United States. Work Projects Administration

“ There never was any talk of buried treasure before the war.
"My folks didn't give me any schoolin before the surrender. I never got any before the surrender and a mighty little afterwards. No nigger knowed anything. I started to farming when I was thirteen years old. I used to be a fertilizer, and then a cotton sower. That was the biggest I knowed about farming when I was a boy. My mother lived about fifteen years after slavery. I reckon.
"In the time of slavery, you couldn't marry a woman. You just took up with her. Mother married the same man she had been going with after freedom. ”

“ When my young master was gone to the War and the jayhawkers would come around, my young master's mother would take all the colored women and children and lock them up and she would take a big heavy gun and go out to meet them. The Jayhawkers were white people who would steal corn and horses and even slaves if they could get them. But colored folks was sharp. They would do things to break their horses' legs and they would run and hide. ”

“ Miss Sarah Henley used to teach with old ex-slaves where the Bethel A.M.E. Church is now. There wasn't no church there then—just a little shanty. I was just five years old. My mother used to take me there and leave me, but she taught me herself at home. She taught me just like I see you teach your kids.
"Boys don't do nothing but play now. They had to hustle then. They can't do nothing now. They have this departmental system now. They didn't have it then. The different temperaments ruin children. They used to review, now they don't. They change text-books so fast the old ones can't be sold." ”

“ Brick makers and brick layers, stone masons, lathers, plasters,—all types of builders were of the freed men. You must remember that slaves were the only ones who did this work. Their masters had used their labor as their means of income. Not all slaves were in the cotton fields, as some suppose. The slave owners of towns and villages had their slaves learn skilled trade occupations and made a great deal of money by their earnings. The Yankee soldiers and the many Northern people who lived here hired the freed men and paid them. Quite soon the colored people were buying homes. ”

“ Yes'm we had a good master and mistress. We didn't suffer for nothin' and we didn't have no overseer over us. Colonel Maples was my master. No'm he wasn't no soldier—that was the name his mother give him.
"When my folks first come to Arkansas we lived in a cabin that just had a balin' sack hangin' in the door and one night a bear come in and my brother and I broke a board off the side and fell right out in the cane. We all hollered so some folks come down and shot the bear. I ain't never seed a bear before and I didn't know what it was.
"I 'member when the Yankees come to my boss man's place. ”

“ Our young master is a doctor. He waited on my mother before she died. Grandma was blind and she lived with us. Our young master may still be living. Old mistress was named Sylvania and she sent for my mother to come wait on her when she got sick to die. I think they had pretty fair treatment there. My mother was to be a house girl and cook. I think grandma was a cook and field woman both.
"I heard them say the white folks took them to church to learn to pray, then they didn't allow them to pray for freedom. But I don't think they wanted freedom. ”

“ The chance to make a living looks so dark I can't see much of a future. Things seem to be getting worse. Nearly everybody I talk with, white or colored, seems to think the same. It is like Senator Glass said. 'If Congress would close up and go home at once, times would get better.' People don't know what kind of fool law Congress is going to make and they are not going to spend much money. ”

“ My father and mother were fed like pigs. They had an old woman that did the cooking. She was broke down from work. They would give the slaves greens and the children pot-liquor. My parents were field hands. My mother was too young to carry a row when she was freed, but she worked on an older person's row. They worked from can till can't. You know what I mean, from the time they could see till the time they couldn't. Reb time was something like the penitentiary now. It never got too cold nor too hot to work. ”

“ The Ku Klux would whip people they caught out. They would whip them just because they could; because they called themselves bosses, because they was white and the colored people was niggers. They didn't do nothin' but just keep the slaves down. It was before the war that I knew 'bout the Ku Klux. There wasn't no difference between the pateroles and the Ku Klux that I knows of. If they'd ketch you, they all would whip you. I don't know nothin' about the Ku Klux Klan after the war. I know they broke them up.
Slave Houses, Furniture, Food, and Work
"Before the war, we lived in a old log house. ”

“ My grandmother on my mother's side said when I was a little fellow that she was a cook and that she would bring stuff up to the cabin where the little niggers were locked up and feed them through the crack. She would hide it underneath her apron. She wasn't supposed to do it. All the little niggers were kept in one house when the old folks were working in the field. ”

“ I heard my father say he was a yard boy.
"I married in Mississippi and came to Malvern and Hot Springs. He was a mill hand. I raised three children of my own and was a chamber maid. I kept house and cooked for Mrs. Bera McCafity, a rich woman in Hot Springs. My husband died and was buried at Malvern. I married again, in Hot Springs, and lived there several years. We went to the steel mill at Gary, Indiana. He died. I come back here and to Brinkley in 1920. One daughter lives in Detroit and one in Chicago. The youngest one is married, has a family and a hard time; the other makes her living. ”

“ The dead lay in heaps in front of them and almost filled the ditch around the breastworks, but the command though terribly cut to pieces was forming as cooly as if on dress parade. Above them floated a peculiar flag, a field of deep blue on which was a crescent moon and stars. ”

“ Some folks got killed. Some was old, some young—old devlish ones. They was like a drove of varments. I guess you be scared. They run the colored folks away from church a lot of times. That was about equalization after the freedom. That was the cause of that.
There was uprisings like I'm telling you but the colored folks didn't have nothing to go in a gun if he had one. White folks make them give up a gun.
The first votin I done I was workin for young Henry Larson back in Mississippi. He give my mother $120 a year to cook for his young wife and give her what she eat and I worked on his farm. ”

“ I always unite with the church whenever I go to a place. I don't care whether I stay there or not.
"My mama's master was good as far as white folks generally be in slavery times. He never whipped my grandmother nor my mother. He was good to the field hands too. He never whipped them. He would feed them too. He had right smart of field hands but I don't know just how many. I don't think he ever sold any of his slaves. I think he come by them from his father because I have heard them say that his father told him before he died never to 'part with Black Mammy. ”

“ Opinions
"If the government would give you a job today, niggers would be up to take you out of it tomorrow. Niggers are dirty, and these 'round here are ignorant.
"The parents don't teach the children, and the children can't amount too anything. If children are not taught to work, they will never have nothing. A bunch of these young people don't mean to work. They just lay 'round waiting for the old people to die so they can get what little the old folks accumulated and run through it. But a man never keeps what he himself doesn't earn. ”

“ The school-teacher stayed with mother's folks—mother's white folks. The school-teacher was teaching white folks, not niggers. She was a Yankee, too. My mother was the house girl, and the school-teacher stayed with her folks. The War was so hot she couldn't git no chance to go back home.
"My daddy farmed after the War. He farmed on shares the first year. The next year, he bought him a horse. He finally owned his own farm. He owned it when he died. He had about one hundred acres of land.
"I have pretty fair health for an old woman like I am. I am bothered with the rheumatism. ”

“ I was born and bred in the desert and my mother said it was a long time after freedom 'fore she knowed anything about it. She said there was just lots of the folks said, to their knowin', they had been free three years 'fore they knowed anything about it.
"My husband brought me to Arkansas when I was 35 and I been workin' in the same family, Captain Jeter's family, ever since-forty odd years.
"I always have worked hard. I've had the flu only reason I'm sittin' here now. If I had to sit and hold my hands very long, they'd have to take me to Little Rock. ”

“ I made four bales cotton, one hundred pounds seed cotton. My place is half mile from town. I have to get somebody to do all the work.
"My father did vote. He voted a Republican ticket. I have voted but I don't vote now. I voted a few days ago for a little cotton this year. It was the cotton control election. I voted a Republican ticket. I found out Democrat times is about the best time for us in the South. I quit voting because I'm too old to keep up with it. If a woman owns anything—land or house—she ought to be allowed to vote. ”

“ We come to Aubrey, Arkansas. We got six living, five dead children. I been here fourteen years (at Brinkley) . I hired out to cook in Mississippi but I wash and iron and work in the field till I bout wore out. My husband in a terrible condition. He picked some cotton. He got rheumatism in his legs.
"We own a little home bout a mile from town and a pig. I wish I could get a cow. I ain't got the money to buy one. Jess can't get one no way. We had a fine garden. Two of us get $10 and commodities. Times so far this year been good. When it gets cold times may be hard. ”

“ From the standpoint of understanding between the white and colored races, Little Rock has always been a good place to live. The better class families did not speak of their retainers as slaves; they were called servants. Both my parents were educated by their masters. Besides being a teacher and minister my father was a carpenter and expert cabinet worker.
The first school for Negroes in Little Rock was opened in 1863 and was taught by my father. ”

“ I do not like the trend of amusements of today; I would like for our young people to become interested in things more worth while; in a higher type of amusement. Conditions of morality and a lack of regard for conventions is deplorable. Smoking among the girls has increased the common use of liquor between the sexes.
Did you ask me about the voting restrictions for the colored race in this State? I will tell you frankly that I think the primary law here is unjust; most unjust. We are citizens in every other respect; the primary voting privilege should be ours also. ”

“ Grandpa was part Indian. Dr. Jimmy didn't whoop. He visited and he'd get a jug of whiskey, call his niggers and give them a little, make them feel good and get them in a humor for working. Dr. Jimmy had a nigger overseer. They was digging a ditch and making a turnpike from Dr. Manson's place to Murfreesboro. They told grandpa to drive down in the ditch with his load of rock and let the white folks drive up on the dump. They was hauling and placing rock on the dump to make a turnpike. In Tennessee it was a law if a man owned a nigger he had to whoop him or have him whooped. ”

“ My daddy bought a horse. He made a crop every year. He made his bale of cotton. He made corn to feed his horse with. He belonged to his white folks but he had his house and lot right next to theirs. They would give him time you know. He didn't have to work in the heat of the day. He made his crop and bought his whiskey. The white folks fed 'im. He had no expenses 'cept tending to his crop. He didn't have to give Tom Eford anything he made. He just worked his crop in his extra time. Many folks too lazy to git theirselves somethin' when they have the chance to do it. ”

“ And the majority of the old people are almost worse than the young ones. Used to be that all the old people were mothers and fathers but now they are all going together. Everything is in a critical condition. There is not much truth in the land. All human affection is gone. There is mighty little respect. The way some people carry on is pitiful."
Interviewer's Comment
The men who bother Omelia Thomas probably take her for a young woman. She hasn't a gray hair in her head, and her skin is smooth and must be well kept. ”

“ I came from Clarendon here in 1901.
"I never had any experiences with the Yankees. My mother used to tell how they took all the old master's stuff—mules and sugar—and then throwed it out and rode their horses through it when they didn't want it for theirselves.
"I married a second time. I have been single now for the last three years. My husband died on the twentieth of August three years ago. I ain't got no business here at all. I ought to be at my home living well. But I work for what I get and I'm proud of it.
"A working woman has many things to contend with. ”