Superstitious Beliefs Among Negroes
Some aged Negroes believe that many of the superstitious ideas that are practiced by their race today had their origin in Africa. A practice that was quite common in ante bellum days was for each member of the family to extract all of their teeth, in the belief that in doing so the family would never disagree. Fortunately, this and similar practices of self mutilation have about become extinct.
An old custom practiced to prevent the separation of a husband and wife was to wrap a rabbit's forefoot, a piece of loadstone, and 9 hairs from the top of the head in red flannel, and bury it under the front door steps.
As a preventitive against being tricked or hoo-dooed, punch a hole through a dime, insert a string through the hole, and tie it around the left ankle.
To carry an axe or hoe into the house means bad luck. An itching nose indicates some one is coming to see you, while an itching eye indicates you will cry.
"Yes ma'am, I was here in slavery times. I was born in Mississippi, Lee County, March 10, 1850. Come to Arkansas when I was ten years old. Had to walk. My old master was Henry Ralls. Sometimes we jump up in the wagon and he'd whip us out.
"My old mistes name was Drunetta. She was good to us. We called her Miss Netta. Old master was mean. He'd whip us. One day he come along and picked up sand and throwed it in my eyes. He was a mean old devil. He thought I was scared of him. Cose I was. That was before the war.
"I recollect when the Yankees come. I knowed they was a'ridin'. White folks made me hide things. I hid a barrel of wool once—put meal on top. They'd a'took it ever bit if they could have found it. They wanted chickens and milk. They'd take things they wanted—they would that. Would a'taken ever bit of our wool if they could have found it.
"They wouldn't talk to old mistes—just talk to me and ask where things was. She didn't notice them and they didn't notice her.
"I reckon the Lord intended for the Yankees to free the people. They was fightin' to free the people.
"I hear em say war is still goin' on in the world.
"The owners was tryin' to hide the colored people. Our white folks took some of us clear out in Texas to keep the Yankees from gettin' em. Miss Liza was Miss Netta's daughter and she was mean as her old daddy. She said, 'Oh, yes, you little devils, you thought you was goin' to be free! She had a good brother though. He wanted to swap a girl for me so I could be back here with my mammy, but Miss Liza wouldn't turn me loose. No sir, she wouldn't.
"After freedom I hired out—cooked, milked cows and washed and ironed.
"I went back to Mississippi and stayed with my father. Old Henry Ralls sold my father fore we come to Arkansas.
"I never been married. I could have married, but I didn't. I don't know hardly why.
"I been makin' my own livin' pretty much since I left my father.
"Biggest majority of younger generation looks like they tryin' to get a education and tryin' to make a livin' with their brain without usin' their hands. But I'd rather use my hands—cose I would.
"I went to school some after the war, but I had to pay for it.
"I been disabled bout five or six years. Got to have somethin' to take us away, I guess."
"I was born at Arlington, Tennessee but when I was a chile the depot was called With. My parents' name Sarah and Solomon Green. There was seven girls and one boy of us. My sister died last year had two children old as I was. I was the youngest chile. Folks mated younger than they do now and seem like they had better times when there was a big family.
"Adam Turnover in Charleston, South Carolina owned my papa. When he died they sold him. He was one year and six months old when he was sold.
"I think S.C. Bachelor, around Brownsville, Tennessee, owned mama first. She said they put her upon the block and sold her and her mother was crying. The man after he sold her ask her if she didn't want him to sell her. She said she didn't care but said she knowed she was afraid to say she cared cause she was crying. She never seen her mama no more. She was carried off on a horse. She was a little girl then. General Hayes bought her and he bought papa too. They played together. General Hayes made the little boys run races so he could see who could run the fastest.
"Papa said they picked him up and carried him off. He said they pressed him into the breastworks of the war. He didn't want to go to war. Mr. Hayes kept him hid out but they stole him and took him to fight. He come home. He belong to Jack Hayes, General Hayes' son. They called him Mr. Jack or Mr. Hayes when freedom come. Mr. Jack sent him to Como, Mississippi to work and to Duncan, Arkansas to work his land. I was fifteen years old when we come to Arkansas. Mr. Walker Hayes that was president of the Commercial Appeal over at Memphis lost his land. We been from place to place over Arkansas since then. Mr. Walker was General Hayes' grandson. We worked field hands till then, we do anything since. I nursed some for Mr. Charles Williams in Memphis. I have done house work. I got two children. My son got one leg off. I live with him. This little gran'boy is the most pleasure to us all.
"The Ku Klux never did interfere with us. They never come to our house. I have seen them.
"When papa come from war it was all over. We knowed it was freedom. Everybody was in a stir and talking and going somewhere. He had got his fill of freedom in the war. He said turn us all out to freeze and starve. He stayed with the Hayes till he died and mama died and all of us scattered out when Mr. Walker Hayes lost his land.
"Ladies used to be too fine to be voting. I'm too old now. My men-folks said they voted. They come home and say how they voted all I know about voting.
"Walker Avenue in Memphis is named for Mr. Walker Hayes and Macremore was named for him or by him one.
"We never was give a thing at freedom but papa was buying a place from his master and got in debt and sold it. I don't own a home.
"I have high blood pressure and the Welfare gives me $8 a month. I'm not able to work. When you been used to a good plenty it is mighty bad to get mighty near helpless."
"Yes'm, I know what I hear em say. Well, in slavery times I helped make the soldiers' clothes.
"I was born on the old Jack Hall place on the Arkansas River in Jefferson County.
"I know I was 'leven years old when peace declared. I reckon I can member fore the War started. I know I was bastin' them coats and pants.
"My old master's name was Jack Hall and old mistress' name was Priscilla. Oh, yes'm, they was good to me—just as good to me as they could be. But ever' once in awhile they'd call me and say, 'Senia.' I'd say, 'What you want?' They say, 'Wasn't you out there doin' so and so?' I'd say, 'No.' They say, 'Now, you're tellin' a lie' and they'd whip me.
"I was the house girl, me and my sister. My mammy was the cook.
"Old master had two plantations. Sometimes he had a overseer and sometimes he didn't.
"Oh, they had plenty to eat, hog meat and cracklin' bread. Yes ma'am. I loved that, I reckon. I et so much of it then I don't hardly ever want it now. They had so much to eat. Blackberry cobbler? Oh Lawd.
"How many brothers and sisters? Me? My dear, I don't know how many I had but I heard my mother say that all the chillun she did have, that she had 'leven chillun.
"Our white folks took us to Texas durin' of the War. I think my old master said we stayed there three years. My mother died there with a congestive chill.
"We come back here to Arkansas after freedom and I think my father worked for Jack Hall three or four years. He wouldn't let him leave. He raised my father and thought so much of him. He worked on the shares.
"After freedom I went to school. I learnt to read and write but I just wouldn't do it. I learnt the other chillun though. I did that. I was into ever'thing. I learnt them that what I could do. Blue Back? Them's the very ones I studied.
"In slavery times I had to rise as early as I could. Old master would give me any little thing around the house that I wanted. They said he was too old to go to war. Some of the hands run off but I didn't know where they went to.
"Some of the people was better off slaves than they was free. I don't study bout things now but sometimes seems like all them things comes before me.
"I used to hear em talkin' bout old Jeff Davis. I didn't know what they was talkin' bout but I heered em.
"I was sixteen when I married and I had eleven chillun. All dead but four.
"Yes'm, I been treated good all my life by white and black. All of em loved me seemed like.
"I been livin' in Arkansas all my life. I never have worked in the field. I always worked in the house. I always was a seamstress—made pants for the men on the place.
"After I come here to Pine Bluff I worked for the white folks. Used to cook and wash and iron. Done a lot of work. I did that.
"I been blind 'leven years but I thank the Lord I been here that long. Glory to Jesus! Oh, Lord have mercy! Glory, glory, glory to Jesus!"
"I will be eighty years old my next birthday. It will be July 6th. Father was bought from Kentucky. I couldn't tell you about him. He stayed on the Reaves place that year, the year of the surrender, and left. He didn't live with mother ever again. I never did hear no reason. He went on Joe Night's farm. He left me and a sister older but there was one dead between us. Mother raised us. She stayed on with the Reaves two years after he left. The last year she was there she hired to them. The only thing she ever done before freedom was cook and weave. She had her loom in the kitchen. It was a great big kitchen built off from the house and a portico joined it to the house. I used to lay up under her loom. It was warm there in winter time. I was the baby. I heard mother say some things I remember well.
"She said she was never sold. She said the Reaves said her children need never worry, they would never be sold. We was Reaves from back yonder. Mother's grandfather was a white man. She was a Reaves and her children are mostly Reaves. She was light. Father was about, might be a little darker than I am (mulatto). At times she worked in the field, but in rush time. She wove all the clothes on the place. She worked at the loom and I lay up under there all day long. Mother had three girls and five boys.
"Mr. Reaves, we called him master, had two boys in the army. He was a real old man. He may have had more than two but I know there was two gone off. The white folks lived in sight of the quarters. Their house was a big house and painted white. I've been in there. I never seen no grand parents of mine that I was allowed to claim kin with.
"When I got up some size I was allowed to go see father. I went over to see him sometimes. After freedom he went to where his brothers lived. They wanted him to change his name from Reaves to Cox and he did. He changed it from James Reaves to James Cox. But I couldn't tell you if at one time they belong to Cox in Kentucky or if they belong to Cox in Tennessee or if they took on a name they liked.
"I kept my name Reaves. I am a Reaves from start to finish. I was raised by mother and she was a Reaves. Her name was Olive Reaves. Her old mistress' name was Charlotte Reaves, old master was Edmond Reaves. Now the boys I come to know was John, Bob; girls, Mary and Jane. There was older children. Mother was a sensible, obedient woman. Nobody ever treated her very wrong. She was the only one ever chastised me. They spoiled me. We got plenty plain rations. I never seen nobody married till after the surrender. I seen one woman chastised. I wasn't close. I never learned what it was about. Old Master Reaves was laying it on.
"Mother moved to New Castle, Tennessee from Mr. Reaves' place. We farmed—three of us. We had been living southeast of Boliver, Tennessee, in Hardeman County. I think my kin folks are all dead. Father's other children may be over in Tennessee now. Yes, I know them. Mother died over at Palestine with me. She always lived with me. I married twice, had one child by each wife. Both wives are dead and my children are dead.
"Mother said I had three older brothers went to the Civil War and never come back home. She never heard from them after they went off. I don't know but it was my understanding that they was to be soldiers. I don't recollect them.
"Mother got so she wasn't able to work in the field several years before she died. She worked in the field long as she was able. She lived with me all my whole life till she died. But I farmed. Some years we done well and some years we jess could live. I farmed all my life but a few years. I love farm life. It is independent living. I mean you are about your own man out there. I work my garden out at my shop now. I make baskets and bottom chairs at Palestine. A few years I kept Mrs. Wilkerson's yard and garden. Her husband died and she moved off to Memphis. They did live at Palestine.
"I heard it said that Reaves said he could keep his own farm. The Ku Klux never bothered us. I have heard a lot of things but I am telling you what I know. I don't know nothing about the Civil War nor the Ku Klux. I was most too small a boy at that time to know much.
"I used to vote. Can't write my name. Don't fool with it.
"I went to school on rainy days. I went a few other days. People used to have to work. I always wanted to work. I piddle around all the time working now. I went to colored teachers all together. I can read a little.
"I had a brother-in-law in Arkansas. I heard a lot of talk. I come on a visit and stayed three months. I went back and moved here. I come to this State—over at Palestine—March 11, 1883 on Sunday. I have a good recollection, or I think I have for my age. I've lived a pretty sensible life, worked hard but had good health. If I had another life to live now I would go to the farm. I love farm life.
"I chop wood, garden, go in the woods get my splints for baskets, chairs. I live by myself. I eat out some with I call them kin. They are my sister's children. I get some help, $10 and commodities.
"When I did vote I voted Republican or I thought I did. But now if I did vote, I might change up. Times have changed.
"I don't know much about the young generation. I do talk with them—some. They are coming up in a changed time. I wouldn't talk against the colored race of people. Some of them work—are good. Some don't. I think some will not work. Maybe they would. I come to know mighty little about them—no more than I know about the white girls and boys. I see them on the streets about as much as I ever see colored folks anywhere."
"I know this—I'm 85. I was born in North Carolina.
"Oh, yes'm, I 'member the War.
"I'm three thousand miles from my home.
"Old John Blue (Belew?) was my white folks.
"I did have good white folks. Yes ma'am, I'll say that. Stayed there a long time after we was sot free. They was good to us.
"My mother was the mother of twelve chillun—she was a fast breeder.
"I was the onliest girl and old missis was just wild about me. I had good owners. I don't remember no hard treatment among 'em.
"I 'member she used to have me runnin' from house to house totin' a little note. That's the reason I had such a good time. Heap of times I slept up at the big house with old missis.
"I got a good memory. We was allowed to sing and pray. I know our white folks was good that way. I'll say that for 'em. I won't go back on 'em.
"Our folks stayed right on there a long time.
"My father died three years after ever'thing had done got quiet and peaceful.
"I left my husband back there and come here to Arkansas with my mother.
"The bigges' work I done—I used to be terrible 'bout cookin', washin' and ironin', and field work. Ever'thing a man ever done I've done—cut wood, cut down sprouts, barn brush—I've done ever'thing.
"Oh yes, I went to school a whole lot. Got so I could read. Used to write too, but all that done left me.
"I'm gwine tell you the truth, lady. I don't know whether the folks is better off free or not. They is better off in one way—they is free—but this young race is the devil."
"I was a little boy pickin' up chips and helpin' feed the hog in slavery times for old master. Name was George Houston. That was in Alabama.
"I reckon I do remember George Houston. As far as I know he was good to us. I remember when he died.
"Our people stayed right there after freedom. My mother was a Houston till she married.
"I reckon I do remember the paddyrollers. I remember the hounds runnin' too. I never thought I would remember that no more.
"They didn't get after me 'cause I was too little. It didn't last long enough for 'em to get after me.
"I'm sick and not able to help myself. I got run over by a wagon.
"I'm livin' here with my daughter. Her husband is a preacher and they got eight children, so you can imagine how much they can do for me.
"One word of the white folks is worth a thousand of ours."
"I was born in 1870 down in Ouachita County about fourteen miles south of Camden going on toward El Dorado. They didn't have no railroad then. I was a young man when they put the branch through. You see, I was born five years after slavery, but I remember my mother, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother. They taken me and talked to me freely and I know everything they knew.
Great-Grandmother on Mother's Side
"My great-grandmother belonged to the Goodmans. Her master was named Bob Goodman. She lived to get one hundred thirteen years old. From the children of the old master, I got the information concerning her age. I looked it up after emancipation. One of old master's sons was named Frank Goodman, and another was named Norphleet Goodman, and there was another whose name I don't recall.
"My grandmother, great-grandmother, was named Frankie Goodman. I wasn't here in slavery time, but I knew her after emancipation.
Grandmother on Mother's Side
"My grandmother was named Hannah Goodman. These were different Goodmans but they were kin to these others. There was a large family of them. I don't know the correct age of my grandmother but she was up in the eighties when she died.
Mother
"My mother was born a Goodman, but she married Reeves, my father. The record of their marriage I ain't got. Back there, they didn't keep up like you and I do, and we don't keep up like these younger folks do. Near as I could get it, she lived to be about seventy-one years old.
Father
"My father was named Adam Reeves. His master was named Rick Reeves. My father was born in Union County about ten miles from El Dorado. You might say north of El Dorado because he lived south of Camden. He lived there all his life. I have known him to move out of Ouachita County into Union, and from Union back to Ouachita.
Grandfather on Mother's Side
"My grandfather on my mother's aide was Henry Goodman. His mistress was a woman by the name of Lucy Goodman. She was the same woman who owned my mother. There was a big family of them Goodmans.
"His age—he lived to be about eighty years old. He died in Hot Spring County.
Grandmother on Father's Side
"My grandmother on my father's side was named Hetty. Her master was named Sam Abbott. She lived right close to seventy-four or seventy-five years. She been gone quite a while now. She used to live with papa.
Other Ancestors
"I don't know so much about another of my ancestors.
Wife
"My wife didn't have many people. She knows her mother, her mother's mistress, and all. Her ma was named Martha Henson. That was her married name. Her mistress' last name was Stribling. Martha Henson was a well-treated slave. The Striblings lived in Rockport, Arkansas, but their native home was Georgia. I don't know where the Striblings are now. The old man died before the Civil War broke out. I guess they are all dead and in torment. My wife's grandmother and grandfather on her mother's side were gone so far back that neither she nor I know anything about them.
Whippings
"My great-grandmother on my mother's side was in Union County when I knew anything of her—close to El Dorado. I was about twenty-two years old when she died. She was tall and spare built, dark ginger cake color. Coarse straight black hair that had begun to mingle with gray. She never did get real gray, and her hair was never white. Even when she died, at a hundred and thirteen years, her hair was mostly black mingled with gray.
"The overseer knocked her in the head in slavery times, and they had to put a silver half-dollar in her head to hold her brains in. I have seen the place myself. When I was a little fellow she used to let me feel the place and she would say, 'That's where the overseer knocked granny in the head, son. I got a half-dollar in there.' I would put her hair aside—my but she had beautiful hair!--and look at the place.
"My wife could tell you what my mother told her. She has seen the marks on my mother's back and has asked, 'Mama, what's all these marks on your back?' And mama would say, 'That's where I was whipped in slavery times, daughter.' She never did like to tell the details. But the scars were awful.
"My grandmother was roughly treated and she had pretty near lost her eyesight from the ill treatment. She got so before she died that she could hardly see to go nowhere. I don't know what it was they done to her that made her eyesight bad, but she insisted that it was due to bad treatment in slavery time.
Patrollers
"I have heard that the pateroles used to run the slaves if they didn't have a pass from their mistress and master. The pateroles would run them and catch them and whip them.
How Freedom Came
"All my mother knew was that it got out that the Negroes were free. The day before the old woman told them that they were free, my grandfather, Henry Goodman who was a teamster, old mis' called him and told him to tell all the darkies to come up to the house the next day.
"Next morning, she said, 'Henry, you forgot what I told you. I want you to call all the darkies up here this morning.' Henry had a voice like a fog-horn. He started hollering. I wish I could holler the way he did, but I got to consider the neighbors. He hollered. 'Tention, 'tention, hey; Miss Lucy says she wants you all up to the big house this morning. She's got somepin to tell you.'
"They all come up to the yard before the house. When they got there, she says to him—not to them; she wouldn't talk to them that morning; maybe she was too full—'Henry, you all just as free now as I am. You can stay here with Miss Lucy or you can go to work with whomsoever you will. You don't belong to Miss Lucy no more.'
"She had been sick for quite a bit, and she was just able to come to the door and deliver that message. Three weeks after that time, they brought her out of the house feet foremost and took her to the cemetery. The news killed her dead. That's been seventy years ago, and they just now picking up on it!
Slave Time Amusements
"The old people say they used to have breakdowns in slave time—breakdown dances with fiddle and banjo music. Far after slavery, they had them. The only other amusement worth speaking about was the churches. Far as the churches was concerned, they had to steal out and go to them. Old man Balm Whitlow can tell you all about the way they held church. They would slip off in the woods and carry a gang of darkies down, and the next morning old master would whip them for it. Next Sunday they would do the same thing again and get another whipping. And it went on like that every week. When old man Whitlow came out from slavery, he continued to preach. But the darkies didn't have to steal out then. He's dead now, him and the old lady both.
Houses
"The slaves lived in old log houses. Some of them would be hewed and put up well. I have seen lots of them. Sometimes they would dob the cracks with mud and would have box planks floors, one by eight or one by ten, rough lumber, not dressed. Set 'em as close together as they could but then there would be cracks in them. I can carry you to some old log houses down in Union County now if they haven't been torn down recently.
"One old log house there used to be old lady Lucy Goodman's home. It has four rooms. It has a hall running through it. It was built in slave times. There is a spring about two hundred yards from it. That is about ten or twelve feet deep. There is a big cypress tree trunk hollowed out and sunk down in it to make a curbing. That cypress is about two or three feet across. The old man, Henry Goodman, sunk that cypress down in there in slavery time. He drove an ox team all the time. That is all the work he done. She would tell all the overseers, 'Now, don't you fool with Henry because we ain't never whipped him ourselves.'
"I don't know who it is that is living now. It's been fifty years ago since I was there.
Right After Freedom
"Right after freedom, when the surrender came, my mother was just a girl 'bout fifteen or sixteen. She married after freedom. Her and her husband farmed for a living—you know, sharecropped.
Ku Klux Klan
"The Ku Klux and the pateroles were the same thing, only the Klan was more up to date. It's all set up with a hellish principle. It's old Pharaoh exactly.
"The Ku Klux Klan didn't have no particular effect on the Negro except to scare him.
"When the emancipation came about, the people of the South went to work to see what they could do about it. The whole South was under martial law. Some of the people formed the Ku Klux Klan to keep the Negro down. I never remember that they bothered any of our family or the people in our house. But they scared some and whipped more, and killed some.
Political Trouble about 1888
"The darkies and the white folks in Union County had an insurrection over the polls about the year 1888. In them days, when you wanted to put a Republican man in, you didn't have to do much campaigning. They just went to the polls and put him in. Everybody that could vote was Republican. In the fall of 1888 they had a great trouble down there, and some of them got killed. They went around and commanded the Negroes not to go to the polls the next day. Some of the Negroes would tell them, 'Well, I am going to the polls tomorrow if I have to crawl.' And then some of them would say, 'I'd like to know how you goin' to vote.' The nigger would ask right back, 'How you goin' to vote?' The white man would say, 'I'm goin' to vote as I damn please.' Then the nigger would say, 'I'm going to do the same thing.' That started the trouble.
"On Sunday before the election on Monday, they went around through that county in gangs. They shot some few of the Negroes. As the Negroes didn't have no weapons to protect theirselves, they didn't have no chance. In that way, quite a few of the Negroes disbanded their homes and went into different counties and different portions of the state and different states. Henry Goodman, my grandfather, came into Hot Spring County in this way.
Opinions
"Roosevelt has got himself in a predicament. They are drunk and don't know what to do. The whole world is stirred up over why one-fourth of the world should rule the other three-fourths. One-fourth of the world is white. The Bible says a house divided can't stand. The people don't know what to do. Look how they fight the Wage Hour Bill. Look at the excitement they raised when it was first suggested that the Union and Confederate veterans meet together.
"We were savages when we came over here. Everything we got and everything we know, good and bad, we got from the white folks. Don't know how they can get impatient with us when everything we do they learnt us.
"Roosevelt has done more than any Democrat that has ever been in the Chair. He had to do something to keep down a rebellion. Then we like to had one as it is through the labor question.
"The poor white man always has been in a tight [HW: place]. He was almost as much oppressed as the Negro.
"The young people of today ain't got no sense. They don't give no thought to nothing. They don't know how to think at all. All the schools and education they give don't make them think. If I had as much education as they have, I would be able to accomplish something. The teachers don't press down on them and make them know what they go over. There is a whole lot of things happening now.
Old People in Pulaski County
"Out in Pulaski County, going west out the Nineteenth Street Pike till you strike the Saline County line, there are quite a few old colored people. I guess you would find no leas than twenty-five or thirty out that way. There is one old man named Junius Peterson out that way who used to run a mill. If you find him, he is very old and has a good memory. He is a mulatto. You could get out to him by going down till you come to a place that is called the Henderson Lane. You turn to the right and go off the pike less than a mile and you come to a big one-story house settin' on a hill where Peterson lives. Right on beyond that about three-fourths of a mile on the right side of the road, you come to George Gregory's. The mother of my church is about eighty-one years old but she is over in Saline County. Her name is Jane Joyner.
"There are quite a few old persons around Woodson that can give you information. But that is in Saline County, I think. Sweet Home, Wrightsville, Toltec—all of them have a few old colored persons on the farm that was here in slavery times."
Interviewer's Comment
Reeves' story was taken because of his clear memories of his parents and grandparents. He described to me an old log house still standing in Union County.
I got all agog with excitement. I asked him for the exact location. He gave it. Then I suggested that maybe he would go down with me sometime to visit it. He agreed. Then at the last moment caution began to assert itself, and I said, "When was the last time you saw the cabin?"
He reflected a moment; then he said, "Waal, I guess it was a little more 'an fifty years ago."
I lost my enthusiasm.
Reeves told the Phill-la-me-york story which was told by Austin Pen Parnell. You will find it in his story. The only difference between his story and Parnell's is that Reeves had the conclusion. He claimed that the old master got in a fight with one of the slaves present and yelled out his identity when he was getting badly beaten. The story sounds like it came from the Arkansas folklore collection or from someone who contributed it to that collection.
An aftermath of Reeves' story is finding out that most people consider Henry Banner, whose story has been previously given and whose age was given as eighty-nine, is considered by many persons to be ninety-four.
Neely, one of the adult school-teachers, says that he has gone over Banner's life carefully with him, and that he must have been twenty-one or twenty-two at the close of the War because during slavery, he had experience at logging, or rather at logrolling, a work so difficult that only full-grown men were used at it. Since Banner is slightly built, there is scarcely a possibility that he did such work before the normal time.
[HW: Cf. 30715 for interview with Parnell.]
"Yes ma'am, I was bred and born in 'sixty-three in Phillips County, Arkansas, close to Helena, on old Judge Jones' plantation. Judge Jones, he was a lawyer. Remember him? I ought to, he whiped me enough. His wife's name was Caroline Jones. She used to smack my jaws and pull my ears but she was a pretty good woman. The old judge was a raw one though. You had to step around or he'd step around for you.
"I stayed right there till I was grown. My mother was named Katie Rhone and my father was named Daniel Rhone. My mother was born in Richmond, Virginia and my father in Petersburg, Virginia.
"Judge Jones brought em here to Arkansas. My father was a bodyguard for old Judge Jones' son Tom in the War. My father stuck with him till peace declared—had to do it.
"They was thirteen of us chillun and they is all gone but me, and I'll soon be gone.
"I know when the Yankees come I run from em. When peace declared, the Yankees come all through our house and took everything they could get hold of to eat.
"The only reason the Yankees whipped the South was they starved em.
"I know one time when peace declared I caught afire and I run and jumped in a tub of water and I had sense enough not to tell my mother. A girl I was raised up with went and told her though.
"After freedom I worked for old Judge Jones on the half system. He give me everthing that was due me. When he was eighty years old, he called all his old tenants up and give em a mule and twenty-five dollars. He was pretty good to em after all.
"I went to free school in the summertime after the crops was laid by, I can read and write pretty good.
"I came here to Jefferson County in 'eighty-six and I put in thirty-six years at the Cotton Belt Shops. When that strike come on they told us colored folks to quit and I never went back. I worked for em when she was a narrow gauge.
"I worked in the North three years. I nightwatched all over St. Louis and Madison, Illinois. I liked it fine up there—white folks is more familiar up there and seems like you can get favors. If I don't get somethin' here, I'm goin' back up there.
"When I got big enough I voted the Republican ticket and after they got this primary. I think the colored people ought to vote now cause they make em pay taxes.
"I'll tell you right now, the younger generation is goin' to the dogs. We'll never make a nation of em as long as they go out to these places at night. They ought to be a law passed. When nine o'clock comes they ought to be home in bed, but they is just gettin' started then.
"I belong to the Catholic Church. I think it's a pretty good church. We have a white priest and I'll tell you one thing thing—you can't get a divorce and marry again and stay in the Catholic Church."
"I was born in South Carolina and I was my mother's baby chile.
"Jacob Foster was our old master and he sold my mother over in east Tennessee. Now of cose she wasn't put upon the block and sold. She was the house woman and spin and wove. After they sold her my father run off. Oh sure, they caught him and I know old mistress said, 'Now, Jacob, if you want to go where Lydia is, you can go.' So they sold him near her.
"I stayed with the Fosters till peace was declared and ever'thing was declared free. Then my father come after me.
"I can just sketch things. I try to forget it. My mother and father was pretty agreeable when they was set free.
"In Tennessee we stayed at the foot of Lookout Mountain and I can remember seein' the cannon balls.
"Here's the way I want to tell you. Some of the white people are as good to the colored people as they could be and some of em are mean. My own folks do so bad I'm ashamed of em.
"So many of the colored of the South have emigrated to the North. I have lived there and I don't know why I'm here now.
"Some of my color don't like that about the Jim Crow Law, but I say if they furnish us a nice comfortable coach I would rather be with my own people. And I don't care to go to the white folks' church.
"My mother used to tell me how they used to hide behind trees so the boss man couldn't see em when they was prayin' and at night put out the light and turn the pot down.
"I went to school in Tennessee. I never will forget it. I had a white teacher. He was in the War and he had a leg shot off. I went through the sixth grade and was ready for the seventh Ray's Arithmetic. I walked four miles there and four miles back—eight miles a day.
"I can remember too when my mother and father was baptized. I know mama come out of the water a shoutin'. Oh, that was good times then. I felt better when I was under my mother cause when I married my life was over. I raised about ten children.
"I remember when the Ku Klux come to my sister's house lookin' for her husband. I know I was in the bed and I raised up. I was scared you know.
"When I hear some colored folks say they wish the old slavery times was back, I just knows they is lazy. They don't want any responsibility."