I came here to stay with my daughter. But now she doesn't have any help
herself. She has three small children and she's their only support now.
She's not working either. She just come in from the Urban League looking
for a job. They say that they don't have a thing and that the people
don't want any women now. They just want these young girls because they
make them work cheaper. We have both applied for help from the Welfare
but neither of us has gotten anything yet."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Hattie Thompson, Widener, Arkansas
Age: 72
"I was born the second year after the surrender. I was born close to
Arlington, Tennessee. My parents was Mariah Thermon and Johnson Mayo.
They had eight children. They belong to different owners. I heard mama
say in slavery time she'd clean her house good Saturday and clean up her
children and start cooking dinner fore pa come. They looked forward to
pa coming. Now that was at our own house.
"Mama was heired. She was the house woman and cook for her young
mistress, Miss Sallie Thermon. She married Mr. John Thermon. She was
Miss Sallie Royster till she married. I heard her say she raised Miss
Sallie's children with her own. She was a wet nurse. I know Miss Sallie
was good to her. I don't think she was sold but her mother was sold.
She would spin and weave and the larger children did too. They made
bed spreads in colors and solid white. They called the colored ones
coverlets. They was pretty. Mama helped quilt. She was a good hand at
that. They made awful close stitches and backstitched every now and then
to make it hold. They would wax the thread to keep it from rolling up
and tangling.
"Thread was in balls. They rolled it from skeins to balls. They rolled
it from shuck broches to the balls. Put shucks around the spindle to
slip it off easy. I have seen big balls this big (2 ft. in diameter)
down on the floor and mama, knitting off of it right on. When the feet
wore out on socks and stockings, they would unravel them, save the good
thread, and reknit the foot or toe or heel.
"When I was a child, patching and darning was stylish. Soon as the
washing was brung in the clothes had to be sorted out and every snag
place patched nice. Folks had better made clothes and had to take care
of em. Clothes don't last no time now. White folks had fine clothes but
they didn't have nigh as many as white folks do now.
"Mama was a pretty good hand at doing mighty nigh what she took a
notion to do about the house. She never was no count in the field--jess
couldn't hold out it seem like. She worked in the field lots. Pa was
a shoemaker. He made all our shoes and had his tools, lasts, etc. He
learned his trade in slavery. He farmed.
"It has been so long ago I tell you I don't recollect things straight. I
don't know how they found out about freedom but they left I think. They
got all they could take, their clothes and a little to eat. They
started share cropping. They was out from Holly Springs when I come to
knowledge. Mama was a nice hand at cooking and hand sewing. She said
Miss Sallie learnt her. She never could read.
"I come to Arkansas fifty year ago this spring with one little girl--all
the little girl I ever had. I never had no boys. I come here to get
work. I always got work. It was a new country and it was being cleared
out. In the spring we could get wild polk greens to cook. You can't get
none now.
"Times is sider'bly changed since then. Hogs run wild. Plenty game here
then. Something to eat was not hard to get then as it is now. We raise a
hog in a pen nearly every year but it takes plenty to feed it that way.
"My husband have rheumatism and we get $12 and commodities. He works in
the field and I wash and iron when I can get some to do. That is scarce.
He works all he can."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person Interviewed: Mamie Thompson
Brinkley, Ark.
Age: 68
"I come here with my parents in 1887. Nothing much here in Brinkley then
but woods and three stores. My mother was a mix-breed. She was mixed
with Cherokee Indian and Negro. My father come from Virginia. He was
black--so black he shined. My mother was born in Cairo, Illinois. My
mother and father both died here in Brinkley. This town started from a
big saw mill."
"Understand, all I knows was told to me by my parents. Grandma's master
was Master Redman. He kept Aunt Emma and my mother. They never was sold.
My mother was put on the block but her mistress come took her down.
Master Redman had her in the field working. The overseer was a white
man. He tried to take her down and carry on with her. She led him to the
house. He wanted her whooped cause she had whooped him sort of. He
was mad cause he couldn't overpower her. Master Redman got her in the
kitchen to whoop her with a cow hide; she told him she would kill him;
she got a stick. He let her out and they come to buy her--_a Negro
trader_. Old Mistress--his wife--went out and led her down from there
in the house and told Master Redman if he sold Mattie she would quit
him--she meant leave him. Mistress Redman kept her with her and made a
house girl out of her. She tended to the children and cleaned the house.
Aunt Emma milked and churned.
"Grandma was a Molly Glaspy woman. She had straight wavy hair, small
eyes. She was a small woman. Grandpa was a tall big man. He was a full
blood Indian.
"My mother called whiskey 'jagger'--I don't know why.
"After Mr. Redman died, Miss Mary married Mr. Badgett. Me and George and
Sissy all growed up together. My mother was married twice too. She had
two of us by her first husband and eight children by her last husband.
"I heard them say they lived in Crittenden County, Arkansas during the
Civil War. They lived in west Tennessee not far from Memphis when I was
a child. Mrs. Badgett lived in Memphis after she got old. Mary's mother
visited her long as she lived. I did too. She has been dead several
years. She give me a sugar bowl when I was twelve years old--I still got
it. I won't sell it. I'll give it to my girl.
"I don't know about the Ku Klux. I never heard a great deal about them.
"I don't vote--not interested.
"Well, I sewed till the very day I was 65 years old. The foreman said I
was too old now, but sign up for the pension. I am crippled. I did. I
get commodities, but no money.
"I washed, ironed, cooked. I worked at Mrs. Jim Gunn's and I cooked nine
years for Mrs. Dora Gregg. I work whenever I can get work to be done. I
like to sew but they cut me off."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Mike Thompson, Widener, Arkansas
Age: 79
"I was born near Honey Grove, Texas. I remember my grandparents on both
sides--they were all Thompsons. They were cotton and corn farmers. I
don't know where they come from. I was so small and as soon as the War
was done a whole gang of us come from Texas to Dardanelle, Arkansas.
"The Bushwhackers was so bad we was guarded to the line and they went
back. We come in wagons. Bushwhackers was robbers. I remember that. My
grandparents and parents all come in the gang. Clem Thompson, my owner,
died. He had a family. I don't know what become of none but Ed Thompson.
We was the same age and growed up together. I worked for him at
Dardanelle but I don't know how he come from Texas. He butchered and
peddled meat and had a shop too. I don't think Ed owned land over at
Dardanelle but my father owned eighty acres over there when he died. My
father was Cubit Thompson. His father was Plato Thompson. My mother was
Harriett Thompson.
"The Thompsons was fairly good to their niggers, I recken. Ed was good
to me. He promised me I should never want but I don't know if he be dead
or not. I wish I could hear from him.
"When I was about twenty-five years old I was coming in home from town
one night. I seen his house on fire. I kept going fast as I could run,
woke him up. He run out but his wife didn't. He said, 'My wife! my wife!
my wife!' I run in where he run out. She was standing back in a corner
the flames nearly all around her. I picked her up and run out and about
that time the whole house fell in. They never got through thanking me.
I come off over here and never hear a word from him. He always said I
saved their lives and hers mostly.
"Times--young men can get work if they will go to the field and work.
If you can't work, times is hard two ways. If you are used to work, you
hard to get contentment and loss of the money too. Money don't buy much.
Awful sight of cotton and you don't get much out of it. Young folks is
got young notions.
"I come to Widener in 1908. I made a good living. I own this house. Now
I got to quit working in bad weather. My rheumatism gets so bad. I'll be
eighty years old 23rd of September this year (1938)."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person Interviewed: Laura Thornton
1215 W. Twenty-Fourth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 105?
"My native home is Alabama. I was born not far from Midway, Alabama,
about twelve miles from Clayton. Midway, Clayton, and Barber are all
nearby towns. We used to go to all of them.
"My master was Tom Eford. When he died, I fell to Polly Eford. Polly
Eford was the old lady. I don't know where they is and they don't know
nothing about where I is. It's been so long. Because I done lef' Alabama
fifty years. I don't know whether any of them is living or not. It's
been so long.
"Their baby boy was named Giles Eford. His mother was Miami Eford and my
father's name was Perry Eford. That is the name he went in. My mother
went in that name too. My father died the second year of the surrender.
My mother was a widow a long time. I was a grown-up woman and had
children when my father died.
"I married during slavery time. I don't remember just how old I was
then. My old man knows my age, but I can't remember it. But he's
been dead this year makes thirteen years. I had one child before the
surrender. I was just married to the one man. I was married after the
surrender. I don't want to be married again. I never seed a man I would
give a thought to since he died. Lord knows how long we'd been married
before he died.
"We came here and stayed four years and we bought a home down on Arch
Street Pike about ten miles from here. I lived there sixty years. I've
got the tax receipts for sixty years back. I ain't never counted the
ones I paid since he's been dead.
"I was the mother of three children and none of them are living. All of
them dead but me.
"They made like they was goin' to give old slave folks a pension. They
ain't gimme none yit. I'm just livin' on the mercy of the people. I
can't keep up the taxes now. I wish I could git a pension. It would help
keep me up till I died. They won't even as much as give me nothin' on
the relief. They say these grandchildren ought to keep me up. I have to
depend on them and they can't hardly keep up theirselves.
"When the Civil War broke out, my baby was about seven years old. My
mother was here when the stars fell. She had one child then.
"I remember a war before the Civil War. I heard the white folks talking
about it. They wouldn't tell colored folks nothing. They'd work them to
death and beat them to death. They'd sell them just like you sell hogs.
My mother was sold from me when I was little. Old lady Eford, she was
my mistress and mammy too. If she ever slapped me, I don't know nothin'
'bout it.
"My daddy made his farm jus' like colored people do now. White man would
give him so much ground if he'd a mind to work it. He had a horse he
used.
"We lived a heap better than the people live now. They fed you then.
You ate three times a day. When twelve o'clock come, there dinner was,
cooked and ready. Nothin' to do but eat it, and then set down and res'
with the other people. There was them that was good.
"But them what was mean done the colored folks bad.