"Two sisters stayed in North Carolina in a two-room house in Wilson
County. There was a big drove of us and we all went to town in the
evening to get whiskey. There was one man who had a wife with us, but
all the rest were single. We cut the pigeon wing, waltzed, and
quadrilled. We danced all night until we burned up all the wood. Then we
went down into the swamp and brought back each one as long a log as he
could carry. We chopped this up and piled it in the room. Then we went
on 'cross the swamp to another plantation and danced there.
"When we got through dancing, I looked at my feet and the bottom of them
was plumb naked. I had just bought new boots, and had danced the bottoms
clean out of them.
"I belong to the Primitive Baptist Church. I stay with Dr. Cope and
clean up the back yard for my rent."
Interviewer: Mary D. Hudgins.
Person Interviewed: Mrs. Lou Fergusson
Aged: 91
Home: With daughter Mrs. Peach Sinclair, Wade Street.
[Jan 29 1938]
Zig-zaging across better than a mile of increasingly less thickly
settled territory went the interviewer. The terrain was rolling--to put
it mildly. During most of the walk her feet met the soft resistance of
winter-packed earth. Sidewalks were the exception rather than the rule.
Wade Street, she had been told was "somewhere over in the Boulevard".
Holding to a general direction she kept her course. "The Boulevard",
known on the tax books of Hot Springs as Boulevard Addition, sprawls
over a wide area. Houses vary in size and construction with startling
frequency. Few of them are pretentious. Many appear well planned, are in
excellent state of repair and front on yards, scrupulously neat,
sometimes patterned with flower beds. Occasionally a building leans with
age, roof caving and windows and doors yawning voids--long since
abandoned by owners to wind and weather.
Up one hill, down another went the interviewer. Given a proper steer
here and there by colored men and women--even children along the way,
she finally found hereself in front of "that green house" belonging to
Peach Sinclair.
Two colored women, middle aged, sat basking in the mild January sunlight
on a back porch. "I beg your pardon," said the interviewer, approaching
the step, "is this the home of Peach Sinclair, and will I find Mrs. Lou
Fergusson here?"
"It sure is," the voice was cheerful. "My mother is in the house. Come
around to the front," (the interviewer couldn't have reached the back
steps, even if she had wanted to--the back yard was fenced from the
front) "she's in the parlor."
Mrs. Lou turned out to be an incredibly black, unbelievably
plump-cheeked, wide smiling "motherly" person. She seemed an Aunt
Jemimah grown suddenly old, and even more mellow. "Mamma, this young
lady's come to see you. She wants to talk to you and ask you some
questions, about when--about before the war." (The situation is always
delicate when an ex-slave is asked for details. Somehow both interviewer
and interviewee avoid the ugly word whenever possible. The skillful
interviewer can generally manage to pass it by completely, as well as
any variant of the word negro. The informant is usually less squeamish.
"Black folks," "colored folks", "black people", "Master's people", "us"
are all encountered frequently.)
Five minutes of pleasant chatter preceeded the formal interview. Both
Mrs. Sinclair and her guest (unintroduced) sat in on the conference and
made comments frequently. "Law, child, we bought this place from your
father. He was a mighty fine man." Mrs. Sinclair was delighted to find
her guest to be "Jack Hudgins daughter." And later in the chat, "You
done lost everything? Even your home--that's going? Too bad. But then I
guess at that you're better off than we are. I've been trying for nearly
a year to get my mother on the old age pension. They say she has passed.
That was way along last March. Here it is January and she hasn't got a
penny. No, I know you can't help. Yes, I see what you're doing. But if
ever you does get on the pensions work--I'm going to 'hant'[A] you." (a
wide grin) [Footnote A: "Hant" was an intentional barbarism.]
The old woman rocked and smiled. "Yes, ma'am. I'm her oldest, alive. She
had 17 and 15 of them lived to grow up. But I'm about as old as she is,
looks like. She never did have glasses--and today she can thread the
finest needle. She can make as pretty a quilt as you'd hope to see.
Makes fine stitches too. Seems like they made them stronger in her day."
A nod of delighted approval from Mrs. Fergusson.
"I was born in Hempstead County, right here in this state. The town we
were nearest was Columbus. I lived around there all of my life until I
come here to be with my daughter. That was 15 years ago. Yes, I was born
on a farm. From what I know, I'm over ninety. I was around 20 when the
war ceaseted.
The man what owned us was named Ed Johnson. Yes, ma'am he had lots of
folks. Was he good to us? Well, he was and he wasn't. He was good
himself, wouldn't never have whipped us--but he had a mean wife. She'd
dog him, and dog him until he'd tie us down and whip us for the least
little thing. Then they put overseers over us. They was most generally
mean. They'd run us out way fore day--even in the sleet--run us out to
the field.
Was the life hard--well it was and it wasn't. No, ma'am, I didn't get
much learning. Some folks wouldn't let their black folks learn at all.
Then there was some which would let their children teach the colored
children what they learned at school. We never learned very much.
You see, Master didn't live on the place. He lived bout as far as from
here to town" (fully two miles) "The overseer looked after us mostly.
No, ma'am I don't remember much about the war. You see, they was afraid
that the fighting was going to get down there so they run us off to
Texas. We settled down and made a crop there. How'd we get the land?
Master rented it.
We made a crop down there and later we come back. No, ma'am we didn't
stay with Mr. Johnson more than a month after there was peace. We come
on in to Washington. No, ma'am, I never heard tell that Washington had
been the Capitol of Arkansas for a while during the War. No, I never did
hear that. Guess it was when we was in Texas. Then we folks didn't hear
so much anyway.
We stayed in Washington most a year. Was I with my Mother? No, ma'am I
was married--married before the war was thru. Married--does you know how
we folks married in them days? Well the man asked your mother. Then you
both asked your master. He built you a house. You moved in and there you
was. You was married. I did some washing and cooking when I was in
Washington. Then we moved onto a farm. I sort of liked Washington, but I
was born on a farm and I sort of liked farm life.
We didn't move around very much--just two or three places. We raised
cotton, corn, vegetables, peas, watermelons and lots of those sort of
things. No ma'am, didn't nobody think of raising watermelons to ship way
off like they does in Hempstead county now. Cotton was our cash crop. We
rented thirds and fourths. Didn't move but three times. One place I
stayed 15 years.
I been a widow 40 years. Yes, ma'am. I farmed myself, and my children
helped me. Me and the owners got along well. Made good crops, me and the
children. I managed to take good care of them. Made out to raise 15 out
of the 17 to be grown. There's only 5 of them alive now.
Hard on a woman to run a farm by herself. Well now, I don't know. I made
out. I raised my children and raised them healthy. I got along well with
the farm owner. You might know when I was let to stay on one place for
15 years. You know I must have treated the land right and worked it
fair.
Yes ma'am I remembers lots. Seems like women folks remembers better than
men. I've got a good daughter. I'm still strong and can get about good.
Guess the Lord has been good to me."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Jennie Ferrell, West Memphis, Arkansas
Age: 65
"I was born in Yellowbush County, Mississippi close to Grenada.
Grandmother come from North Carolina. They wouldn't sell grandpa. He was
owned by Laston. They never met again. She brought two boys with her.
She was a Pernell. Her master brought her away and would have brought
her husband but they wouldn't sell. She said durin' her forty years in
slavery she never got a whoopin'. She was a field hand. After she come
to Mississippi they was so good to her they called her free. She was a
midwife. She doctored the rich white and colored. She rode horseback,
she said, far and near. In Grenada after freedom she walked. They called
her free her master was so good to her. I don't know how she learned to
be a midwife. Her master was Henry Pernell. He owned a small place
twelve miles from Grenada and another place in the Mississippi bottoms.
My folks become renters after freedom. I don't know if they rented from
him but I guess they did.
"The Ku Klux never bothered them that I ever heard them mention."
Interviewer: Pernella Anderson
Person interviewed: Frank Fikes, El Dorado, Arkansas
Age: About 88
"My name is Frank Fikes. I live between El Dorado and Strong and I am 79
years old if I make no mistake. I know my mama told me years ago that I
was born in watermelon time. She said she ate the first watermelon that
got ripe on the place that year and it made her sick. She thought she
had the colic. Said she went and ate a piece of calamus root for the
pain and after eating the root for the pain behold I was born. So if I
live and nothing happens to me in watermelon time I will be eighty this
year. I was a boy at surrender about the age of fourteen or fifteen.
"My work was very easy when I was a little slave. Something got wrong
with my foot when I first started to walking and I was crippled. I could
not get around like the other children, so my work was to nurse all of
the time. Sometimes, as fast as I got one baby to sleep I would have to
nurse another one to sleep. We belonged to Mars Colonel Williams and he
had I guess a hundred families on his place and nearly every family had
a baby, so I had a big job after all. The rest of the children carried
water, pine, drove up cows and held the calves off and made fires at old
mar's house.
"I had to keep a heap fire so the boys wouldn't have to beat fire out of
rocks and iron. Old miss did the cooking while all of the slaves worked.
The slaves stood around the long back porch and ate. They ate out of
wooden bowls and wooden spoons. They ate greens and peas and bread. And
old miss fed all of us children in a large trough. She fed us on what we
called the licker from the greens and peas with bread mashed in it. We
children did not use spoons. We picked the bread out with our fingers
and got down on our all fours and sipped the licker with our mouth. We
all had a very easy time we thought because we did not know any better
then.
"I never went to church until after surrender. Neither did we go to
school but the white children taught me to read and count.
"I recollect as well today as if it had been yesterday the soldiers
passing our house going to Vicksburg to fight. The reason I recollect it
so well they all was dressed in blue suits with pretty gold buttons down
the front. They passed a whole day and we watched them all day.
"Old miss and mars was not mean to us at all until after surrender and
we were freed. We did not have a hard time until after we were freed.
They got mad at us because we was free and they let us go without a
crumb of anything and without a penny and nothing but what we had on our
backs. We wandered around and around for a long time. Then they hired us
to work on halves and man, we had a hard time then and I've been having
a hard time ever since.
"Before the War we lived in log cabins. There was a row of log cabins a
quarter of a mile long. No windows and no floor. We had grass to sit on.
Our beds was made of pine poles nailed to the wall and we slept on hay
beds. My mama and other slaves pulled grass and let it dry to make the
beds with. Our cover was made from our old worn out clothes.
"On Sunday evenings we played. We put on clean clothes once a week. In
summer we bathed in the branch. We did not bathe at all in winter. I
went in my shirt tail until I was eleven or twelve years old. Back in
slavery time boys did not wear britches. They wore shirts and our hair
was long. The slaves say if you cut a child's hair before he or she was
ten or twelve years old they won't talk plain until they are that old."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: J.E. Filer, Marianna, Arkansas
Age: 76
"I was born in Washington, Georgia. I come here in 1866. There was three
stores in Marianna. My parents name Betsy and Bob Filer. My mother
belong to Collins in Georgia. She come to this state with Colonel Woods.
She worked in the field in Georgia and here too. Mama said they always
had some work on hand. Work never played out. When it was cold and
raining they would shuck corn to send to mill. The men would be under a
shelter making boards or down at the blacksmith shop sharpening up the
tools so they could work.
"Since we come to this state I've seen them make oak boards and pile
them up in pens to dry out straight. I don't recollect that in Georgia.
I was so little when we come here. I can recollect that but not much
else. My brother was older. He might tell all about it."
[TR: Next section crossed out]
Interviewer's Comment
I didn't get to see his brother. I went twice more but he was at work on
a farm somewhere.
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Subject: Ex-slavery
[May 11 1938]
Person Interviewed: Orleans Finger [TR: In text of interview, Orleana]
Negro (Apparently octoroon or quadroon)
Address: 2804 West Fifteenth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas.
Occupation: Formerly field hand and housekeeper
Age: 79
[TR: Personal information moved from bottom of first page.]