"Jep Davis had been to town. He got a notice to free his niggers. He had
the farm bell rung. We all went out up to his house. He said, 'You are
free. Go. If you can't get along come back and do like you been.' They
left. Went hog wild. I was the last one to go. He said, 'Mattie, come
back if you find you can't make it.' I had a hard time for a fact. I had
a sister married in Atlanta. I went with them in 1866. I married to
better my living. We quit. I met a man come to Arkansas and sent back
for me when he got the money. I was in Atlanta thirty years. I was
married in Arkansas in 1895. Been here ever since 'ceptin' visits back
in Georgia. My husband was a good farmer and a good shoemaker. He left
me six good rent houses and this house here when he died." (She has an
income of forty dollars per month--rent on houses.) "He was a hard
worker.
"I'd go to see my white folks after freedom. I loved 'em all.
"Jep Davis died out of the church. Him and Jack (Robertson, Robson,
Robinson?) was deacons together in the Baptist church and their farms
j'ined. Jack had two boys, John and Ed. Ed was killed by Hinton Right
over his sister Mollie. Then she married Hinton Right. The quarrel
started at La Grange but they had a duel during preaching on the church
yard at the Baptist church at Nuna, Georgia. Jack was mean. He had a lot
of Negroes and a big farm. He had two boys and four girls. Jennie died.
Florence and Lula, old maids; John and Ed and Mollie.
"Jack caused Jep Davis to be put out of the church 'cause he said after
freedom he didn't believe in slavery. He always thought they ought to be
free but owned some to be like all the other folks and to have a living
easy. He was afraid to own that, fear somebody kill him before freedom.
When Jack was sick, Jep went to see him. He wouldn't let Jep come in to
see him and he died.
"I worked in the field, washed and ironed. I never cooked but a little.
In Atlanta when my first baby could stand in a cracker box I started
cooking for a woman. She was upstairs. Had a small baby a few days old.
I didn't have time to do the work and nurse and get my baby to sleep. It
cried and fretted till I got dinner done. I took it and got it to sleep.
She sent word for me to leave my baby at home, she wasn't going to have
a nigger baby crying in her kitchen and messing it up. She was a Yankee
woman. I left and I never cooked out no more.
"I never had no dealings with the Ku Klux. I was in Atlanta then. I
heard my mother say they killed and beat up a lot of colored people in
the country where she was. Seem like they was mad 'cause they was free.
"Times was hard after freedom. Times is hard now for some folks. Times
running away with the white and black races both. They stop thinking.
The thing what they call education done ruined this country. The folks
quit work and living on education. I learned to work. My husband was a
good shoemaker. We laid up all we could. I got seven houses renting
around here. I gets about forty or forty-five dollars a month rent. It
do very well, I reckon."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person Interviewed: Robert Farmer
1612 Battery Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 84
[HW: Tale of a "Nigger Ruler"]
"I was born in North Carolina. I can't tell when. Our names are in the
Bible, and it was burnt up. My old master died and my young master was
to go to the war, the Civil War, in the next draft. I remember that they
said, 'If them others had shot right, I wouldn't have had to go.'
"He talked like they were standing up on a table or something shooting
at the Yankees. Of course it wasn't that way. But he said that they
didn't shoot right and that he would have to do it for them. They all
came back, and none of them had shot right. One sick (he died after he
got home); the other two come back all right.
"When my old master died, the son that drawed me stayed home for a
little while. When he left he said about me, 'Don't let anybody whip him
while I am gone. If they do, I'll bury them when I come back.' He was a
good man and a good master.