United States. Work Projects Administration

“ This white man bound me to his wife's friend for a year to keep Mr. Cargo from getting me back. The woman at the house and Mr. Cargo had war nearly about me. I missed my whoopings. I never got none that whole year. It was Mrs. Brown, twenty miles from Dardanelle, they bound me over to. I never got no more than the common run of Negro children but they wasn't mean to me.
"When I was at Cargo's, he wouldn't buy me shoes. Miss Betty would have but in them days the man was head of his house. Miss Betty made me moccasins to wear out in the snow—made them out of old rags and pieces of his pants. ”

“ My father tended to the white folks' mules. He wasn't no soldier. When he married my mother, he was only fifteen years old. His master told him to go pick himself out a wife from a drove of slaves that were passing through, and he picked out my mother. They married by stepping over the broom. The old master pronounced them master and wife. ”

“ Yes, ma'am, the master and mistress, when they find a couple of young slave folks want to get married, they call them before themselves and have them confess they want to marry. Then they hold the broom, one at each end, and the young folks told to jump over. ”

“ There are many types, just like older people. It has always been like that, though. If all young folks were like my granddaughter—I guess there is many, too. She does all the sewing, and gardening. She paints the house, makes the draperies and bed clothing. She can cook and do all our laundry work. She understands raising chickens for market but just don't have time for that. She is honest and clean in her life. ”

“ But we just had boxes in the cabins.
"Them that was in the white folks' house had pretty good meals, but them that was in the field they would feed just about like they would the hogs. They had little wooden trays and they would put little fat meat and pot-liquor and corn bread in the tray, and hominy and such as that. Biscuits came just on Sunday.
"They had old ladies to cook for the slave children and old ladies to cook for the hands. What was in the big house stayed in the big house. All the slave men ate in one place and all the slave women ate in one place. ”

“ When she went, there was her old master, James Moore. "Angeline," he said, "you remember me, don't you?" Course she did. Then he told her he was hungry and homeless. A man hiding out. The Yankees had taken everything he had. Mother took him in and fed him for two or three days till he was rested. The other thing clear to my memory is when my uncle Tom was sold. Another day when mother was washing at the wellhouse and I was playing around, two white men came with a big, broad-shouldered colored man between them. ”

“ That was a plantation where my mother had been; a man name Moore—James Moore—owned it. I don't know whether he had bought my mother from Beebe or not. I can remember two things plain what happened there. I was little, but can still see them. One of my mother's babies died and Master went to Little Rock on a horse and carried back a little coffin under his arm. The mistress had brought mother a big washing. She was working under the cover of the wellhouse and tears was running down her face. When master came back, he said: "How come you are working today, Angeline, when your baby is dead?" ”

“ Reverend Winfield used to preach to the colored people that if they would be good niggers and not steal their master's eggs and chickens and things, that they might go to the kitchen of heaven when they died. ”

“ While the men were feeding the stock and providing temporary quarters, the women assisted the slaves in preparing the evening meal, of hoe-cake, fried venison and coffee. Then the women and children would sleep in the wagons while the men kept watch for wild life.
Mammy Emiline was a faithful old black mammy, true to life and traditions, and refused her freedom, at the close of the war, as wanted to stay and raise "Old Massa's chilluns," which she did, for she was nursing her sixth generation in the Waddell family at the time of her death. ”

“ Some of the neighbors take in washing and they give me ironing to do. Friends bring in fresh bread when they bake. It takes all my granddaughter makes to keep up the mortgage and pay all the rest. She don't have clothes decent to go.
I have about sold the last of the antiques. In old days the mistress used to give my mother the dishes left from broken sets, odd vases and such. I had some beautiful things, but one by one have sold them to antique dealers to get something to help out with. My church gives me a donation every fifth Sunday of a collection for benefit. ”

“ During the period of slavery the more apt and intelligent among those of the younger Negroes were singled out and given special training for those places in which their talents indicated they would be most useful in the life of the plantation. Girls were trained in housework, cooking, and in the care of children while boys were taught blacksmithing, carpentrying, and some were trained for personal servants around the home. ”

“ Course the black folks knowed they was white men. They hung some slaves and white Yankees too if they be very mean. They beat em. Hear em hollowing and they hollow too. They shoot all directions round and up an down the road. That's how you know they comin close to yo house. If you go to any gatherins they come break it up an run you home fast as you could run and set the dogs on you. Course the dogs bite you. They say they was not goiner have equalization if they have to kill all the Yankees and niggers in the country. The masters sometime give em a home. ”

“ The slaves left many a plantation and they would grow up in weeds. When a man would clear up the ground like this and plant it down in something, he would get all he planted on it. That was in addition to the ground that he would contract to plant. He used to plant rice, peas, potatoes, corn, and anything else he wanted too. It was all his'n so long as it was on extra ground he cleared up.
"But they said, 'Cotton grows as high as a man in Arkansas.' Then they paid a man two dollars fifty cents for picking cotton here in Arkansas while they just paid about forty cents in Georgia. ”

“ We lived right in Atlanta. I cleaned up round the house. Yes ma'm, that's what I followed. When the Yankees come to Atlanta they just forced us into the army. After I got into the army and got used to it, it was fun—just like meat and bread. Yankees treated me good. I was sorry when it broke up. When the bugle blowed we knowed our business. Sometimes, the age I is now, I wish I was in it. Father Abraham Lincoln was our President. I knowed the war was to free the colored folks. I run away from my white folks is how come I was in the Yankee army. ”

“ Freedom! Master Campbell Jones come to us and said, 'You free this morning. The war is over.' It been over then but travel was slow. 'You all can go back home, I'll take you, or you can go root hog or die.' We all got to gatherin' up our belongings to come back home. Tired of no wood neither, besides that hard work. We all share cropped with Captain R. Campbell Jones two years. I know that. We got plenty wood without going five or six miles like in Texas. After freedom folks got to changing 'bout to do better I reckon. ”

“ My mistress's oldest son, Ed Sterling, got shot in the Civil War. He got shot right in the side at Franklin, Tennessee. It tore his whole side off—near about killed him. But he lived to ride paterole. He was mean. Catch a man in bed with his wife at night, he'd whip him and make him go home. He was the meanest man in the world. ”

“ My uncle was sold at Richmond and when I come to Arkansas he was living at Helena. I never did get to see him but I seen his two boys. They live down there now. I don't know how my uncle got to Helena but he was turned loose down in this country at 'mancipation. They told me that.
"When a man wanted a woman he went and axed the master for her and took her on. That is about all there was to it. No use to want one of the women on Jim Johnson's, Debrose, Tillery farms. They kept them on their own and didn't want visitors. They was big farms. Kershy had a big farm. ”

“ She said that her old master never did whip her, and she sure wasn't going to let the young one do it. I never heard that they punished her for whipping her young master. I never heard her say that anybody tried to whip her at any other time. My mother was a strong woman. She could lift one end of a log with any man. ”

“ We crossed the river out from Memphis to Hopefield. I lived at Wittsburg, Arkansas during the war. They smuggled us about from the Yankees and took us to Texas. Before the war come on we had to fight the Indians back. They tried to sell us in Texas. George Coggrith's wife died. Mother was the cook for all the hands and the white folks too. She raised two boys and three girls for him. She went on raising his children during the war and after the war. During the war we hid out and raised cotton and corn. We hid in the woods. The Yankees couldn't make much out in the woods and canebrakes. ”

“ We have no place to raise things to help out and pay big prices for everything. I work. But times is hard. That is the very reason it is hard. We got no place to raise nothing. (Hard road and ditch in front and cotton field all around it except a few feet of padded dirt and a wood pile.) ”

“ The spiritual and religious needs of the slaves received the attention of the same minister who attended the like needs of the master and his family, and services were often conducted on Sunday afternoons exclusively for them at which times the minister exhorted his congregation to live lives of righteousness and to be at all times obedient, respectful and dutiful servants in the cause of both their earthly and heavenly masters. ”

“ At the end of the War provisions got mighty scarce. If we didn't have enough to eat we took it. They hadn't raised nothing to eat the last two years. Before I got back to Kentucky the Ku Klux was about and it was hard to get enough to eat to keep traveling on. I was scared nearly to death all the time. I'm not in favor of war. I didn't stay on with the master but my folks lived on. They didn't want to hire Negro soldiers. I traveled about hunting a good place and got to Osceola, Arkansas. I been here in Forrest City twenty ard years. The best people in the world live in Arkansas. ”

“ They lived on different places here in Arkansas. I had a hard time. I was awfully abused by the old man that married Miss Betty. She was my young mistress. He was poor and hated Negroes. He said they didn't have no feeling. He drunk all the time. He never had been used to Negroes and he didn't like em. He was a middle age man but Miss Betty Holland was in her teens.
"No, mama didn't have as hard a time as I had. She was Miss Holland's cook and wash woman. Miss Betty told her old husband, 'Papa don't beat his Negroes. He is good to his Negroes.' He worked overseers in the field. ”

“ Slaves what lived in the family didn't talk like cottonfield hands. My parents sure did believe in education.
The first free schools in Little Rock were opened by the Union for colored children. They brought young white ladies for teachers. They had Sunday School in the churches on Sunday. In a few years they had colored teachers come. One is still living here in Little Rock. I wish you would go see her. She is 90 years old now. She founded the Wesley Chapel here. On her fiftieth anniversary my club presented her a gold medal and had "Mother Wesley" engraved on it. ”

“ Old Father Abraham Lincoln, I've seen him since he been dead too. I got a gun old Father Abraham give me right out o' his own hand at Vicksburg. I'm goin' to keep it till I die too.
Yes ma'm, I know they is spirits. ”

“ After the Civil war was over the Indians let the slaves go.
I had an Indian wife and wore Indian dress and when I went to Milford, Tenn., I had to send the outfit home to Okla. I had long hair until 1931.
My Indians believed in our God. They held their meetings in a large tent. They believed in salvation and damnation, and in Heaven and Hell.
My idea of Heaven is that it is a holy place with God. We will walk in Heaven just as on earth. As in him we believe, so shall we see.
The earth shall burn, and the old earth shall pass away and the new earth will be created. ”

“ They'd run you and bay you, and a white man would ride up there and say, 'If you hit one of them hounds, I'll blow your brains out.' He'd say 'your damn brains.' Them hounds would worry you and bite you and have you bloody as a beef, but you dassent to hit one of them. ”

“ I heard of the Ku Klux too; they never bothered my people none. They scared the niggers at night. I never saw none of them. I can't remember how freedom came. First I knowed, I was free.
"People in them days didn't know as much as the young people do now. But they thought more. Young people nowadays don't think. Some of them will do pretty well, but some of them ain't goin' to do nothin'. They are gittin' worse and worser. I don't know what is goin' to become of them. They been dependin' on the white folks all along, but the white folks ain't sayin' much now. ”

“ I was raised in Louisiana, but I was born in Georgia. I have had several people countin' up my age and they all say I is a hundred years old. I had eight children. All of them are free born. Four of them died when they were babies. I lost one just a few days ago.
"I had such a hard time in slavery. Them white folks was slashing me and whipping me and putting me in the buck, till I don't want to hear nothin' about it.
"An old man named Dr. Polk got a dime from me and said it was for the Old Age Pension. He lived in Magnolia, Arkansas. ”

“ Never went to school but one day in my life, then my father put us to work. Never learned to read. You see everybody in the pen now'days got a education. I don't think too much education is good for 'em. ”

“ Work them till dark; then they would eat supper. Cook their own supper. Had nothing to cook but a little meat and bread and molasses. Then they would go back and bale up three or four bales of cotton. Some nights they work till twelve o'clock then get up before daylight—'round four o'clock—and cook their breakfast and go to work again. That was on Jim Holbert and Lard Moore's place. Them was two different men and two different places—plantations. They whipped their slaves a good deal—always beating down on somebody. ”

“ After the War our owners brought us back to Little Rock. That is where they left from. They left here on account of the War. They run off their slaves to keep the Yankees from freeing them. All the old masters were dead. But the young ones were Louis Fletcher, John Fletcher, Dick Fletcher, Jeff Fletcher, and Len Fletcher. Five brothers of them. Their home was here in Little Rock. The War was going on. ”