"Young folks Just need the right handlin'.
"I don't mix in politics."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Mary Tabon, Forrest City, Arkansas
Age: 67
"Pa was sold twice to my knowing. He was sold to McCoy, then to
Alexander. He was Virginian. Then he was carried to Alabama and brought
to Holly Grove by the Mayos. I have wore four names, Alexander, Adams,
Morgan, and Tabon.
"My mother's owners was Ellis from Alabama. She said she was sold from
the Scales to Ellis. Her father, sister, and two brothers was sold from
Ellis. She never seen them no more. They found Uncle Charles Ellis dead
in the field. They never knowed how it come.
"My parents had hard times during slavery. Ma had a big scar on her
shoulder where the overseer struck her with a whoop. She was chopping
cotton. She either wasn't doing to suit him or wasn't getting along fast
enough to suit him.
"Ma had so many little ones to raise she give me to Nancy Bennett. I
love her soul in her grave. I helped her to do all her work she taught
me. She'd leave me with her little boy and go to church and I'd make
cakes and corn bread. She brag on me. We'd have biscuits on Sunday
morning. They was a rarity.
"One day she had company. She told me to bake some potatoes with the
jackets on. I washed the potatoes and wrapped them up in rags and boiled
them. It made her so mad she wet the towel and whooped me with it. I
unwrapped the potatoes and we had them that way for dinner. That was the
maddest she ever got at me. She learned me to cook and keep a nice house
and to sew good as anybody. I rather know how to work than be educated.
"Mr. Ash give me a lot of scraps from his garment factory. I made them
up in quilts. He give me enough to make three dresses. I needed dresses
so bad." (One dress has sixty-six pieces in it but it didn't look like
that. They sent it to Little Tock and St. Louis for the county fairs.
Her dresses looked fairly well.)
"I was born at Holly Grove, Arkansas. Alexander was the name my pa went
by and that was my maiden name."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Liza Moore Tanner, Helena, Arkansas
Age: 79
"I was born in north Georgia. It was not fer from Rome. We belong to
Master Belton Moore and Miss Jane Moore. They had a big family, some
grandchildren old as their own. That was my job playing wid the
children. My parents' name Rob Moore and Pilfy Calley. She lived five
miles from Belton Moore's house. She was hired out over at Moore's the
way she and papa met up. I know now I was hired out too. I run after
them children a long time it seemed like to me. I loved them and they
cried after me. I get so tired I'd slip off and go up in the loft and
soon be asleep. I learned to climb a ladder that very way. It was nailed
up straight against the side of the wall. They'd ask me where I been.
They never did whoop me fer that. I tell 'em I been asleep. I drapped
off 'sleep. I was so tired. Papa helped with the young calves and the
feeding and in the field too. Mama was a fast hand in the field. They
called her a little guinea woman. She could outdo me when I was grown
and she was getting old. She washed fer the Calley's. All I remember
they was a old man and woman. Mama lived in the office at their house.
He let her ride a horse to Moore's to work. I rode home wid her many a
time. She rode a side saddle. I rode sideways too. She used a battling
stick long as she lived when she washed.
"Papa died two years after the surrender in Atlanta, Georgia. The
Moore's moved there and he went along. He left mama at Master Calley's
and I was still kept at the old home place. Aunt Jilly kept me and my
two oldest sisters. Her name was Jilly Calley. I seen mama right often.
They fetched papa back to see us a few times and then he died. We all
went to Atlanta where he was buried. Mama lived to be purty nigh a
hundred years old. She had fourteen children. I had two sisters and
eight half-brothers and three half-sisters. Some died so young they
never was named. My stepfather was mean to her and beat her, caused some
of their deaths. She was a midwife in her later years. She made us a
living till I married. She was gone with Dr. Harrison a lot. He'd come
take her off and bring her home in the buggy. I married and immigrated
to Dell, Arkansas. We lived there a year and went to Memphis. Mama come
there and died at my house. She got blind. Had to lead her about. My
steppapa went off and never come back. He got drunk whenever he could
get to it. We hunted him and asked about him. I think he went off with
other women. We heard he did.
"Freedom--I heard Miss Jane say when she was packing up to go to
Atlanta, 'I will get a nurse there. They will make her go to school.' I
thought she was talking about me. I wanted to go. I loved the children.
I got to go to school in the country a right smart. I can read and
write. Me and my two sisters all was in the same class. It seemed
strange then. We had a colored man teacher, Mr. Jacobin. It was easier
for me to learn than my sisters. They are both dead now.
"I got three living children--one here and two in Memphis. After I got
my hip broke I live about with them so they can wait on me.
"I don't know about this new way of living. My daughter in Memphis
raising her little girl by a book. She don't learn her as much manners
as children used to know. She got it from the white lady she works for.
It tells how to do your child. Times done changed too much to suit my
way of knowing. 'The Old Time Religion' is the only good pattern fer
raising a family. Mighty little of that now."
Interviewer: Pernella M. Anderson
Person interviewed: Fannie Tatum, Junction City, Arkansas
Age: Born 1862
"I was born on Wilmington landing in 1862 on the Ouachita River and was
carried away when I was two years old. My mother ran away and left my
sister and me when we was three and five years old. I never saw her any
more till I was eight and after I was eight years old I never saw her
again in forty years. After my mama left me old Master Neal come here to
El Dorado and had me bound to him until I was twenty-one. I stayed there
till I was twenty-one. I slept by the jamb of the fireplace on a sack of
straw and covered with saddle blankets. That was in the winter when snow
was waist high. In summer I slept on naked floor and anywhere I laid
down was my bed just like a dog.
"I wasn't allowed to eat at the table. I et on the edge of the porch
with the dogs with my fingers. I worked around the house and washed
until I was nine and then I started to plowing. At ten I started
splitting rails. My task was two hundred rails a day. If I didn't cut
them I got a beating. I did not know what a coat was. I wore two pieces,
a lowel[HW:?] underskirt and a lowel[HW:?] dress, bachelor brogans and
sacks and rags wrapped around my legs for stockings. That was in winter.
Summer I went barefooted and wore one piece. My sun hat was a rag tied
on my head.
"I did not know anything about Sunday School nor church. The children
would try to teach me my ABC's but master would not let them. Never
visited any colored people. If I see a colored person coming I run from
them. They said they might steal me. After I got grown they let me go
to a colored party and they whipped me for going. Tried to make me tell
whether or not a boy come home with me but I did not tell it; one come
with me though. That was the first time I got out. Of course they sent
one of the boys along with me but he would not tell on me.
"I never slept in a bed until I was twenty-two years old. Never was with
any colored people until I was grown. My play was with white children.
My father was a white man. He was my ma's old master and they was Neals.
They kept my hair cut off like a boy's all the time. I never wore a
stocking until I was twenty-two and my hair did not grow out and get
combed until I was twenty-two. My old master and mistress would have
been mean to me but I was so smart they did not get a chance. The only
thing I was treated like a dog.
"I live in Junction City but am here visiting my daughter."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Anthony Taylor
2424 W. Ninth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 68, or 78?
"I was born in Clark County adjoining Hot Spring County, between Malvern
and Arkadelphia. Clark County was named after old man General Clark. He
was worth four or five thousand acres of land.
"My father's name was Anthony McClellan. Why they called me Anthony
Taylor was my stepfather was named Taylor. My mother's name was Lettie
Sunnaville. My mother has been dead thirty or forty years and my father
died six months before I was born. He died a natural death. Sickness. He
was exposed and died of pneumonia.
"Fayette Sunnaville was my grandfather on my mother's side. That was
my mother's father. Rachel Sunnaville was my mother's mother's name. I
don't know the names of my father's people. They was _sole_[HW:?]
in slavery. But it is been so far back; I don't remember nothing, and I
don't know whether they would or not if they was living.
"We stayed on the old plantation for seven or eight years before we had
sense enough or knowed enough to get away from there and git something
for ourselves. That is how I come to raise such big potatoes. I been
raising them fifty years. These are hill potatoes. You have to know how
to raise potatoes to grow 'em this big. (He showed me some potatoes,
sweet, weighing about seven pounds--ed.)
"I have heard my mother and my grandfather tell lots of stories about
slavery. I can't remember them.
"Old man Bullocks had about eight or ten families that I knew about.
Those were the families that lived right near us in the quarters. I
didn't say eight or ten hands--I said eight or ten families. Them was
the ones that was right near us. We was awful small after freedom but
them what was with him stayed with him quite a while--stayed with the
old master. He would pay them so much after freedom come.
"Lawd. I could tell you things about slavery. But I'm forgitful and I
can't do it all at once. He had the whole county from Arkadelphia clean
down to Princeton and Tulip--our old mars did. Lonoke was between
Princeton and Tulip. Princeton was the county-seat. He must have had a
large number of slaves. Those ten families I knew was just those close
'round us. Most of the farm was _fur_ pine country land. There
would be thirty or forty acres over here of cultivation and then thirty
or forty acres over there of woods and so on. He had more land than
anybody else but it wasn't all under cultivation.
"He's been dead now twenty or thirty years. I don't know that he was
mean to his slaves. If he had been, they wouldn't have gone on after
freedom. They would have moved out. You see, they didn't care for
nothing but a little something to eat and a fine dress and they would
have gone on to somebody else and got that.
"Wasn't no law then. He was the law. I worked all day long for ten cents
a day. They would allowance you so many pounds of meat, so much meal, so
much molasses. I have worked all day for ten cents and then gone out at
night to get a few potatoes. I have pulled potatoes all day for a peck
of meal and I was happy at that. I never did know what the price of
cotton was.
"Where we was, the Ku Klux never did bother anybody. All there was,
every time we went out we had to have a pass.
"My grandfather and grandmother were both whipped sometimes. I don't
know the man that whipped them. I don't know whether it was the agent or
the owner or who, but they were whipped. Lots of times they had work to
do and didn't do it. Naturally they whipped them for it. That was what
they whipped my grandparents for. Sometimes too, they would go off and
wouldn't let the white folks know where they was going. Sometimes they
would neglect to feed the horses or to milk the cows--something like
that. That was the only reason I ever heard of for punishing them.
"I heard that if the boss man wanted to be with women that they had, the
women would be scared not to be with him for fear he would whip them.
And when they started whipping them for that they kept on till they got
what they wanted. They would take them 'way off and have dealings with
them. That is where so much of that yellow and half-white comes from.
"There was some one going through telling the people that they was free
and that they was their own boss. But yet and still, there's lots of
them never did leave the man they was with and lots of them left. There
was lots of white people that wouldn't let a nigger tell their niggers
that they was free, because they wanted to keep them blind to that for
years. Kept them for three or four years anyway. Them that Bullocks
liked was crazy about him. He would give them a show--so much a month
and their keeps. I don't remember exactly how much it was but it was
neighborhood price. He was a pretty good man. Of course, you never seen
a white man that wouldn't cheat a little.
"He'd cheat you out of a little cotton. He would have the cotton carried
to the gin. He would take half the corn and give us five or six shoats.
After he got the cotton all picked and sold, the cotton it would all go
to him for what you owed him for furnishing you. You never saw how much
cotton was ginned, nor how much he got for it, nor how much it was worth
nor nothing. They would just tell you you wasn't due nothing. They did
that to hold you for another year. You got nothing to move on so you
stay there and take what he gives you.
"Of all the crying you ever heard, one morning we'd got up and the pigs
and hogs in the lot that we had fattened to go on that winter, he was
catching them. After we'd done fattened them with the corn that was
our share, he took 'em and sold 'em. We didn't even know we owed him
anything. We thought the crops had done settled things. Nobody told us
nothin'. All we children cried. The old man and the old woman didn't say
nothing, because they was scared. My mother would get up and go down and
milk the cows and what she'd get for the milking would maybe be a bucket
of buttermilk.
"We'd have a spoonful of black molasses and corn bread and buttermilk
for breakfast. We got flour bread once a week. We would work hard all
the week talkin' 'bout what good biscuits we'd have Sunday morning. Sack
of flour would last two or three months because we wouldn't cook flour
bread only once a week--Saturday night or Sunday morning.
"We had no skillet at that time. We would rake the fireplace and push
the ashes back and then you would put the cake down on the hearth or on
a piece of paper or a leaf and then pull the ashes over the cake to cook
it. Just like you roast a sweet potato. Then when it got done, you would
rake the ashes back and wash the cake and you would eat it. Sometimes
you would strike a little grit or gravel in it and break your teeth. But
then I'm tellin' you the truth about it.
"When our hogs was taken that time, we didn't have nothing to go on that
winter. They would compel us to stay. They would allowance us some meat
and make us split rails and clear up land for it. It was a cinch if he
didn't give it to you you couldn't get nothin'. Wasn't no way to get
nothing. Then when crop time rolled 'round again they would take it all
out of your crops. Make you split rails and wood to earn your meat and
then charge it up to your crop anyhow. But you couldn't do nothin' 'bout
it.
"Sometimes a barrel of molasses would set up in the smokehouse and turn
to sugar. You goin' hungry and molasses wastin'. They was determined not
to give you too much of it.
"I made my way by farming. After I got to be some size, I started at it.
I farmed all my life. While I could work, things was pretty good. Wisht
I was on a farm now. Even when I'm 'round here sick, I can git these
potatoes raised with a little help from the neighbors.
"I don't belong to church. I oughter, but I don't. Then again, I figure
that a man can be just as good out of it as he can in it. I've got good
desires, but I never confessed to the public.
"I have had three hundred dollars worth of stuff stolen from me.
Everything I produced is stolen from me because I have no way to protect
myself. What I raise if I don't get shet of it right away, the people
get shet of it for me. I had eighty head of chickens in the barn out
there runnin' 'round. When I got sick and was in the bed and couldn't
help myself, the chickens went. In the daytime, they would fix traps and
jerk a string and pull a board down on them and then go out in the weeds
and get them. I never reported nothin' to the police. I wasn't able to
report nothing. I was just batching, and now and then people would come
in and report them to me. They would wait till they saw somebody come
in and when they saw that I was talking and wouldn't notice them, they
would steal anything they wanted. The police came by here and ran them
once. But that didn't do no good.
"Once somebody stole an automatic shotgun. They stole a colt one time.
They stole all my clothes and pawned them to a whiskey dealer. He got
sent to the pen for selling whiskey, but I didn't get my clothes.
They come in the yard and steal my potatoes, collards, turnips, ochre
(okra?), and so on. I lay there in the bed and see them, but I can't
stop them. All I can do is to holler, 'You better go on and let them
things alone.' Ever since the last war, I haven't been able to work. I
am bare-feeted and naked now on account of not bein' able to support
myself.
"I just come out of the hospital. I been too sick even to work in my
garden. After I come home I taken a backset[TR: ?] but I am still
staying here. I am just here on the mercies of the people. I don't
get nothing but what the people give me. I don't get no moddities nor
nothin' from the Government.
"I ain't never been able to get no help from the Government. Long time
ago, I went down to the place and asked for help and they told me that
since I was alone, I oughta be able to help myself. They gimme a ticket
for twenty meals and told me by the time I ate them up, they might have
something else they could do for me. I told them I couldn't go back and
forth to git the meals. I have the ticket now. I couldn't git to the
place to use it none, so I keep it for a keepsake. It is 'round here
somewheres or other. I was past the pension age. I ain't been able to do
no steady work since the war. I was too old for the war--the World War."