook and house woman and a fine breeder. She had such a terrible temper they sold her to McAlways, some of their relations close to Augusta, Arkansas.

"Mama said she was eight years old when Gabe McAlway come to Nashville, Tennessee and got her. He bought her. He was a young man and a saloon-keeper at Augusta, Arkansas. He put her out on the farm at his father's. She was a field hand. She was part African and a whole lot Indian. She was fractious and high tempered. The old man McAlway and the overseers would drop her clothes down in the field before all the hands and whoop her. Gabe never even slapped her. His aunt Mrs. Jones didn't want them to put her in the field. She wanted to keep her but couldn't she was so fractious, and she didn't know how bad old man treated her.

"When mother was sold she was brought from twenty brothers and her mother and never saw none of them no more. She left them at Wolf River. They took the boat. Wolf River is close to Memphis. They must have brought them that far but I don't know. This is what all she told me minua and minua time. Her own papa bought her when she was eight years old, Gabe McAlway. When she got to be a young maid he forced motherhood up on her. I was born before freedom. How old I am I don't know. Gabe McAlway was sort of a young bachelor. He got killed in the Civil War. He was a Scotch-Irishman. I never seen my father.

"Mother married then and had five children. She lived in the back yard of Mrs. Will Thompson. Dr. Goodridge stopped her from having children, she raved wild. She had such a bad fractious temper. She suckled both Mrs. Will Thompson's children, old man Nathan McGreggor's grandchildren. She lived in Mrs. Thompson's back yard but she slept in their house to help with the babies.

"Judge Milwee's wife and auntie, Mrs. Baxter, raised me from a baby (infant). Judge Milwee was in Brinkley but he moved to Little Rock. Them is my own dear white folks. Honey, I can't help but love them, they part of me. They raised me. They learned me how to do everything.

"My son live with me and I raising my little great-grandson. We can't throw him away. My baby's mother is way off in St. Louis. He is three years old.

"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. [HW: 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 (?)." [HW: Bushville or 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.