My mother was dead and I would go with him. Sometimes they would have
church at his house. That would be when they would want a real meetin'
with some real preachin'. It would have to be durin' the week nights.
You couldn't tell the difference between Baptists and Methodists then.
They was all Christians. I never saw them turn nobody down at the
communion, but I have heard of it. I never saw them turn no pots down
neither; but I have heard of that. They used to sing their songs in a
whisper and pray in a whisper. That was a prayer-meeting from house to
house once or twice--once or twice a week.
"Old Phipps whipped me once. He aimed to kill me but I got loose. He
whipped me about a colored girl of his'n that he had by a colored woman.
Phipps went with a colored woman before he married his wife. He had a
girl named Martha Ann Phipps. I beat Martha 'bout a pair of stockings.
My mistress bought me a nice pair of stockings from the store. You see,
they used to knit the stockings. I wore the stockings once; then I
washed them and put them on the fence to dry. Martha stole them and put
them on. I beat her and took them off of her. She ran and told her
father and he ran me home. He couldn't catch me, and he told me he'd get
me. I didn't run to my father. I run to my mistress, and he knew he'd
better not do nothin' then. He said, 'I'll get you, you little old black
some thin'.' Only he didn't say 'somethin'.' He didn't get me then.
"But one day he caught me out by his house. I had gone over that way on
an errand I needn't have done. He had two girls hold me. They was
Angeline and Nancy. They didn't much want to hold me anyhow. Some
niggers would catch you and kill you for the white folks and then there
was some that wouldn't. I got loose from them. He tried to hold me
hisself but he couldn't. I got away and went back to my old mistress and
she wrote him a note never to lay his dirty hands on me again. A little
later her brother, Johnson Chatman, came there and ran him off the
place. My old mistress' name was Susan Chatman before she married. Then
she married Toliver. Then she married Reed. She married Reed last--after
Toliver died.
"One old lady named Emily Moorehead runned in and held my mother once
for Phipps to whip her. And my mother was down with consumption too. I
aimed to git old Phipps for that. But then I got religion and I couldn't
do it. Religion makes you forgit a heap of things.
"Susan Reed, my old mistress, bought my father and paid fifteen hundred
dollars for him and she hadn't never seen 'im. Advertising. He had run
away so much that they had to advertise and sell 'im. He never would run
away from Miss Susan. She was good to him till she got that old nigger
beater Phipps. Her husband, Reed, was called a nigger spoiler. My father
was an old man when Phipps was on overseer and wasn't able to fight much
then.
"Phipps sure was a bad man. He wasn't so bad neither; but the niggers
was scared of him. You know in slave times, sometimes when a master
would git too bad, the niggers would kill him--tote him off out in the
woods somewheres and git rid of him. Two or three of them would git
together and scheme it out, and then two or three of them would git him
way out and kill 'im. But they didn't nobody ever pull nothin' like
that on Phipps. They was scared of him.
"One time I saw the Yankees a long way off. They had on blue uniforms
and was on coal black horses. I hollered out, 'Oh, I see somethin'.' My
mistress said, 'What?' I told her, and she said, 'Them's the Yankees.'
She went on in the house and I went with her. She sacked up all the
valuables in the house. She said, 'Here,' and she threw a sack of silver
on me that was so heavy that I went right on down to the ground. Then
she took hold of it and holp me up and holp me carry it out. I carried
it out and hid it. She had three buckskin sacks--all full of silver.
That wasn't now; that was in slavery times. During the War, Jeff Davis
gave out Confederate money. It died out on the folks' hands. About
twelve hundred dollars of it died out on my father's hands. But there
wasn't nothin' but gold and silver in them sacks.
"I heard them tell the slaves they were free. A man named Captain Barkus
who had his arm off at the elbow called for the three near-by
plantations to meet at our place. Then he got up on a platform with
another man beside him and declared peace and freedom. He p'inted to a
colored man and yelled, 'You're free as I am.' Old colored folks, old as
I am now, that was on sticks, throwed them sticks away and shouted.
"Right after freedom I stayed with that white woman I told you about. I
was with her about four years. I worked for twelve dollars a month and
my food and clothes. Then I figured that twelve dollars wasn't enough
and I went to work in the field. It was a mighty nice woman. Never hit
me in her life. I never have been whipped by a white woman. She was good
to me till she died. She died after I had my second child--a girl child.
"I have been living in this city fifteen years. I come from Chicot
County when I come here. We come to Arkansas in slavery times. They
brought me from Copiah County when I was six or eight years old. When
Mrs. Toliver married she came up here and brought my mother. My mother
belonged to her son and she said, 'Agnes (that was my mother's name),
will you follow me if I buy your husband?' Her husband's name was John
Beasley. She said, 'Yes.' Then her old mistress bought Beasley and paid
fifteen hundred dollars to get my mother to come with her. Then Peachy
went to war and was shot because he come home of a furlough and stayed
too long. So when he went back they killed him. My mother nursed him
when he was a baby. Old man Toliver said he didn't want none of us to be
sold; so they wasn't none of us sold. Maybe there would have been if
slavery had lasted longer; but there wasn't.
"Mother really belonged to Peachy, but when Peachy died, then she fell
to her mistress.
"I have been a widow now for thirty years. I washed and ironed and
plowed and hoed--everything. Now I am gittin' so I ain't able to do
nothin' and the Relief keeps me alive. I worked and took care of myself
and my last husband and he died, and I ain't married since. I used to
take a little boy and make ten bales of cotton. I can't do it now. I
used to be a woman in my day. I am my mother's seventh child.
"I don't buy no hoodoo and I don't believe in none, but a seventh child
can more or less tell you things that are a long way off. If you want to
beat the devil you got to do right. God's got to be in the plan. I tries
to do right. I am not perfect but I do the best I can. I ain't got no
bottom teeth, but my top ones are good. I have a few bottom ones. The
Lawd's keepin' me here for somepin. I been with 'im now seventy-three
years."
Interviewer's Comment
I'll bet the grandest moment in the life of Sister Alexander's mother
was when her mistress said, "Agnes, will you follow me if I buy your
husband?" Fifteen hundred dollars to buy a rebellious slave in order to
unite a slave couple. It's epic.
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Ed Allen, Des Arc, Ark.
Age: ?
"I know that after freedom they took care of my pa and ma and give em a
home long as they lived. Ma died wid young mistress here in Des Arc.
"The present generation is going to the bad. Have dealings wid em, not
good to you. Young folks ain't nice to you like they used to be.
"White boys and colored boys, whole crowd of us used to go in the river
down here all together, one got in danger help him out. They don't do it
no more. We used to play base ball together. All had a good time. We
never had to buy a ball or a bat. Always had em. The white boys bought
them. I don't know as who to blame but young folk changed."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Lucindy Allison, Marked Tree, Arkansas
With children at Biscoe, Arkansas
Age: 61
"Ma was a slave in Arkansas. She said she helped grade a hill and help
pile up a road between Wicksburg and Wynne. They couldn't put the road
over the hill, so they put all the slaves about to grade it down. They
don't use the road but it's still there to show for itself.
"She was a tall rawbony woman. Ma was a Hillis and pa's name was Adam
Hillis. He learned to trap in slavery and after freedom he followed that
for a living. Ma was a sure 'nough field hand. Mama had three sets of
children. I don't know how many she did have in all. I had eleven my own
self. Grandma was named Tempy and I heard them tell about when she was
sold. She and mama went together. They used to whoop the slaves when
they didn't work up peart.
"When the 'Old War' come on and the Yankees come they took everything
and the black men folks too. They come by right often. They would drive
up at mealtime and come in and rake up every blessed thing was cooked.
Have to go work scrape about and find something else to eat. What they
keer 'bout you being white or black? Thing they was after was filling
theirselves up. They done white folks worse than that. They burned their
cribs and fences up and their houses too about if they got mad. Things
didn't suit them. If they wanted a colored man to go in camp with them
and he didn't go, they would shoot you down like a dog. Ma told about
some folks she knowd got shot in the yard of his own quarters.
"Us black folks don't want war. They are not war kind of folks. Slavery
wasn't right and that 'Old War' wasn't right neither.
"When my children was all little I kept Aunt Mandy Buford till she died.
She was a old slave woman. Me and my husband and the biggest children
worked in the field. She would sit about and smoke. My boys made cob
pipes and cut cane j'ints for 'er to draw through. Red cob pipes was the
prettiest. Aunt Mandy said her master would be telling them what to do
in the field and he say to her, 'I talking to you too.' She worked right
among the men at the same kind of work. She was tall but not large. She
carried children on her right hip when she was so young she dragged that
foot when she walked. The reason she had to go with the men to the field
like she did was 'cause she wasn't no multiplying woman. She never had a
chile in all her lifetime. She said her mother nearly got in bad one
time when her sister was carrying a baby. She didn't keep up. Said the
riding boss got down, dug a hole with the hoe to lay her in it 'cause
she was so big in front. Her mother told him if he put her daughter
there in that hole she'd cop him up in pieces wid her hoe. He found he
had two to conquer and he let her be. But he had to leave 'cause he
couldn't whoop the niggers.
"If I could think of all she tole I'd soon have enough to fill up that
book you're getting up. I can't recollect who she belong to, and her old
talk comes back to me now and then. She talked so much we'd get up and
go on off to keep from hearing her tell things over so many times.
"Folks like me what got children think the way they do is all right. I
don't like some of my children's ways but none of us perfect. I tells
'em right far as I knows. Times what makes folks no 'count. Times gets
stiff around Biscoe. Heap of folks has plenty. Some don't have much--not
enough. Some don't have nothing.
"I don't believe in women voting. That ruined the country. We got along
very well till they got to tinkering with the government."
Name of Interviewer: Pernella Anderson
Subject: Early Days in Caledonia--Early days in El Dorado
Name: Josephine Ames
Occupation: Domestic
Resident: Fordville
Age: not given.
[TR: Information moved from bottom of first page.]
Ah wuz bo'n de first year niggers wuz free. Wuz born in Caledonia at de
Primm place. Mah ma belonged tuh George Thompson. After mah ma died ah
stayed wid de Wommacks, a while. Aftuh dat mah pa taken me home. Pa's
name wuz Jesse Flueur. Ah worked lak er slave. Ah cut wood, sawed logs,
picked 400 pounds uv cotton evah day. Ah speck ah married de first time
ah wuz about fo'teen years ole. Ah been mahrid three times. All mah
husband's is daid. Ole man England and ole man Cullens run business
places and ole man Wooley. His name wuz reason Wooley. De Woolies got
cemetery uv dey own right dar near de Cobb place. No body is buried in
dar but de fambly uv Wooleys. Ole man Allen Hale, he run er store dar
too. He is yet livin right dar. He is real ole. De ole Warren Mitchell
place whar ah use tuh live is Guvment land. Warren Mitchell, he
homesteaded the place. We lived dar and made good crops. De purtiest dar
wuz eround, but not hit's growed up. Don lived dar and made good crops.
De purtiest dar wuz eround. Dar is whah all mah chillun wuz bo'n. Ah use
tuh take mah baby an walk tuh El Dorado to sevice. Ah use tuh come tuh
El Dorado wid a oman by de name of Sue Foster. Nothin but woods when dey
laid de railroad heah. Dey built dem widh horses and axes. Ah saw em
when dey whoop de hosses and oxen till dey fall out working dem when dey
laid dat steel. Ah wuz at de first buryin uv de fust pussen buried in
Caledonia graveyard. Huh name wuz Joe Ann Polk. We set up wid huh all
night and sing and pray. An when we got nearly tuh de church de bells
started tolling and de folks started tuh singin. When evah any body died
dey ring bells tuh let yo know some body wuz daid. A wuz born on
Christmas day, an ah had two chilluns born on Christmas Day. Dey wuz
twins and one uv em had two teeth and his hair hung down on her
shoulders when hit wuz born but hit did not live but er wek.
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Charles Anderson. Helena, Arkansas
Age: 77 or 78, not sure
"I was born in Bloomfield, Kentucky. My parents had the same owners.
Mary and Elgin Anderson was their names. They was owned by Isaac Stone.
Davis Stone was their son. They belong to the Stones as far back as they
could remember. Mama was darker than I am. My father was brighter than I
am. He likely had a white father. I never inquired. Mama had colored
parents. Master Stone walked with a big crooked stick. He nor his son
never went to war. Masters in that country never went. Two soldiers were
drafted off our place. I saw the soldiers, plenty of them and plenty
times. There never was no serious happenings.
"The Federal soldiers would come by, sleep in the yard, take our best
horses and leave the broken down ones. Very little money was handled. I
never seen much. Master Stone would give us money like he give money to
Davis. They prized fine stock mostly. They needed money at wheat harvest
time only. When a celebration or circus come through he give us all
twenty-five or thirty cents and told us to go. There wasn't many slaves
up there like down in this country. The owners from all I've heard was
crueler and sold them off oftener here.
"Weaving was a thing the women prided in doing--being a fast weaver or a
fine hand at weaving. They wove pretty coverlets for the beds. I see
colored spreads now makes me think about my baby days in Kentucky.
"Freedom was something mysterious. Colored folks didn't talk it. White
folks didn't talk it. The first I realized something different, Master
Stone was going to whip a older brother. He told mama something I was
too small to know. She said, 'Don't leave this year, son. I'm going to
leave.' Master didn't whip him.
"Master Stone's cousin kept house for him. I remember her well. They
were all very nice to us always. He had a large farm. He had twenty
servants in his yard. We all lived there close together. My sister and
mama cooked. We had plenty to eat. We had beef in spring and summer.
Mutton and kid on special occasions. We had hog in the fall and winter.
We had geese, ducks, and chickens. We had them when we needed them. We
had a field garden. He raised corn, wheat, oats, rye, and tobacco.
"Once a year we got dressed up. We got shirts, a suit, pants and shoes,
and what else we needed to wear. Then he told them to take care of their
clothes. They got plenty to do a year. We didn't have fine clothes no
time. We didn't eat ham and chicken. I never seen biscuit--only
sometimes.
"I seen a woman sold. They had on her a short dress, no sleeves, so they
could see her muscles, I reckon. They would buy them and put them with
good healthy men to raise young slaves. I heard that. I was very small
when I seen that young woman sold and years later I heard that was what
was done.
"I don't know when freedom came on. I never did know. We was five or six
years breaking up. Master Stone never forced any of us to leave. He give
some of them a horse when they left. I cried a year to go back. It was a
dear place to me and the memories linger with me every day.
"There was no secret society or order of Ku Klux in reach of us as I
ever heard.
"I voted Republican ticket. We would go to Jackson to vote. There would
be a crowd. The last I voted was for Theodore Roosevelt. I voted here in
Helena for years. I was on the petit jury for several years here in
Helena.
"I farmed in your state some (Arkansas). I farmed all my young life. I
been in Arkansas sixty years. I come here February 1879 with distant
relatives. They come south. When I come to Helena there was but one set
of mechanics. I started to work. I learned to paint and hang wall paper.
I've worked in nearly every house in Helena.
"The present times are gloomy. I tried to prepare for old age. I had a
apartment house and lost it. I owned a home and lost it. They foreclosed
me out.
"The present generation is not doing as well as I have.
"My health knocked me out. My limbs swell, they are stiff. I have a bad
bladder trouble.
"I asked for help but never have got none. If I could got a little
relief I never would lost my house. They work my wife to death keeping
us from starving. She sewed till they cut off all but white ladies. When
she got sixty-five they let her go and she got a little job cooking.
They never give us no relief."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Nancy Anderson
Street H, West Memphis, Arkansas
Age: 66
"I was born at Sanitobia, Mississippi. Mother died when I was a child. I
was three months old, they said, when I lost her. Father lived to be
very old. My mother was Ella Geeter and my stepmother was Lucy Evans. My
father's name was Si Hubbard. My parents married after the War. I
remembers Grandma Harriett Hubbard. She said she was sold. She was a
cook and she raised my papa up with white folks. Her children was sold
with her. Papa was sold too at the same time. Papa fired a steam gin.
They ground corn and ginned cotton.
"I stayed with Sam Hall's family. She was good to me. I had a small bed
by the fireplace. She kept me with two of her own children. Some of the
girls and boys I was raised up with live at Sanitobia now and have fine
homes. When we would be playing they would take all the toys from me.
Miss Fannie would say, 'Poor Nancy ain't got no toys.' Then they would
put them on the floor and we would all play. They had a little table. We
all eat at it. We had our own plates. We all eat out of tin plates and
had tin cups.
"They couldn't keep me at home when papa married. I slipped off across
the pasture. There was cows and hogs in there all the time. I wasn't
afraid of them. I would get behind Miss Fannie and hide in her dress
tail when they come after me. They let me stay most of the time for
about five years. Sam Hall was good to my father and Miss Fannie about
raised me after my mother died. She made me mind but she was good to me.
"Grandma lived with papa. She was part Indian. As long as papa lived he
share cropped and ginned. He worked as long as he was able to hit a
lick. He died four miles east out from Sanitobia on Mr. Hayshaws place.
What I told you is what I know. He said he was sold that one time.
Hubbards had plenty to eat and wear. He was a boy and they didn't want
to stunt the children. Papa was a water boy and filed the hoes for the
chopping hands. He carried a file along with them hoeing and would
sharpen their hoes and fetch 'em water in their jugs. Aunt Sallie, his
sister, took keer of the children.
"Papa went to the War. He could blow his bugle and give all the war
signals. He got the military training. Him and his friend Charlie Grim
used to step around and show us how they had to march to orders. His
bugle had four joints. I don't know what went with it. From what they
said they didn't like the War and was so glad to get home.
"Between the big farms they had worm fences (rail fences) and gates. You
had to get a pass from your master to go visiting. The gates had big
chains and locks on them. Some places was tollgates where they traveled
over some man's land to town. On them roads the man owned the place
charged. He kept some boy to open and shut the gate. They said the gates
was tall.
"Some of the slaves that had hard masters run off and stay in the woods.
They had nigger dogs and would run them--catch 'em. He said one man
(Negro) was hollowing down back of the worm fence close to where they
was working. They all run to him. A great long coachwhip snake was
wrapped 'round him, his arms and all, and whooping him with its tail. It
cut gashes like a knife and the blood poured. The overseer cut the
snake's head off with his big knife and they carried him home bleeding.
His master didn't whoop him, said he had no business off in the woods.
He had run off. His master rubbed salt in the gashes. It nearly killed
him. It burnt him so bad. That stopped the blood. They said sut (soot)
would stopped the blood but it would left black mark. The salt left
white marks on him. The salt helped kill the pison (poison). Some
masters and overseers was cruel. When they was so bad marked they didn't
bring a good price. They thought they was hard to handle.
"Aunt Jane Peterson, old friend of mine, come to visit me nearly every
year after she got so old. She told me things took place in slavery
times. She was in Virginia till after freedom. She had two girls and a
boy with a white daddy. She told me all about how that come. She said no
chance to run off or ever get off, you had to stay and take what come.
She never got to marry till after freedom. Then she had three more black
children by her husband. She said she was the cook. Old master say,
'Jane, go to the lot and get the eggs.' She was scared to go and scared
not to go. He'd beat her out there, put her head between the slip gap
where they let the hogs into the pasture from the lot down back of the
barn. She say, 'Old missis whip me. This ain't right.' He'd laugh. Said
she bore three of his children in a room in the same house his family
lived in. She lived in the same house. She had a room so as she could
build fires and cook breakfast by four o'clock sometimes, she said. She
was so glad freedom come on and soon as she heard it she took her
children and was gone, she said. She had no use for him. She was scared
to death of him. She learned to pray and prayed for freedom. She died in
Cold Water, Mississippi. She was so glad freedom come on before her
children come on old enough to sell. Part white children sold for more
than black children. They used them for house girls.
"I don't know Ku Klux stories enough to tell one. These old tales leave
my mind. I'm 66 and all that was before my time.
"Times is strange--hard, too. But the way I have heard they had to work
and do and go I hardly ever do grumble. I've heard so much. I got
children and I do the best I can by them. That is all I can do or say."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: R.B. Anderson
Route 4, Box 68 (near Granite)
Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 75
[HW: The Brooks-Baxter War]
"I was born in Little Rock along about Seventeenth and Arch Streets.
There was a big plantation there then. Dr. Wright owned the plantation.
He owned my mother and father. My father and mother told me that I was
born in 1862. They didn't know the date exactly, so I put it the last
day in the year and call it December 30, 1862.
"My father's name was William Anderson. He didn't go to the War because
he was blind. He was ignorant too. He was colored. He was a pretty good
old man when he died.
"My mother's name was Minerva Anderson. She was three-fourths Indian,
hair way down to her waist. I was in Hot Springs blacking boots when my
mother died. I was only about eight or ten years old then. I always
regretted I wasn't able to do anything for my mother before she died. I
don't know to what tribe her people belonged.
"Dr. Wright was awful good to his slaves.
"I don't know just how freedom came to my folks. I never heard my father
say. They were set free, I know. They were set free when the War ended.
They never bought their freedom.