United States. Work Projects Administration

“ The white folks what had money wouldn't pay nothing much for work. All the slaves was in confusion.
A cousin of mine saw Dr. Hazen down in Texas and they all come back to work his land. They wrote to us about it being so fine for hunting. I always liked to hunt so I rode a pony and come to them. The white folks in Texas told the Yankees what to do after the surrender; get off the land. We didn't never vote there but I voted in Arkansas. Mr. Abel Rinehardt always hope me. I could trust him. I don't vote now. No colored people held office in Texas or here that I heard of. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Roosevelt will become a dictator, but I do believe that his being elected a third time will cause some one else to become dictator. My opinion is that he is neither Democrat nor Republican.
"Our young people are advancing from a literary point of view, but I claim that they are losing out along moral lines. I don't believe that we value morals as well as the people did years ago who didn't know so much. I believe that the whole nation, white and black, is losing moral stamina. They do not think it is bad to kill a man, take another man's wife or rob a bank, or anything else. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If a good nigger killed a white overseer, they wouldn't do nothin' to him. If he was a bad nigger, they'd sell him. They raised niggers to sell; they didn't want to lose them. It was just like a mule killing a man.
"Yellow niggers didn't sell so well. There weren't so many of them as there are now. Black niggers stood the climate better. At least, everybody thought so.
"If a woman didn't breed well, she was put in a gang and sold. They married just like they do now but they didn't have no license. ”

“ I made money every year. Yes ma'am, I have made some money in my day. When I moved from Louisiana to Arkansas I sold one hundred eighty acres of land and three hundred head of hogs. I come up here cause my chillun was here and my wife wanted to come here. You know how people will stroll when they get grown. Lost everything I had. Bought a little farm here and they wouldn't let me raise but two acres of cotton the last year I farmed and I couldn't make my payments with that. Made me plow up some of the prettiest cotton I ever saw and I never got a cent for it. ”

“ You could git anything you wanted as long as you worked. If you didn't make no money, that's all right; they would advance you more. But you better not leave him—you better not try to leave and get caught. They'd keep you in debt. They were sharp. Christmas come, you could take up twenty dollars in somethin' to eat and much as you wanted in whiskey. You could buy a gallon of whiskey. Anything that kept you a slave because he was always right and you were always wrong if there was difference. ”

“ While we lived at the old Kidd place, there was a church a few miles from our home. My uncle George was coachman and drove my master's family in great splendor in a fine barouche to church. After the war, when he went to his own place, Mr. Parks gave him the old carriage and bought a new one for the family.
"I can remember the days of slavery as happy ones. We always had an abundance of food. Old Aunt Martha cooked and there was always plenty prepared for all the white folks as well as the colored folks. There was a long table at the end of the big kitchen for the colored folks. ”

“ The white people would have service one a month. But like these street cars. White people would be at the front and colored would fill up back. They'll quit that after a while. Sometimes they would have church in the morning for the white folks and church in the evening for the colored. They would baptize you just like they would anybody else.
"I'll tell you what was done in slave time. They'd sing and pray. The white folks would take you to the creek and baptize you like anybody else.
"Sometimes the slaves would be off and have prayer meetings of their own—nothing but colored people there. ”

“ When the War ended I don't know where my father was living, but I was bred and born in Woodruff near Augusta in Arkansas. All the Booneses were there when I knew anything about it. They owned hundreds and hundreds of acres of ground. I was born on old Captain Boone's farm.
"My father was always a farmer. He farmed till he died. They were supposed to give him a pension, but he never did get it. They wrote to us once or twice and asked for his number and things like that, but they never did do nothing. You see he fit in the Civil War. ”

“ My grandma who belonged to her had twenty-six children. She got her start off of the slaves her parents gave her, and finally she had about seventy-five. She ran a farm. My mother's work was house woman. She worked in the house. Her mistress was good to her. The overseer couldn't whip the niggers, except in her presence, so that she could see that it wasn't brutal. She didn't allow the women to be whipped at all. When an overseer got rough, she would fire him. Slaves would run away sometimes and stay in the woods if they thought that they would get a whipping for it. ”

“ The pateroles carried on their work for a good while after slavery was over, and the Civil War had ended.
"I was pretty good when I was a boy. So I never had any trouble then. I was right smart size when I saw the Ku Klux. They would whip men and women that weren't married and were living together. On the first day of January, they would whip men and boys that didn't have a job. They kept the Negroes from voting. They would whip them. They put up notices, 'No niggers to come out to the polls tomorrow.' They would run them off of government land which they had homesteaded. ”

“ Lordy, they's plenty to do. Never is no time for rest. Load, onload, scrub. Just you do whatever you is told to do and do it right now, and you'll keep outen trouble, on a steamboat, or a railroad, or in the army, or wherever you is. That's what I knows.
Yessum, I reckon they was right smart old masters what didn't want to let they slaves go after freedom. They hated to turn them loose. Just let them work on. Heap of them didn't know freedom come. I used to hear tell how the govmint had to send soldiers away down in the far back country to make them turn the slaves loose. ”

“ On our place no grown person was ever whipped. They was just like one family. They called grandmother's house the big house. They farmed. They didn't raise cotton though. They raised corn, peas, wheat, potatoes, and all things for the table. Hogs, cows, and all such like was raised. I never saw a pound of meat or a peck of flour or a bucket of lard or anything like that bought. We rendered our own lard, pickled our own fish, smoked our own meat and cured it, ground our own sausage, ground our own flour and meal from our own wheat and corn we raised on our place, spun and wove our own cloth. ”

“ 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 remember much of the treatment given to the slaves. I used to say 'master' myself in my day. We had to do that till after '69 or '70. I remember the time when I couldn't go nowhere without asking the 'white folks.' I wasn't a slave then but I couldn't go off without asking the white people. I didn't know no better.
"I have known the time in the southern part of this state when if you wanted to give an entertainment you would have to ask the white folks. Didn't know no better. For years and years, most of the niggers just stayed with the white folks. ”

“ Roosevelt is not reelected again, the country is going to have one of the bloodiest wars it has ever had because we have so many European doctrines coming into the United States. I have been living seventy-eight years, and I never thought that I would live to see the day when the government would reach out and take hold of things like it has done—the WPA, the FERA, and the RFC, and other work going on today. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mother and father had 12 children and we lived in a one room log cabin and cooked on a fireplace and oven. Mos and Miss Cook did not allow ma and pa to whip me. When ever I do something and I knew I was going to get a whipping I would make it to old Miss. She would keep me from getting that whipping. I was a devilish boy. I would do everything in the world I could think of just for devilment. Old mos was sure good to his slaves. I never went to school a day in my life. ”

“ It wasn't nothing but farms in Little Rock then. The river road was the only one there at that time. It would take a day to cone down from Clear Lake with the cotton. You would start 'round about midnight and you would get to Argenta at nine o'clock the next morning. The roads was always bad.
"After freedom, we worked on shares a while. Then we rented. When we worked on shares, we couldn't make nothing—Just overalls and something to eat. Half went to the other man and you would destroy your half if you weren't careful. A man that didn't know how to count would always lose. ”

“ If you cut a child's finger nails before it is a year old, it will steal when it grows up.
If you put your hand on the head of a dead man, you will never worry about him; he will never haunt you, and you will never fear death. ”

“ The Yankees met the Southerners at Prairie Grove. The shots sounded just like popcorn from here in Fayetteville. We always thought the man got killed there.
The soldiers camped all around everywhere. Lots of them were in tents and some of the officers were in houses. They didn't burn the college—where Miss Sawyer had taught, you know. The officers used it for their living quarters. They built barracks for the men of upright logs. See that building across the street. It's been lots of things, a livery stable, veterinary barn, apartment house. But it was one of the oldest buildings in Arkansas. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One handles a big school in Augusta and the other in Forrest City. One of 'em is in the Smith-Hughes work too.
"I've done something no other man has done. I've educated four of my brothers and sisters after my father died and four of my wife's brothers and sisters and one adopted boy and my own six children—fifteen in all. A man said to me once, "Why any man that's done that much for education ought to get a pension from the educator people." ”

“ We've got to have vision and try to give the people vision. Not to live for ourselves but for all. The present generation is selfish. The life should flow out and as it flows out it makes room for more life. If it does not flow out, it congeals and ferments. Selfishness is just like damming a stream.
"I think Woodrow Wilson won the World War with his fourteen points of democracy. If the people of foreign countries had not that old imperialism sentiment, the Jew would not be where he is today."
Interviewer's Comment
This man is the best informed and most sensible negro I have interviewed. ”

“ A man does better to live by himself. Young people got the devil in them now a days. Your own children don't want you around.
"I got one grand-daughter that ain't never stood on the floor. Her husband kicked her and hit her and she ain't never been able to stand up since. I got another daughter that ain't thinking about marrying. She just goes from one man to the other.
"The government gives me a pension. The white folks help me all along. Before I preached, I fiddled, danced, shot craps, did anything.
"My mother was born in Chickasaw, Mississippi. She was born a slave. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That work makes no count women.
"The girls swept yards, cleaned the house, nursed, and washed and ironed, combed old miss' and the children's hair and cut their finger and toe nails and mended the clothes. The womens' job was to cook, attend to the cows, knit all the socks for the men and boys, spin thread, card bats, weave cloth, quilt, sew, scrub and things like that.
"The little boys drove up the cows, slopped the hogs, got wood and pine for light, go to the spring and get water. After a boy was twelve then he let him work in the fields. ”

“ 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. ”