"Brother Mack" as he is familiarly and affectionately known to his
friends is a man keen and vigorous, mentally and physically. He attends
Sunday school, church both in the morning and evening, and all
departments of the Epworth League. He takes the Epworth Herald, the
Southwestern Christian Advocate, the Literary Digest, some poultry and
farm magazines, the Arkansas Gazette, and the St. Louis Democrat, and
several other journals. He is on omnivorous reader and a clear thinker.
He raises chickens and goats and plants a garden as avocations. He has
on invincible reputation for honesty as well as for thrift and thought.
Nothing is pleasanter than to view the relationship between him and his
wife. They have been married fifty-six years and seem to have achieved a
perfect understanding. She is an excellent cook and is devoted to her
home. She attends church regularly. Seems to be four or five years
younger than her husband. Like him, however, she seems to enjoy
excellent health.
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Cresa Mack
1417 Short Indiana St., Pine Bluff, Ark.
Age: 85
"I can tell you something about slavery days. I was born at South Bend,
Arkansas on the old Joe Clay place. I 'member they used to work 'em
scandalous. They used me at the house and I used to wait on old
mistress' brother. He was a old man named Cal Fletcher.
"I 'member when they said the Yankees was comin' the boss man put us in
wagons and runned us to Texas. They put the women and chillun in the
wagons but the men had to walk. I know I was something over twelve years
old.
"Old mistress, Miss Sarah Clay, took her chillun and went to Memphis.
"My white folks treated us very well. I never seed 'em whip my mother
but once, but I seen some whipped till they's speechless. Yes ma'm I
have.
"I can 'member a lot 'bout the war. The Lord have mercy, I'se old. I
'member they used to sing
'Run nigger run,
The paddyrollers'll ketch you,
Run nigger run.'
"Corse if they ketch you out without a pass they'd beat you nearly to
death and tell you to go home to your master.
"One time I was totin' water for the woman what did the washin'. I was
goin' along the road and seed somethin' up in a tree that look like a
dog. I said 'Look at that dog.' The overseer was comin' from the house
and said 'That ain't no dog, that's a panther. You better not stop' and
he shot it out. Then I've seen bears out in the cane brakes. I thought
they was big black bulls. I was young then--yes mam, I was young.
"When the Yankees come through they sot the house afire and the gin and
burned up 'bout a hundred bales a cotton. They never bothered the
niggers' quarters. That was the time the overseer carried us to Texas to
get rid of the Yankees.
"After the surrender the Yankees told the overseer to bring us all up in
the front yard so he could read us the ceremony and he said we was as
free as any white man that walked the ground. I didn't know what 'twas
about much cause I was too busy playin'.
"I didn't know what school was 'fore freedom, but I went about a month
after peace was declared. Then papa died and mama took me out and put me
in the field.
"I was grown, 'bout twenty-four or five, when I married. Now my chillun
and grand chillun takes care of me."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Warren McKinney, Hazen, Arkansas
Age: 85
I was born in Edgefield County, South Carolina. I am eighty-five years
old. I was born a slave of George Strauter. I remembers hearing them say
"Thank God Ize free as a jay bird." My ma was a slave in the field. I
was eleven years old when freedom was declared. When I was little, Mr.
Strauter whipped my ma. It hurt me bad as it did her. I hated him. She
was crying. I chunked him with rocks. He run after me, but he didn't
catch me. There was twenty-five or thirty hands that worked in the
field. They raised wheat, corn, oats, barley, and cotton. All the
children that couldn't work stayed at one house. Aunt Mat kept the
babies and small children that couldn't go to the field. He had a gin
and a shop. The shop was at the fork of the roads. When de war come on
my papa went to build forts. He quit ma and took another woman. When de
war closed ma took her four children, bundled em up and went to Augusta.
The government give out rations there. My ma washed and ironed. People
died in piles. I don't know till yet what was de matter. They said it
was the change of living. I seen five or six wooden, painted coffins
piled up on wagons pass by our house. Loads passed every day lack you
see cotton pass here. Some said it was cholorea and some took
consumption. Lots of de colored people nearly starved. Not much to get
to do and not much house room. Several families had to live in one
house. Lots of the colored folks went up north and froze to death. They
couldn't stand the cold. They wrote back about them dieing. No they
never sent them back. I heard some sent for money to come back. I heerd
plenty bout the Ku Klux. They scared the folks to death. People left
Augusta in droves. About a thousand would all meet and walk going to
hunt work and new homes. Some of them died. I had a sister and brother
lost that way. I had another sister come to Louisiana that way. She
wrote back.
I don't think the colored folks looked for a share of land. They never
got nothing cause the white folks didn't have nothing but barren hills
left. About all the mules was wore out hauling provisions in the army.
Some folks say they ought to done more for de colored folks when dey
left, but dey say dey was broke. Freeing all de slaves left em broke.
That reconstruction was a mighty hard pull. Me and ma couldn't live. A
man paid our ways to Carlisle, Arkansas and we come. We started working
for Mr. Emenson. He had a big store, teams, and land. We liked it fine,
and I been here fifty-six years now. There was so much wild game living
was not so hard. If a fellow could get a little bread and a place to
stay he was all right. After I come to dis state I voted some. I have
farmed and worked at odd jobs. I farmed mostly. Ma went back to her old
master. He persuaded her to come back home. Me and her went back and run
a farm four or five years before she died. Then I come back here. I
first had 300 acres at Carlisle. I sold it and bought 80 acres at Green
Grove. I married in South Carolina. We had a fine weddin, home weddin.
Each of our families furnished the weddin supper. We had 24 waiters.
That is all the wife I ever had. We lived together 57 years. It is hard
for me to keep up with my mind since she died. She been dead five years
nearly now. I used to sing but I forgot all the songs. We had song
books. I joined the church when I was twelve years old.
I think the times are worse than they use to be. The people is living
mighty fast I tell you. I don't get no help from the government. They
won't give me the pension. I can't work and I can't pay taxes on my
place. They just don't give me nothing but a little out of the store. I
can't get no pension.
Little Rock District
FOLKLORE SUBJECTS
Name of Interviewer: Irene Robertson
Subject: Ex-Slave--History
Story:--Information
This Information given by: Warren McKinney
Place of Residence: Hazen, Green Grove Settlement, Arkansas
Occupation: Farming
Age: 84
[TR: Information moved from bottom of first page.]
Warren McKinney was born in Edgefield County, South Carolina. He was
born a slave. His master was George Strauter. He had a big plantation
and worked twenty-five or thirty work hands. There were twenty-five or
thirty children too small to work in the field. They raised cotton,
corn, oats, and wheat. His mother washed and ironed and cooked. He was
small but well remembers once when his mother had been sick and had just
gotten out. George Strauter whipped her with a switch on her legs.
Warren did not approve of it. Rocks were plentiful and he began throwing
at him. He said Mr. George took out after him but didn't catch or whip
him.
George Strauter tried to teach them all how to be good farmers and be
saving. Warren knew war was going on but he didn't see any of it. His
father came home several times. He was off building forts. He said he
remembered a big "hurly-burly" and he heard 'em saying, "Thank God I'ze
free as a jay bird." He didn't know why they were fighting so he didn't
know then why they were saying that.
George Strauter had a shop at the fork of the roads. He had his own gin.
They sold cotton and bought provisions at Augusta, Georgia. They made
some of their meal and flour and raised all their meat and made enough
lard to do the year around.
He heard them talking about the "Yankees" burning up Augusta, but he saw
where they had burned Hamburg, South Carolina or North Augusta they call
it.
After they were free he remembers his mother bundling up her things and
her family and them all going in an ox cart to Augusta to live. Warren's
mother washed, cooked and ironed for a living. Her husband went off and
lived with another woman after freedom. Warren was about eleven years
old then. The Government furnished food for them too. One thing that
distressed Warren was _the way people died for more than a year_. He saw
five or six coffins piled up on a wagon being taken out to be buried. He
thought it was changing houses and changing ways of living. They didn't
have shoes and warm clothes and weren't fed from white folks smoke
house. _Lots of the slaves had Consumption and died right now_. Stout
men and women didn't live two years after they were freed. Lots of them
said they didn't like that freedom and wanted to go back but the masters
were broke and couldn't keep many of them if they went back.
When Warren was about fifteen years old, there was a white man or two,
but colored leaders mostly got about a thousand colored people to start
for the West walking. Warren had sisters and brothers who started on
this trip. Warren had some fussy brothers, his mother was afraid would
get in jail. They kept her uneasy. They shipped their "stuff" by boat
and train. He never saw them any more but he heard from them in
Louisiana. Louisiana had a bad name in those days.
When Warren was about fourteen and fifteen, his mother had them on a
farm, farming near Hamburg.
When he was sixteen or seventeen, his mother and the other children came
on the train to about where Carlisle now is but it wasn't called by that
name. There were very few houses of any kind. Mr. Emerson had a big
store and lots of land. He worked black and white. Mr. Emerson let them
have seven or eight mules and wagons and they farmed near there. He
remembers pretty soon there was a depot where the depot now stands, a
bank, a post office, and two or three more stores, all small buildings.
He liked coming to Arkansas because he got to ride on the train a long
ways. It was easy to live here. There were lots of game and fish.
Warren never shot anything in his life. He was no hunter. _Nats_ were
awful. Warren made smoke to run the nats from the cows. Four or five
deer would come to the smoke. Cows were afraid of them and would leave
the smoke. When he would go the deer would leap four or five feet in the
air at the sight of him.
When Warren lived in Augusta, Georgia, they had schools a month at a
time but Warren never did get to go to any, so he can't read or write.
But he learned to save his money. He joined a church when he was twelve
years old in South Carolina and belongs to the Baptist church at Green
Grove now.
The old master in South Carolina persuaded his mother to come back. They
all went back four or five years before his mother died. While Warren
was there he married a woman on a joining farm.
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Victoria McMullen
1416 E. Valmar, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 54
Occupation: Seamstress
"My mother was born March 16, 1865, and knew nothing of slavery.
"Both my grandmothers and both grandfathers were slaves. My father was
born in the same year as my mother and like my mother knew nothing of
slavery although both of them might have been born slaves.
"I knew my mother's mother and father and my father's mother, but I
didn't know my father's father.
"He was from Texas and he always stayed there. He never did come out to
Louisiana where I was born. My mother was born in Louisiana, but my
father was born in Texas. I don't know what county or city my father was
born in. I just heard my grandmother on his side say he was born in
Texas.
"During the War (he was born in '65 when the War ceased), Grandmother
Katy--that was her name, Katy, Katy Elmore--she was in Louisiana at
first--she was run out in Texas, I suppose, to be hidden from the
Yankees. My father was born there and my grandfather stayed there. He
died in Texas and then Grandma Katy come back to Louisiana with my
father and settled in Ouachita Parish.
"Grandma Katy was sold from South Carolina into Louisiana to Bob
McClendon, and she kept the name of Elmore who was her first owner in
South Carolina. It was Bob McClendon who run her out in Texas to hide
her from the Yankees. My grandfather in Texas kept the name of Jamison.
That was the name of his master in Texas. But grandma kept the name of
Elmore from South Carolina because he was good to her. He was better
than Bob McClendon. The eastern states sold their slaves to the southern
states and got all the money, then they freed the slaves and that left
the South without anything.
"Grandma Katy had Creek Indian blood in her. She was of medium size and
height, copper colored, high cheek bones, small squinchy eyes, black
curly hair. Her hair was really pretty but she didn't curl it. It was
just naturally curly. She was a practical nurse as they call it, but she
did more of what some people call a midwife. They call it something else
now. They got a proper word for it.
"They got it in these government agencies. That is what she was even in
slavery times. She worked for colored people and white people both. That
was after she was freed until she went blind. She went blind three years
before she died. She died at the age of exactly one hundred years. She
treated women and babies. They said she was a real good doctor in her
day. That is been fifty-four years ago. [I will be fifty-four years old
tomorrow--September 18, 1938.] In slavery times my grandma was almost as
free as she was in freedom because of her work.
"She said that Bob McClendon was cruel to her. Sometimes he'd get angry
and take the shovel and throw hot ashes on the slaves. And then he'd see
them with blisters on them and he would take a handsaw or a flat plank
and bust the blisters. Louisiana was a warm country and they wouldn't
have much clothes on. When the slaves were freed, he went completely
broke. He had scarcely a place to live.
"I seen him once. Be look like on old possum. He had a long beard down
to his waist and he had long side burns too. Just a little of his face
showed. He was tall and stooping and he wore his hair long and uncut
down on his neck. You know about what he looked like. He had on blue
jeans pants and brogan shoes and a common shirt--a work shirt. He wore
very common clothes. When they freed the Negroes, it broke him up
completely. He had been called a 'big-to-do' in his life but he wasn't
nothing then. He owned Grandma Katy.
"Grandma Katy had a sister named Maria and a brother named Peter. He
owned all three of them. I have seen all of them. Grandma Katy was the
oldest. She and Uncle Peter stayed close together. He didn't have no
wife and she didn't have no husband. But Aunt Maria had a husband. She
lived off from them after freedom. It was about twelve miles away. My
great-aunt and great-uncle--they were Maria and Peter--that was what
they were. Uncle Peter died first before I left Louisiana, but Aunt
Maria and Grandma Katy died after I came to Arkansas. Grandma Katy lived
four years after I came here.
"After they was free and my father had gotten large enough to work and
didn't have no horse, my grandma was going 'round waiting on women--that
is all she did--all the rest of the people had gotten large and left
home. Papa made a crop with a hoe. He made three bales of cotton and
about twelve loads of corn with that hoe. He used to tell me, 'You don't
know nothin' 'bout work. You oughter see how I had to work.' After that
he bought him a horse. Money was scarce then and it took something to
buy the place and the horse both. They were turned loose from slavery
without anything. Hardly had a surname--just Katy, Maria, and Peter.
"I knew more about the slave-time history of my mother's folks than I
did about my father's but I'll tell you that some other time. My
grandmother on my mother's side was born in Richmond, Virginia. She was
owned by a doctor but I can't call his name. She gets her name from her
husband's owners. They came from Virginia. They didn't take the name of
their owners in Louisiana. They took the name of the owners in Virginia.
She was a twin--her twin was a boy named June and her name was Hetty.
Her master kept her brother to be a driver for him. She was sent from
Virginia to Louisiana to people that were related to her Virginia
people. She called her Louisiana mistress 'White Ma;' she never did call
her 'missis.' The white folks and the colored folks too called her
Indian because she was mixed with Choctaw. That's the Indian that has
brown spots on the jaw. They're brownskin. It was an Indian from the
Oklahoma reservation that said my mother belonged to the Choctaws.
"She rode from Virginia to Louisiana on a boat at the age of twelve
years. She was separated from her mother and brothers and sisters and
never did see them again. She was kept in the house for a nurse. She was
not a midwife. She nursed the white babies. That was what she was sent
to Louisiana for--to nurse the babies. The Louisiana man that owned her
was named George Dorkins. But I think this white woman came from
Virginia. She married this Louisiana man, then sent back to her father's
house and got grandma; she got her for a nurse. She worked only a year
and a half in the field before peace was declared. After she got grown
and married, my grandfather--she had to stay with him and cook and keep
house for him. That was during slavery time but after George Dorkins
died. Dorkins went and got hisself a barrel of whiskey--one of these
great big old barrels--and set it up in his house, and put a faucet in
it and didn't do nothin' but drink whiskey. He said he was goin' to
drink hisself to death. And he did.
"He was young enough to go to war and he said he would drink hisself to
death before he would go, and he did. My grandma used to steal
newspapers out of his house and take them down to the quarters and leave
them there where there were one or two slaves that could read and tell
how the War was goin' on. I never did learn how the slaves learned to
read. But she was in the house and she could steal the papers and send
them down. Later she could slip off and they would tell her the news,
and then she could slip the papers back.
"Her master drank so much he couldn't walk without falling and she would
have to help him out. Her mistress was really good. She never allowed
the overseer to whip her. She was only whipped once in slave time while
my father's mother was whipped more times than you could count.
"Her master often said, 'I'll drink myself to death before I'll go to
war and be shot down like a damn target.' She said in living with them
in the house, she learned to cuss from him. She said she was a cussin'
soul until she became a Christian. She wasn't 'fraid of them because she
was kin to them in some way. There was another woman there who was some
kin to them and she looked enough like my grandma for them to be kin to
each other. We talked it over several times and said we believed we were
related; but none of us know for sure.
"When the slaves wanted something said they would have my grandma say it
because they knew she wouldn't be whipped for it. 'White Ma' wouldn't
let nobody whip her if she knew it. She cussed the overseer out that
time for whipping her.
"When grandma was fourteen or fifteen years old they locked her up in
the seed house once or twice for not going to church. You see they let
the white folks go to the church in the morning and the colored folks in
the evening, and my grandma didn't always want to go. She would be
locked up in the seed bin and she would cuss the preacher out so he
could hear her. She would say, 'Master, let us out.' And he would say,
'You want to go to church?' And she would say, 'No, I don't want to hear
that same old sermon: "Stay out of your missis' and master's hen house.
Don't steal your missis' and master's chickens. Stay out of your missis'
and master's smokehouse. Don't steal your missis' and master's hams." I
don't steal nothing. Don't need to tell me not to.'
"She was tellin' the truth too. She didn't steal because she didn't have
to. She had plenty without stealin'! She got plenty to eat in the house.
But the other slaves didn't git nothin' but fat meat and corn bread and
molasses. And they got tired of that same old thing. They wanted
something else sometimes. They'd go to the hen house and get chickens.
They would go to the smokehouse and get hams and lard. And they would
get flour and anything else they wanted and they would eat something
they wanted. There wasn't no way to keep them from it.
"The reason she got whipped that time, the overseer wanted her to help
get a tree off the fence that had been blown down by a storm. She told
him that wasn't her work and she wasn't goin' to do it. Old miss was
away at that time. He hit her a few licks and she told old miss when she
came back. Old 'White Ma' told the overseer, 'Don't never put your hands
on her no more no matter what she does. That's more than I do. I don't
hit her and you got no business to do it.'
"Her husband, my grandfather, was a blacksmith, and he never did work in
the field. He made wagons, plows, plowstocks, buzzard wings--they call
them turning plows now. They used to make and put them on the stocks. He
made anything-handles, baskets. He could fill wagon wheels. He could
sharpen tools. Anything that come under the line of blacksmith, that is
what he did. He used to fix wagons all the time I knowed him. In harvest
time in the fall he would drive from Bienville where they were slaves to
Monroe in Ouachita Parish. He kept all the plows and was sharpening and
fixing anything that got broke. He said he never did get no whipping.
"His name was Tom Eldridge. They called him 'Uncle Tom'. They was the
mother and father of twelve children. Six lived and six died. One boy
and five girls lived. And one girl and five boys died--half and half. He
died at the age of seventy-five, June 6, 1908. She died January 1920.
"I came out here in January 1907. I lived in Pine Bluff. From Louisiana
I came to Pine Bluff in 1906. In 1907 I went to Kerr in Lonoke County
and lived there eight years and then I came to Little Rock. I farmed at
Kerr and just worked 'round town those few months in Pine Bluff.
Excusing the time I was in Pine Bluff and Little Rock I farmed. I farmed
in Ouachita Parish, Louisiana."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Nannie P. Madden
West Memphis, Arkansas
Age: 69
"I am Martha Johnson's sister. I was born at Lake Village, Arkansas. I
am 69 years old. I was born on Mr. Ike Wethingtons place. Pa was
renting. Mother died in 1876 on this farm. We called it Red Leaf
plantation. Father died at Martha Johnson's here in West Memphis when he
was 88 years old.
"Mother was not counted a slave. Her master's Southern wife (white wife)
disliked her very much but kept her till her death. Mother had three
white children by her master. After freedom she married a black man and
had four children by him. We are in the last set.
"We was born after slavery and all we know is from hearing our people
talk. Father talked all time about slavery. He was a soldier. I couldn't
tell you straight. I can give you some books on slavery:
Booker T. Washington's Own Story of His Life and Work,
64 page supplement, by Albon L. Holsey
Authentic Edition--in office of Library of Congress,
Washington, D.C., 1915, copywrighted by J.L. Nichols
Co.
The Master Mind of a Child of Slavery--Booker T. Washington,
by Frederick E. Drinker, Washington, D.C.