Person interviewed: Mattie Brown. Helena. Arkansas
Age: 75
"I heard mother say time and ag'in I was a year and two months old the
year of the surrender. I was born in Montgomery, Alabama. Mother was a
milker and a house woman. Father died when I was a baby. Mother never
married. There was three of us to raise. I'm the youngest.
"Sister was the regular little nurse girl for mother's mistress. I don't
recollect her name. The baby was sickly and fretful. My sister set and
rocked that baby all night long in a homemade cradle. Mother said she'd
nod and go on. Mother thought she was too young to have to do that way.
Mother stole her away the first year of the Civil War and let her go
with some acquaintances of hers. They was colored folks. Mother said she
had good owners. They was so good it didn't seem like slavery. The
plantation belong to the woman. He was a preacher. He rode a circuit and
was gone. They had a colored overseer or foreman like. She wanted a
overseer just to be said she had one but he never agreed to it. He was a
good man.
"Mother said over in sight on a joining farm the overseers whooped
somebody every day and more than that sometimes. She said some of the
white men overseers was cruel.
"Mother quilted for people and washed and ironed to raise us. After
freedom mother sent for my sister. I don't recollect this but mother
said when she heard of freedom she took me in her arms and left. The
first I can recollect she was cooking for soldiers at the camps at
Montgomery, Alabama. They had several cooks. We lived in our own house
and mother washed and ironed for them some too. They paid her well for
her work.
"I recollect some of the good eating. We had big white rice and big soda
crackers and the best meat I ever et. It was pickled pork. It was
preserved in brine and shipped to the soldiers in hogheads (barrels). We
lived there till mother died and I can recollect that much. When mother
died we had a hard time. I look back now and don't see how we made it
through. We washed and ironed mostly and had a mighty little bit to eat
and nearly nothing to wear. It was hard times for us three children. I
was the baby child. My brother hired out when he could. We stuck
together till we all married off."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person Interviewed: Molly Brown
Age: 90 or over Brinkley, Ark.
One morning early I (Irene Robertson) got off the bus and started up
Main Street. I hadn't gone far before I noticed a small form of a woman.
She wore men's heavy shoes, an old dark dress and a large fringed woolen
shawl; the fringe was well gone and the shawl, once black, was now brown
with age. I passed her and looked back into her face. I saw she was a
Negro, dark brown. Her face was small with unusually nice features for a
woman of her race. She carried a slick, knotted, heavy walking stick--a
very nice-looking one. On the other arm was a rectangular split basket
with wires run through for a handle and wrapped with a dirty white rag
to keep the wire from cutting into her hand or arm.
I stopped and said, "Auntie, could you direct me to Molly Brown's
house?"
"I'm her," she replied.
"Well, I want to go home with you."
"What you want to go out there for?"
"I want you to tell me about times when you were a girl," I said.
"I'm not going home yet. I got to get somethin' for dinner."
"Well, you go ahead and I'll follow along."
"Very well," she said.
I window shopped outside, and I noticed she had a box of candy, but it
was a 25¢ box and had been opened, so I thought it may be nearly
anything just put in the box. The next store she went into was a
nice-looking meat market and grocery combined, I followed in behind her.
A nice-looking middle-aged man gave her a bundle that was large enough
to hold a 50¢ meat roast. It was neatly tied, and the wrapping paper was
white, I observed. She thanked him. She turned to me and said, "Give me
a nickel."
I said, "I don't have one." Then I said teasingly, "Why you think I have
a nickel?"
She said, "You look like it."
I opened my purse and gave her a dime. She went over to the bread and
picked up a loaf or two, feeling it. The same man said, "Let that
alone."
The old woman slowly went on out. I was amazed at his scolding. Then he
said to me, "She begs up and down this street every day, cold or hot,
rain or shine, and I have to watch her from the time she enters that
door till she leaves. I give her scrap meat," he added.
"How old is she?"
"She was about fifty years old sixty years ago when she came to
Brinkley. She is close to a hundred years. People say she has been here
since soon after the town started." He remarked, "She won't spend that
dime you gave her."
"Well, I will go tell her what to buy with it," I replied.
I hurried out lest I loose her. She had gained time on me and was
crossing the Cotton Belt Ry. tracks. I caught up with her before she
went into a small country grocery store on #70 highway. She had passed
several Negro stores, restaurants, etc, "I want a nickel's worth of
meal, please, sir."
I said, "Auntie, buy a dime's worth of meal."
"I don't want but a nickel's worth." The man handed it to her to put in
the basket. "Give me a piece candy." The merchant gave her a nice hard
stick. She broke it half in to and offered me a piece.
I said, "No, thank you, Auntie." She really wanted me to have it, but I
refused it.
She blowed her nose on her soiled old white underskirt. She wormed and
went on out.
I asked the merchant "How old is she?"
"Bless her heart, I expect she is ninety years old or more. I give her
some hard candy every time she comes in here. I give her a lot of
things. She spends her money with me."
Then I asked if she drew an Old Age Pension.
He said, "I think she does, but that is about 30¢ and it runs out before
she gets another one. She begs a great deal."
I lagged behind. The way she made her way across the Broadway of America
made me scringe. I crossed and caught up with her as she turned off to a
path between a garage and blacksmith shop.
I said, "Auntie, let me take your basket." She refused me. I said, "May
I carry your meal or your meat?"
"I don't know you." she said shortly.
A jolly man at the side of the garage heard me. I said, "I'm all right,
am I not" to the man.
He said, "Aunt Molly, let her help you home. She is all right. I'm
sure."
I followed the path ahead of her. When we turned off across a grassy
mesa the old woman said, "Here," and handed over her basket. I carried
it. When we got to her house across a section of hay land at least a
mile from town, she said, "Push that door open and go to the fire."
An old Negro man, not her husband and no relation, got a very
respectable rocking chair for me. He had a good fire in the fireplace.
The old woman sat on a tall footstool. She was so cold.
She said, "Bring me some water, please."
A young yellow boy stepped out and gave her a cup of water. She drank it
all. She put the meat bones and scrap meat on the coals in an iron pot
in some water. She had the boy scald the meal, sprinkle salt in it and
add a little cold water to it. He put it in an iron pan and put a heavy
iron lid over it. The kettle was iron. The boy set it aside and put the
bread on hot embers. She sat down and said, "I'm hungry."
I said, "Auntie, what have you in that box?"
She reached to her basket, untied some coins from the corner of the
soiled rag--three pennies and a nickel. She untied her ragged hose--she
wore two pairs--tied above the knee with a string, and slipped the money
to the foot and in her heavy shoes. It looked safe. Then the old Negro
man came in with an armfull of scrub wood and placed it by the fireplace
on the floor.
He said, "The Government sent me here to live and take care of Aunt
Molly. She been sick. I build her fires, and me and that boy wait on
her."
I asked, "Is the boy kin".
He said, "No'm, she's all alone."
He went away and the boy went away. The old woman called them and
offered them candy. She had twelve hard pieces of whitish, stale
chocolate candy in the box. The boy refused and went away, but the old
man took three pieces. I observed it well, when she passed it to me, for
worms. I refused it. It seemed free from bugs though. She ate greedily
and the old man went away.
We were alone and she was warm. She talked freely till the old Negro man
returned at one o'clock for dinner. Notwithstanding the fact the meal
hadn't been sifted and the meat not washed, it looked so brown and nice
in two pones and the meat smelled so good I left hurriedly before I
weakened, for I was getting hungry from the aroma.
"I was born at Edgefield County, South Carolina, and lived there till
after I married."
"Did you have a wedding?"
"I sure did."
"Tell me about it."
"I married at home, at night, had a supper, had a nice dance."
"You did?"
"I did."
"Did a colored man marry you?"
"Colored preacher--Jim Woods."
"Did he say the ceremony?"
"He read it out of a little book."
"Did you have a nice supper?"
"Course I did! White folks helped fix my weddin' supper. Had turkey,
chickens, baked shoat, pies and cake--a table piled up full. Mama helped
cook it. It was all cooked on fireplace.
"How were you dressed?"
"Dressed like folks dressed to marry."
"How was that?"
"I wore three or four starched underskirts trimmed in ruffles and a
white dress over em. I wore a long lacy vail of net."
"Did you go away?"
"I lived close to my ma and always lived close bout her. I was called a
first class lady then."
"You were."
"My parents name Tempy Harris and Albert Harris. She was a cook. He was
a farmer. They had five children. The reason I come to Arkansas was
cause brother Albert and Caroline come here and kept writin' for us to
come. My folks belong to the Harrises. I don't know nothin' bout
em--been too long--and I never fooled round their houses. Some my folks
belong to the Joneses. They kinfolks of the Harrises.
"No, I never saw no one sold nor hung neither.
"Remember grandpa. His daddy was a white man. His wife was a black
woman. Mama was a brown woman like I is.
"I ain't had narry child. My mother died here in this house. Way me an
my husband paid for the house, he farmed for Jim Black and Mr. Gunn. I
cooked for Jim Woodfin. Then I run a roomin' house till four years ago.
Four years ago I went to South Carolina to see my auntie. Her name
Julia. They all had more 'n I had. She'd dead now. All of em dead bout
it. She was a light woman--Julia. Her pa was a white man; her ma a light
woman. Julia considered wealthy.
"I don't know nothin' bout freedom. I seen the soldiers. I seen both
kinds. The white folks was good to us. We stayed on. Then we went to
Albany, Georgia. We lived there a long time--lived in Florida a long
time, then come here.
"The Joneses and Harrises had two or three families all I know. They
didn't have no big sight of land. They was good to us. I picked up
chips, put em in the boxes. Picked em up in my dress, course; I fetched
up water. We had rocked wells and springs, too. We lived with man named
Holman in Georgia. We farmed. I used to be called a smart woman, till I
done got not able. My grandpa was a white man; mama's pa.
"What I been doin' from 1864-1937? What ain't I done! Farmin', I told
you. Buildin' fences was common. Feedin' hogs, milkin' cows, churnin'.
We raised hogs and cows and kept somethin' to eat at home. I knit sox. I
spin. I never weaved. Folks wore clothes then. They don't wear none now.
Pieced quilts. Could I sew? Course I did! Got a machine there now.
(pointed to an old one.)
"I never seen no Ku Klux. I hid if they was about. I sure did hear bout
em. They didn't never come on our place.
"I told you I never knowed when freedom come on.
"I went to school in South Carolina. I went a little four or five years.
I could read, spell, cipher on a slate. Course I learned to write.
Course I got whoopins; got a heap o' whoopins. People tended to childern
then. What kind books did we have? I read and spelled out of the Blue
Back Speller. We had numbers on our slates. The teacher set us copies.
We wrote with soapstone. Some teachers white and some colored.
"Well, course I got a Bible. (disgusted at the question). I go to church
and preachin' every Sunday. Yes. ma'am, now.
"I don't study votin'. I don't vote. (disgusted). I reckon my husband
and pa did vote. I ain't voted.
"Course I go to town. I go to keep from gettin' hungry.
"Me and this old man get demodities and I get some money.
"I told you I don't bother young folks business. I thought I told you I
don't. If I young I could raise somethin' at home that the reason I go
hungry. I give down. I know I do get hungry.
"One thing I didn't tell you. I made tallow candles when I was a young
woman.
"I don't know nothin' bout that Civil War."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Peter Brown. Helena, Arkansas
Age: 86
"I was born on the Woodlawn place. It was owned by David and Ann Hunt. I
was born a slave boy. Master Hunt had two sons and one girl. Bigy and
Dunbar was the boys' names. Annie was the girl's name.
"My parents' names was Jane and William Brown. Papa said he was a little
shirt tail boy when the stars fell. Grandma Sofa and Grandpa Peter Bane
lived on the same place. I'm named after him. My papa come from
Tennessee to Mississippi. I never heard ma say where she come from.
"My remembrance of slavery is not at tall favorable. I heard the master
and overseers whooping the slaves b'fore day. They had stakes fixed in
the ground and tied them down on their stomachs stretched out and they
beat them with a bull whoop (cowhide woven). They would break the
blisters on them with white oak paddles that had holes in it so it would
suck. They be saying, 'Oh pray, master.' He'd say, 'Better pray fer
yourself.' I heard that going on when I was a child morning after
morning. I wasn't big enough to go to the field. I didn't have a hard
time then. Ma had to work when she wasn't able. Pa stole her out and one
night a small panther smelled them and come on a log up over where they
slept in a canebrake. Pa killed it with a bowie knife. Ma had a baby out
there in the canebrake. Pa had stole her out. They went back and they
never made her work no more. She was a fast breeder; she had three sets
of twins. They told him if he would stay out of the woods they wouldn't
make her work no more, take care of her children. They prized fast
breeders. They would come to see her and bring her things then. She had
ten children, three pairs of twins. Jonas and Sofa, Peter and Alice,
Isaac and Jacob.
"When I was fifteen years old, mother said, 'Peter, you are fifteen
years old today; you was born March 1, 1852.' She told me that two or
three times and I kept up wid it. I am glad I did; she died right after
that.
"Ma and pa et dinner, well as could be. Took cholera, was dead at twelve
o'clock that night. It was on Monday. Ike and Jake took it. They got
over it. I waited on the little things. One of them said, 'Peter, I'm
hungry.' I broiled some meat, made a ash cake and put the meat in where
I split the ash cake. He et it and went to sleep. He started mending.
Sister come and got the children and took them to Lake Providence. I
fell in the hands then of some cruel people. They had a doctor named Dr.
Coleman come to see ma and pa. He said, 'Don't eat no fruit, no
vegetables.' He said, 'Eat meat and bread.' I et green plums and peaches
like a boy fifteen years old then would do. I never did have cholera. A
boy fifteen years old didn't know as much as boys do now that age. The
master died b'fore the cholera disease come on. We had moved from the
hill place to a place in the bottoms. It was on the same place. None of
his family hod cholera but neighbors had it. We buried ma and pa on the
neighbor's place. We had kin folks on the Harris place. While we was at
the graveyard word come to dig two or three more graves.
"Master's house was set on fire, the smokehouse emptied, the gin burned
and the cotton. The mules was drove out of the lot. That turned me
ag'in' the Yankees. We helped raise that meat they stole. They left us
to starve and fed their fat selves on what was our living. I do not
believe in parts of slavery. That whooping was cruel, but I know that
the white man helped the slave in ways. The slaves was worked too hard.
Men was no better than they are now.
"My owner had two fine black horses name Night and Shade. Clem was a
white driver. We lived close to Fiat where they had horse races. He told
Clem to get Night ready to win some money. He told Clem not to let
nobody have their hand on the horse. Clem slept in the stable with the
horse. They had three horses on the track. They made three rounds. Night
lost three times, but on Friday Night come in and won the money. He made
two or three thousand dollars and paid Clem. I never heard how much.
Freedom
"Some men come to our house searching for arms. We had a chest. They
threw things winding. Said it was freedom. We didn't think much of such
freedom. Had to take it. We didn't have no arms in the house. We never
seen free times and didn't know what to look for nohow. We never felt
times as good. We moved to the bottoms and I lost my parents.
"I fell in the hands of some mean people. They worked me on the frozen
ground barefooted. My feet frostbit. I wore a shirt dress and a britches
leg cap on my head and ears. I had no shoes, no underwear. I slept on a
bed made in the corner of a room called a bunk. It had bagging over
straw and I covered with bagging. Aunt July (Julie) and Uncle Mass
Harris come for me. Sister brought my horse pa left for me. They took me
from, them folks to stay at Mr. W.C. Winters. He was good to me. He give
me fifty dollars and fed me and my horse. He give me good clothes and a
house in his yard. I was hungry. He fattened me and my horse both.
"They broke the Ku Klux up by putting grapevines across the roads. I
know about that? I never seen one of them in my life.
"Election days years gone by was big times. I did vote. I voted regular
a long time. The last President I voted for was Wilson.
"I farmed and worked on steamboats on the Mississippi River. I was what
they called rousterbout. I loaded and unloaded freight, I worked on the
Choctaw, Jane White, Kate Adams, and other little boats a few days at a
time. Kate Adams burnt at Moons Landing. I stopped off here at Helena
for Christmas. Some people got drowned and some burned to death. The mud
clerk got lost. He went in and got two bags of silver money, put them in
his pockets. The stave plank broke and he went down and never come up.
He was at the shore nearly but nobody knew he had that silver in his
pockets. He never come up and he drowned. People seen him go in but the
others swum out. He never come up. They missed him and found him dead
and the two bags of silver. I was due to be on there but I wanted to
spend Christmas with grandma and my wife. The Choctaw carried ten
thousand bales of cotton at times. I worked at the oil mill sixteen or
seventeen years. I night watched on the transfer twenty-two years. I
come to Helena when I was thirty years old. I'm eighty-six now. The
worst thing I ever done was drink whiskey some. I done quit it. I have
asthma. The doctors say whiskey is bad on that disease. I don't tetch it
now.
"I think the present generation is crazy. I wish I had the chance they
have now. The present times is getting better. I ask the Lord to spare
me to be one hundred years old. I'm strong in the faith. I pray every
day. He will open the way. The times have changed in my life."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: William Brown, Hazen, Arkansas
Age: 67
I was born in Virginia but I was born after slavery. I heard my folks
talk a heap about oldern times. The way I come here was Dr. Hill brought
bout 75 families down to Mississippi to work on farms. I come to Deer
Creek close to Sunflower, Mississippi. I lived there 11 years and I
drifted to Arkansas.
I don't remember if they was in any uprisings or not. If they was any
rebellion cept the big rebellion I don't recall it. My whole families
was in de heat of the war.
My mother and father's owner was John Smith. I recollects hearin them
talk bout him well as if it was yesterday--we worked on McFowell place
close to Petersburg, Virginia when I was little. Then I worked for Miss
Bessie and Mr. John Stewart last fore I come with Dr. Hill. I had lived
up there but he come and settled down in Mississippi.
The first place I worked on in Arkansas was the John Reeds bout 3 miles
from Danville. I stayed there 3 years. My folks stayed on there but I
rambled to Little Rock. I worked with Mr. L.C. Merrill. I milked cows
and cut grass, fed cows. He has a automobile company in Little Rock now.
I farmed bout all my life. Now I don't own nothing. I stays at my
daughters. I been married twice. Both my wives dead.
The times change so much I don't know whether they any better or not.
The black race ain't never had nuthin--some few gets a little headway
once in a while.
I used to vote some--didn't care nuthin bout it much. Never seed no good
come of it. Heap of them vote tickets like somebody tell em or don't
know how dey vote.
The young generations better off than the old folks now. The things
change so fast I don't know how they will get by.
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: William Brown
409 W. Twenty-Fifth Street
North Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 78
[HW: U.S. Dictatorship Predicted]
"I was born in Arkansas in Cross County at the foot of Crowley's Ridge
on the east side of the Ridge and just about twelve miles from Old
Wittsburg, on May 3, 1861. I got the date from my mother. She kept dates
by the old family Bible. I don't know where she got her learning. She
had a knowledge of reading. I am about her sixth child. She was the
mother of thirteen.
"My mother's master was named Bill Neely. Her mistress was named Mag
Neely.
"My mother was one of the leading plow hands on Bill Neely's farm. She
had a old mule named Jane. When the Yankees would come down, Bill Neely
and all his friends would leave home. They would leave when they would
hear the cannon, because they said that meant the Yankees were coming.
When Neely went away, he would carry my mother to do his cooking.
"She would leave the children there and carry just the baby when she
went. Old Aunt Malinda--she wasn't our aunt; she was just an old lady we
called Aunt Malinda who cooked for the kitchen--would cook for us while
she was gone. When the Yankees had passed through, my mother and the
master would all come back.
"My original name was not Brown. It was Pope. I became Brown after the
War was over. I moved on the old Barnes' farm. When the soldiers were
mustered out in the end of the War, a lot of soldiers worked on that
place. Peter Brown, an old colored soldier mustered out from Memphis,
met my mother, courted her, and married her. All the other children that
were born to her were called Brown, and the people called her Brown, and
just called all the other children Brown too, including me. And I just
let it go that way. But my father was named Harrison Pope. He died in
the Confederate army out there somewheres around Little Rock. He had
violated some of the military laws, and they put him in that thing they
had to punish them by, and when they taken him out, he contracted
pneumonia and died. I don't know where he is buried. I would to God I
did! You know when these Southern armies went along they carried colored
stevedores to do the work for them.
Patrollers
"I was a little fellow in the time of the pateroles. If the slaves
wanted to go out anywhere, they had to get a pass and they had to be
back at a certain time. If they didn't get back, it would be some kind
of punishment. The pateroles was a mighty bad thing. If they caught you
when you were out without a pass, they would whip you unmercifully, and
if you were out too late they would whip you. Wherever colored people
had a gathering, them pateroles would be there looking on to see if they
could find anybody without a pass. If they did find anybody that
couldn't show a pass, they would take him right out and whip him then
and there.
Ku Klux
"I know the Ku Klux must have been in use before the War because I
remember the business when I was a little bit of a fellow. They had a
place out there on Crowley's Ridge they used to meet at. They tried to
make the impression that they would be old Confederate soldiers that had
been killed in the battle of Shiloh, and they used to ride down from the
Ridge hollering, 'Oh! Lordy, Lordy, Lordy!' They would have on those old
uniforms and would call for water. And they would have some way of
pouring the water down in a bag or something underneath their uniforms
so that it would look like they could drink four or five gallons.