People in Forrest City send for Ida and keep her a week or two baking
Christmas and wedding cakes.
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Milton Ritchie
R.F.D., Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 78
"I was born in Marietta Hotel at Marietta, Georgia. The hotel belong to
Milton Stevens. He had two sons. One died fo I was born and Pink was in
the war. Mistress Thursday was old moster's wife. We all had to refugee.
My sister was down in the bottoms with all the slaves and cattle when
she died. She took sick and died suddenly. They heard the soldiers was
coming to Atlanta and knowed they would come by Marietta. Moster Stevens
sold the hotel just at the beginning of the war. He moved to the
country. Mama cooked at the hotel and in the country both. The hotel was
a brick house on the railroad where they fed a lot of people every day.
Moster Milton used to take me bout where he went, rode me on his foot
when I was a baby. After they went to the farm every evening Mistress
Thursday come get me, take me to the house. She got bread and butter,
sugar, give it to me and I slept on a pallet in her room. I never did
know why she done that. Mama had a little house she slept in. She
cooked. They never whooped me. They never whooped mama.
"One time the Federal army camped not a great ways from us. One time I
was playing in a gully--big red ditch. I spied the Federals coming. I
flew out the ditch up the hill and across the field. They was calvary
men camped back of our field. We all left that place and refugeed to
another place. They didn't burn the house but they sent two bullets
through the walls or that house. 'Old Granny' was too old to refugee.
She kept living by herself in a house on the place. They never bothered
her. She wasn't kin to us but Moster Milton owned her and kept her fed.
We raised sugar-cane, hogs, corn, and goobers. The sugar-cane had
no top. I got a whooping every Monday. Mama whoop me. We go drink
sugar-cane juice in the trough at the mill. We got up in there with our
feet. They had to wash out the troughs. It was a wood house. It was a
big mill. He sold that good syrup in Atlanta. It wasn't sorghum. The men
at the mill would scare us but we hid around. They come up to the house
and tell on us.
"We had moved from the farm when they burned Atlanta. From the place
where Moster Milton refugeed I could hear a roaring all the time nearly,
sometimes clearer, and the roaring was broke sometimes.
"Moster Milton ran the farm when he run the hotel cept I was born at
the hotel and Mistress Thursday lived there then too. He had all Negro
overseers. Each overseer had a certain lot of hands to do what he told
them. He didn't have no trouble. He told them if they made something for
them and him too it would be fine, if they didn't work they would have
to do without. They had plenty they said.
"My mama was sold on the block in Virginia when she was twelve years
old. She and her little brother sold the same day. Moster Milton Stevens
bought her. The same man couldn't buy them both, didn't have money
enough. They had a little blanket and she and her brother cut it into
and put it around their shoulders. They been sleeping together and
Moster Milton brought her home on his horse up behind him. Her mama was
crying when she left her. She never heard nor seen none of her folks no
more she told me. (The old Negro cried.)
"My mama and papa was dark but both was mixed. They never told me if it
was white or Indian. Papa was a tall, big bony man. Mama wasn't so big
and stouter. He never tried to get away from his owners. He belong to
Sam Ritchie five or six miles away. I never beard much about them. They
had Negro overseers. Papa was a foreman. He tanned the cow hides and
made shoes for all the hands on Ritchie's place. He made our shoes over
there too. They said Stevens and Ritchies didn't keep bad dogs. Mistress
Eliza Ritchie was a Stevens before she married. Papa never was sold. He
said they was good to them. Mama was named Eliza too and papa George
Ritchie.
"When freedom was on papa went to Atlanta and got transportation to
Chattanooga. I don't know why. He met me and mama. She picked me up and
run away and met him. We went in a freight box. It had been a soldier's
home--great big house. We et on the first story out of tin pans. We had
white beans or peas, crackers and coffee. Meat and wheat and cornbread
we never smelt at that place. Somebody ask him how we got there and he
showed them a ticket from the Freedmans bureau in Atlanta. He showed
that on the train every now and then. Upstairs they brought out a stack
of wool blankets and started the rows of beds. Each man took his three
as he was numbered. Every night the same one got his own blankets. The
room was full of beds and white guards with a gun over his shoulder
guarded them all night long. We stayed there a long time--nearly a year.
They tried to get jobs fast as they could and push em out but it was
slow work. Mama got a place to cook at--Mrs. Crutchfield's. She run a
hotel in town but lived in the country. We stayed there about a year.
Papa was hired somewhere else there.
"Papa got us on a farm in middle Tennessee after that. We come to Mr.
Hooper's place and share cropped one year, then we went to share crop
for Wells Brothers close to Murfreesboro. I been on the farm all my life
since then.
"The Ku Klux never pestered us. I heard about them.
"The Welfare helps me and I would do work if I could get work I can do.
I could do light work. Times is hard. Hard to get a living. I don't mind
work. I couldn't do a day's work now.
"The young generation is beyond me. I don't be about them much."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Alice Rivers
W. 17th, Highland Addition, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 81
"Yes'm, I remember when the Yankees come. I ricollect when they throwed
out all the meat from old master's smokehouse. The colored folks was
tryin' to ketch it and I know I tried to ketch it too.
"Don't I look like I been here in Reb. time? I was born in Mississippi
on Colonel Reed's place in 1857.
"I just know the Yankees come through. Had on blue coats with gold
lookin' buttons. I never will forget it 'cause it was so frightening.
"I can ricollect way back there.
"I don't know whether the white folks was good or not, we hardly ever
saw 'em. Had a old woman that cooked for the chillun at the quarters.
I ricollect they had a big old kittle and she'd cook that full of
somethin'. I know the old lady give us plenty of somethin' to eat.
"All the white folks didn't treat their hands mean. Some of 'em was a
fool 'bout them little niggers.
"Old woman what cooked for the chillun was old Aunt Henie and she walked
half bent with a stick.
"I went to school some after freedom. Learned how to spell and read but
not much writin'.
"I can't tell you 'bout no whippin's 'cause if they whipped the folks
they didn't do it at the quarters where the chillun was.
"I been farmin' all my life till I come to Arkansas in 1916. Since then
I first cooked and washed. I ain't worked out in three years now.
"I gets a little pension from the Welfare and I make out on that. My
granddaughter lives with me. She will finish high school in May and then
she can take care of herself.
"I used to own this place but it was sold for taxes. Don't make any
difference if you is as old as Methuselah you got to pay them taxes. Old
Caeser started 'em and we've had to pay 'em ever since.
"Younger generation ain't mannerly now like they was when I was young.
Chillun used to be obedient but they got to have their way now. Old
folks done put the chillun where they is now and they ought to take care
of 'em.
"I don't know where the world gwine come to in the next five years. I
reckon they'll all be dead way they're gwine now. Storms takin' 'em away
here and war in them other countries."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: J. Roberts, Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 45 or 50
Occupation: Methodist preacher
"My father was a Federal soldier in the Civil War. He was from Winston,
Virginia. He went to war and soon after the end he came to Holly Grove.
He was in Company "K". He signed up six or seven papers for men in his
company he knew and they all got their pensions. Oh yes! He knew them.
He was an awful exact honest man. He was a very young man when he went
into the war and never married till he come to Arkansas. He married a
slave woman. She was a field woman. They farmed. Father sat by the hour
and told how he endured the war. He never expected to come out alive
after a few months in the war.
"John Roberts Collins was his owner in slavery. I never heard why he cut
off the Collins. I call my own self J. Roberts."
"The present times are hard times. Sin hath caused it all. Machinery has
taken so much of the work."
"The present generation are fair folks but wild. Yes, the young folks
today are wilder than my set was. I can't tell you how but I see it
every way I go."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: George Robertson? or George Robinson?
Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 81
"My papa named Abe Robertson. His owner named Tom Robertson. I was born
in middle Tennessee. My mama named Isabela Brooks. Her master named
Billy Brooks. His wife name Mary Brooks. My master boys come through
here six years ago wid a tent show. My papa went off wid the Yankees.
Last I seed of him he was in Memphis. They took my mama off when I was
a baby to Texas to keep the Yankees from gettin' her. My grandma raised
me. We stayed on the big plantation till 1880.
"I don't want no Sociable Welfare help till I ain't able to work. I
don't want none now."
(To be continued) [TR: no continuation found.]
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Augustus Robinson
2500 W. Tenth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 78
"I was born in Calhoun County, Arkansas in 1860, January 15th. I am
going according to what my daddy told me and nothing else. That is all I
could do.