They had to tote water. One day I heard somebody crying over 'cross a
ditch and fence covered with vines and small trees. I heard, 'Do pray
master.' I run hid under the house. I was snoring when they found me. I
heard somebody say, 'Slave day is over.' That is all I ever knowed about
freedom. The way I knowed, a Yankee. We was in the road piling up sand
and a lot of blue coats on horses was coming. We got out of the road and
went to tell our white folks. They said, 'Get out of their way, they are
Yankees.'
"When I left Alabama I went to Mississippi. I worked my way on a
steamboat. I had been trained to do whatever I was commanded. The man,
my boss, said, 'Mack, get the rope behind the boiler and tie it to the
stob and 'dead man'. I tied it to the stob and I was looking for a dead
man. He showed me what it was. Then I tied it. I went to Vicksburg then.
I had got mixed up with a woman and run off.
"I been married once in my life. I had eighteen children. Nine lived. I
got a boy here and a girl in Pine Bluff. My son's wife is mean to me. I
don't want to stay here. If I can get my pension started, I want to live
with my daughter.
"I used to vote Republican. They claimed it made times better for my
race. I found out better. I don't vote now. Wilson was good as Mr.
Roosevelt, I think. I voted about eight years ago, I reckon. I didn't
vote for Mr. Roosevelt.
"I wish I was young and had the chance this generation has got. Times is
better every way for a good man unless he is unable to work like I am
now. (This old man tends his garden, a large nice one--ed.) My son
supports me now."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Ellen Brass
1427 W. Eighth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: About 82
[HW: White Folks want Niggers]
"I was born in Alabama in Green County. I was about four years old when
I came from there; so I don't know much about it. I growed up in
Catahoula, Louisiana. My mother's name was Caroline Butler and my
father's name was Lee Butler. One of my father's brothers was named Sam
Butler. I used to be a Butler myself, but I married. My father and
mother were both slaves. They never did any slave work.
Father Free Raised
"My father was free raised. The white folks raised him. I don't know how
he became free. All that I know is that he was raised right in the house
with the white folks and was free. His mother and father were both
slaves. I was quite small at the time and didn't know much. They bought
us like cattle and carried us from place to place.
Slave Houses
"The slaves lived in log cabins with one room. I don't know what kind of
house the white folks lived in. They, the colored folks, ate corn bread,
wheat bread (they raised wheat in those times), pickled pork. They made
the flour right on the plantation. George Harris, a white man, was the
one who brought me out of Louisiana into this State. We traveled in
wagons in those days. George Harris owned us in Louisiana.
Slave Sales
"We were sold from George Harris to Ben Hickinbottom. They bought us
then like cattle. I don't know whether it was a auction sale or a
private sale. I am telling it as near as I know it, and I am telling the
truth. Hickinbottom brought us to Catahoula Parish in Louisiana. Did I
say Harris brought us? Well, Hickinbottom brought us to Louisiana. I
don't know why they went from one place to the other like that. The
soldiers were bad about freeing the slaves. From Catahoula Parish,
Hickinbottom carried us to Alexandria, Louisiana, and in Alexandria, we
was set free.
How Freedom Came
"According to my remembrance the Yankees come around and told the people
they was free. I was in Alexandria, Louisiana. They told the colored
folks they was free and to go and take what they wanted from the white
folks. They had us all out in the yard dancing and playing. They sang
the song:
'They hung Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree
While we all go marching on.'
It wasn't the white folks on the plantation that told us we was free. It
was the soldiers their selves that came around and told us. We called
'em Yankees.
Right After the War
"Right after the War, my folks farmed--raised cotton and corn. My mother
had died before I left Alabama. They claimed I was four years old when
my mother died in Alabama. My father died after freedom.
Occupation
"My first occupation was farming--you know, field work. Sometimes I used
to work around the white people too--clean house and like that.
Random Opinions
"The white folks ain't got no reason to mistreat the colored people.
They need us all the time. They don't want no food unless a nigger cooks
it. They want niggers to do all their washing and ironing. They want
niggers to do their sweeping and cleaning and everything around their
houses. The niggers handle everything they wears and hands them
everything they eat and drink. Ain't nobody can get closer to a white
person than a colored person. If we'd a wanted to kill 'em, they'd a all
done been dead. They ain't no reason for white people mistreating
colored people."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Alice Bratton, Wheatley, Arkansas
Age: 56
"I was born a few miles from Martin, Tennessee. Mama was born in
Virginia. She and her sister was carried off from the Witherspoon place
and sold. She was Betty and her sister was named Addie.
"Their mama had died and some folks said they would raise them and then
they sold them. She said they never did know who it was that carried
them off in a big carriage. They brought them to Nashville, Tennessee
and sold them under a big oak tree. They was tied with a hame string to
a hitching ring. Addie wanted to set down and couldn't. She said,
'Betty, wouldn't our mama cry if she could see us off like this?' Mama
said they both cried and cried and when the man come to look at them he
said he would buy them. They felt better and quit crying. He was such a
kind looking young man.
"They lived out from Nashville a piece then. He took them home with him,
on a plank across the wagon bed. He was Master Davy Fuller. He had a
young wife and a little baby. Her name was Mistress Maude and the baby
was Carrie. She was proud of Betty and Addie. They told her their mama
died. Mama said she was good to them. She died the year of the surrender
and Master Davy took them all to his mother's and his papa put them out
to live with a family that worked on his place.
"They went to see Carrie and played with her till Addie married and mama
come close to Martin to live with them. Addie took consumption and died,
then mama married Frank Bane and he died and I was born.
"My pa was a white man. He was a bachelor, had a little store, and he
overcome mama. She never did marry no more. I was her only child. I
don't remember the man but mama told me how she got tripped up and
nearly died and for me never to let nobody trip me up that way. I sorter
recollect the store. It burned down one night. We lived around over
there till I was sixteen years old. We moved to a few miles of Corinth,
Mississippi on a farm. Mr. Cat Madford was the manager. I got married. I
married Will Bratton. We had a home wedding on Sunday evening. It was
cold and freezing and the freeze lasted over a week. Will Bratton was
black as night. I had one little boy. After mama died Will Bratton went
off with another woman. He come back but the place was mine. Mama left
it to me. I wouldn't let him stay there. I let him go on where he
pleased.
"Times been growing slacker for a long time. People live slack. Young
folks coming on slacker and slacker every day. Don't know how to do,
don't want to know. They get by better 'en I did. I work in the field
and I can't hardly get by. I see folks do nothing all the time. Seem
like they happy. Times is hard for some, easy for some. I want to live
in the country like I is 'cause I belongs there. I can work and be
satisfied! I did own my home. I reckon I still do. I got a little cow
and some chickens."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Frank Briles
817 Cross Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: About 82 or 83
[HW: Gives up the Ghost]
"I was born right here in Arkansas. My father's name was Moses Briles.
My mother's name was Judy Briles. Her name before she was married I
don't know. They belonged to the Briles. I don't know their first name
either.
"My father was under slavery. He chopped cotton and plowed and scraped
cotton. That is where I got my part from. He would carry two rows along
at once. I was little and couldn't take care of a row by myself. I was
born down there along the time of the War, and my father didn't live
long afterwards. He died when they was settin' them all free. He was a
choppin' for the boss man and they would set them up on blocks and sell
them. I don't know who the man was that did the selling, but they tell
me they would sell them and buy them.
"I am sick now. My head looks like it's goin' to bust open.
"I have heard them tell about the pateroles. I didn't know them but I
heard about them. Them and the Ku Klux was about the same thing. Neither
one of them never did bother my folks. It was just like we now, nobody
was 'round us and there wasn't no one to bother you at all at Briles'
plantation. Briles' plantation I can't remember exactly where it was. It
was way down in the west part of Arkansas. Yes, I was born way back
south--east--way back. I don't know what the name of the place was but
it was in Arkansas. I know that. I don't know nothing about that. My
father and mother came from Virginia, they said. My father used to drive
cattle there, my mother said. I don't know nothin' except what they told
me.
"I learnt a little some thing from my folks. I think of more things
every time I talk to somebody. I know one thing. The woman that bossed
me, she died. That was about--Lord I was a little bitty of a fellow,
didn't know nothin' then. She made clothes for me. She kept me in the
house all the time. She was a white woman. I know when they was setting
them free. I was goin' down to get a drink of water. My father said.
'Stop, you'll be drowned.' And I said, 'What must I do?' And he said,
'Go back and set down till I come back.' I don't know what my father was
doing or where he was going. There was a man--I don't know who--he come
'round and said, 'You're all free.' My mama said, 'Thank God for that.
Thank God for that.' That is all I know about that.
"When I got old enough to work they put me in the woods splitting rails
and plowing. When I grew up I scraped cotton and worked on the farm.
That is where my father would come and say, 'Now, son, if anybody asks
you how you feel, tell them the truth.'
"I went to school one session and then the man give down. He got sick
and couldn't carry it no longer. His pupils were catching up with him I
reckon. It was time to get sick or somethin'.
"I never did marry. I was promised to marry a woman and she died. So I
said, 'Well, I will give up the ghost. I won't marry at all.'
"I ain't able to do no work now 'cept a little pittling here and there.
I get a pension. It's been cut a whole lot."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Mary Ann Brooks
James Addition, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 90
"I was born here in Arkansas. Durin' the war we went to Texas and stayed
one year and six months.
"My old master was old Dr. Brewster. He bought me when I was a girl
eight yeers old. Took me in for a debt. He had a drug store. I was a
nurse girl in the house. Stayed in the house all my life.
"I stayed here till Dr. Brewster--Dr. Arthur Brewster was his
name--stayed here till he carried me to his brother-in-law Dr. Asa
Brunson. Stayed there awhile, then the war started and he carrled us all
to Texas.
"I seen some Yankeee after we come back to Arkansas. I wes scared of em.
"I don't knew nothln' bout the war. I wasn't in it. I was livin' but we
was in Texas.
"The Ku Klux got after us twice when we was goin' to Texas. We had six
wagons, a cart, and a carriage. Old Dr. Brunson rode in the carriage.
He'd go ahead and pilot the way. We got lost twice. When we come to Red
River it was up and we had to camp there three weeks till the water
fell.
"We took some sheep and some cows so we could kill meat on the way. I
member we forded Saline River. Dr. Brunson carried us there and stayed
till he hired us out.
"After the war ceasted he come after us. Told as we didn't belong to him
no more--said we was free as he was. Yankees sent him after us. All the
folks come back--all but one famlly.
"I had tolerable good owners. Miss Fanny Brewster good to me.
"Old master got drunk so much. Come home sometimes muddy as a hog. All
his chillun was girls. I nursed all the girls but one.
"I was a mighty dancer when I was young--danced all night long.
Paddyrollers run us home from dancin' one night.
"I member one song we used to sing:
'Hop light lady
Cake was all dough--
Never mind the weather,
So the wind don't blow.'
"How many chillun I have? Les see--count em up. Ida, Willie, Clara--had
six.
"Some of the young folks nowadays pretty rough. Some of em do right and
some don't.
"Never did go to school. Coulda went but papa died and had to go to
work.
"I thinks over old times sometimes by myself. Didn't know what freedom
was till we was free and didn't hardly know then.
"Well, it's been a long time. All the Brewsters and the Bransons dead
and I'm still here--blind. Been blind eight years."
Waters Brooks
1814 Pulaski Street, Little Rock, Ark.
Retired railroad worker, No. Pac. 75
[TR: Information moved from bottom of each page.]
[HW: A Railroad Work History]
I was only three years old when peace (1865) was declared. I was born in
1862. Peace was declared in 1865. I remember seeing plenty of men that
they said the white folks never whipped. I remember seeing plenty of men
that they said bought their own freedom.
I remember a woman that they said fought with the overseer for a whole
day and stripped him naked as the day he was born. She was Nancy Ward.
Her owner was named Billie Ward. He had an overseer named Roper. Her
husband ran away from the white folks and stayed three years. He was in
the Bayou in a boat and the bottom dropped out of it. He climbed a tree
and hollered for someone to tel his master to come and get him if he
wanted him.
FATHER
My father's master was John T. Williams. He went into the army--the
rebel army--and taken my father with him. I don't know how long my
father stayed in the army but I was only 6 months old when he died. He
had some kind of stomach trouble and died a natural death.
MOTHER
My mother and father both belonged to Joe Ward at first but Ward died
and his widow married Williams. My mother told me and not only told me
but showed me knots across her shoulder where they whipped her from
seven in the morning until nine at night. She went into the smoke house
to get some meat and they closed in on her and shut the door and strung
her up by her hands (her arms were crossed and a rope run from her
wrists to the hook in the ceiling on which meat was hung). There were
three of them. One would whip until he was tired, and then the other
would take it up.
Some years after she got that whipping, her master's child was down to
the bayou playing in the water. She told the child to stop playing in
the water, and it did not. Instead it threw dirt into the water that had
the bluing in it. Then she took the child and threw it into the Bayou.
Some way or other the child managed to scramble out. When the child's
aunt herd it from the child, she questioned my mother and asked her if
she did it. My mother told her "Yes". Then she said. "Well what do you
want to own it for? Don't you know if they find it out they will kill
you?"
HOW FREEDOM CAME
My mother said that an old white man came through the quarters one
morning and said that they were all free--that they could go away or
stay where they were or do what they wanted to. If you will go there, I
can send you to an old man eighty-six years old who was in General
Sherman's army. He came from Mississippi. I don't know where he was a
slave. But he can tell you when peace was declared aad what they said
and everything.
WHAT THE SLAVES EXPECTED
The slaves were not expecting much but they were expecting more than
they got. I am not telling you anything I read in history but I have
heard that there was a bounty in the treasury for the ex-slaves, and
them alone. And some reason or other they did not pay it off, but the
time was coming when they would pay it off. And every man or woman
living that was born a slave would benefit from it. They say that
Abraham Lincoln principally was killed because he was going to pay this
money to the ex-slaves end before they would permit it they killed him.
Old man White who lives out in the west part of town was an agent for
some Senator who was in Washington, and he charged a dime and took your
name and age and the place where you lived.
KU KLUX KLAN
They called the K.K.K. "White Cape". Right there in my neighborhood,
there was a colered man who hadn't long come in. The colored man was
late coming into the lot to get the mule for the white man and woman he
was working for. The white man hit him. The Negro knocked the white man
down and was going to kill him when the white man begged him off,
telling him that he wouldn't let anybody else hurt him. He (the Negro)
went on off and never came back. That night there were two hundred White
Caps looking for him but they didn't find him.
Another man got into an argument. They went to work and it started to
rain. The Negro thought that they would stop working because of the
rain; so he started home. The man he was working for met him and asked
him where he was going. When he told him he started to hit him with the
butt end of the gun he was wearing. The Negro knocked his gun up, took
it away from him, and drawed down and started to kill him when another
Negro knocked the gun up, and saved the white man's life. But the Nigger
might as well have killed him because that night seventy-five masked men
hunted him. He was hid away by his friends until he got a chance to get
away. This man was named Matthew Collins.
There was another case. This was a political one. The colored man wanted
to run for representative of some kind. He had been stump speaking. He
lived on a white man's place, and the owner came to him and told him he
had better get away because a mob was coming after him (not just
K.K.K.). He told his wife to go away and stay with his brother but she
wouldn't. He hid himself in a trunk and his wife was under the floor
with his two children. The white men fired into the house and that
didn't do anything, so they throwed a ball of fire into the house and
burned his wife and children. Then he rose up and came out of the trunk
and hollered, "Look out I'm coming", and he fired a load of buck shot
and tore one man nearly in two and ran away in the confusion. The next
day he went to the man on whose place he lived, but he told him he
couldn't do anything about it.
Another man by the name of Bob Sawyer had a farm near my home and
another farm down near Maginty's place. He worked the ????[TR:
Illegible] Niggers from one farm to the other.
His boy would ride in front with a rifle and he would be in the rear
with a big gun swinging down from his hip. There wae one Nigger who got
out and went down to Alexandria (Louisiana). He wrote to the officers
and they caught the Nigger and put him into the stocks and brought him
back, and the man hadn't done a thing but run away. After that they
worked him with a chain holding his legs together so that he could only
make short steps.
They had an old white man who worked there and they treated him so mean
he ran away and left his wife. They treated the poor whites about as bad
as they treated the colored.
If Bob met a Negro carrying cotton to the Gin, he would ask "Whose
cotton is that?", and if the Nigger said it was some white man's, he
would let him alone. But if he said. "Mine", Bob would tell him to take
it to some Gin where he wanted it taken. He was the kind of man that if
you seen him first, you wouldn't meet him.
One night he slipped up on a Nigger man that had left his place and
killed him as he sat at supper. I had an aunt with five or six children
who worker with him. He married my young Mistress after I was freed.
I saw him do this. The white folks had a funeral at the church down
there one Sunday. He came along and young Billie Ward (white man) was
sitting in a buggy driving with his wife. When he saw Billie, he jumped
down out of his buggy and horse-whipped him until he ran away. All the
while, Sawyer's mother-in-law was sitting in his buggy calling out,
"Shoot him, Bob, shoot him." this was because Billie and another man
had done some talk about Bob.
OCCUPATIONS
I came to Brinkley, Arkansas, March 4, 1900, and have been in Arkansas
ever since. Why I came, the postmaster where I was rented farm on which
I was farming. In March he put hands in my field to pick my cotton. All
that was in the field was mine. I knew that I couldn't do anything about
it so I left. A couple of years before that I rented five acres of land
from him for three dollars as acre (verbal agreement) sowed it down in
cotton. It done so well I made five bales of cotton on it. He saw the
prospects were so good that he went to the man who furnished me supplies
and told him that I had agreed to do my work on a third and fourth
(one-third of the seed and one-fourth of the cotton to go to the owner).
He get this although if he had stuck to the agreement he would not have
gotten but fifteen dollars. So he dealt me a blow there, but I got over
it.
Before this I had bought a piece of timber land in Moorehouse parish
(Louisiana) and was expecting to get the money to finish paying for it
from my cotton. The cost was $100.00. So when he put hands in my field,
it made me mad, and I left. (Brooks would have lost most of his cotton
if the hands had picked it.)
At Brinkley, I farmed on halves with Will Carter, one of the richest men
in Monroe County (Arkansas). I done $17.50 worth of work for Carter and
he paid me for it. Then he turned around and charged me up with it. When
we came to settle up, we couldn't settle. So finally, he said, "Figures
don't lie." and I said, "No, figures don't lie but men do." When I sed
that I stepped out and didn't get scared until I was half way home. But
nobody did anything. He sent for me but I wouldn't go back because I
knew what he was doing.
After that I went to Wheatley, Arkansas, about five miles west of
Brinkley. I made a crop for Goldberg. Jake Readus was Goldberg's agent.
The folks had told the white folks I wasn't no account, so I couldn't
get nothing only just a little fat meat and bread, and I got as naked as
a jaybird. About the last part of August, when I had done laid by and
everything. Jake Readus came by and told me what the Niggers had said
and said he knowed it was a lie because I had the best crop on the
place.
When Goldberg went to pay me off, he told Dr. Beauregard to come and get
his money. I said. "You give me my money; I pay my own debts. You have
nothing to do with it." When I said that you could have heard a pin
drop. But he gave it to me. Then I called the Doctor and gave him his
money and he receipted me. I never stayed there but one year.
I moved then down to Napel[TR: Possibly Kapel] Slough on Dr. West's
place. I wanted to rent but Dr. West wouldn't advance me anything unless
he took a mortgage on my place; so I wouldn't stay there. I chartered a
car and took my things back to Brinkley at a cost of ten dollars. I
stayed around Brinkley all the winter.
While I was at Wheatley, there was a man by the name of Will Smith who
married the daughter of Dr. Paster, druggist at Brinkley. Now Jim Smith,
poor white trash, attempted to assault Will Thomas' daughter. Negro
girl. When Thomas heard it, he hunted Jim with a Winchester. When that
got out, Deputy Sheriff arrested Will and they said that he was chained
when he was brought to trial. He got away from them somehow and went to
Jonesboro. I took my horse and rid seven or eight miles to carry his
clothes. Another Nigger who had promised to make a crop when he left had
the blood beat out of his back because he didn't do it.
The winter, I worked at the Gin and Black Saw Mills. That spring I pulls
up and goes to Brises. That was in the year 1903. I made a crop with old
man Wiley Wormley one of the biggest Niggers there. I fell short. George
Walker furnished what I had.
Then I left and went back to Brinkley and worked at the Sawmill again.
That was in 1904. I went to Jonesboro. I had just money enough to go to
Jonesboro, and I had a couple of dollars over. I had never been out
before that; so I spent that and didn't get any work. I stayed there
three days and nights and didn't get anything to eat. Lived in a box
car. Then I went to work with the Cotton Belt.
My boarding mistress decided to go up to fifteen dollars for board. I
told her I couldn't pay her fifteen dollars for that month, but would
begin next month. She wouldn't have that and got the officers to look
for my money so I caught the train and went back to Brinkley and worked
on the railroad again from the Cotton Belt to the Rock Island.