Bearing Witness: Memories of Arkansas Slavery

Chicot County

she could ask just one thing of him, and that was that she and my uncle go back to Mother Hulsie just for the day, and help put everything away and do the washing. The captain said they could go, but they must be back by five o’clock and not one nigger child could go along, so they went back for the day and mammy did all the washing, every rag that she could find, and my uncle chopped and stacked outside the house, all the wood that he could chop that day, and then they came back to camp. My mammy said she’d never forget Mother Hulsie wringing her hands and crying, ‘Oh Lawd, what will I do,’ as they went down the lane.” Chicot County Jones, Nannie Age: 81 1601 Saracen Street Pine Bluff, Arkansas Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden [M:9: pt. 4: 164–65] “Good morning. Come in. I sure is proud to see you. Yes ma’am, I sure is. “I was born in Chicot County. I heerd Dr. Gaines say I was four years old in slavery times. I know I ain’t no baby. I feels my age, too—in my limbs. “I heerd ’em talk about a war but I wasn’t big enough to know about it. My father went to war on one side but he didn’t stay very long. I don’t know which side he was on. Them folks all dead now—I just can remember ’em. “Dr. Gaines had a pretty big crew on the place. I’m gwine tell you what I know. I can’t tell you nothin’ else. “Now I want to tell it like mama said. She said she was sold from Kentucky. She died when I was small. “I remember when they said the people was free. I know they jumped up and down and carried on. “Dr. Gaines was so nice to his people. I stayed in the house most of the time. I was the little pet around the house. They said I was so cute. “Dr.Gaines give me my age but I lost it movin’.But I know I ain’t no baby. I never had but two children and they both livin’—two girls. “Honey, I worked in the field and anywhere. I worked like a man. I think that’s what got me bowed down now. I keeps with a misery right across my back. Sometimes I can hardly get along. 57 Lankfordtext:Lankford / Final Pages 7/14/09 10:06 AM Page 57 “Honey, I just don’t know ’bout this younger generation. I just don’t have no thoughts for ’em, they so wild. I never was a rattlin’ kind of a girl. I always was civilized. Old people in them days didn’t ’low their children to do things. I know when mama called us, we’d better go. They is a heap wusser now. So many of ’em gettin’ into trouble.” Clark County Newton, Pete Age: 83 Clarksville, Arkansas Interviewer: Sallie C. Miller [M:10: pt. 5: 216–18] “My white folks was as good to me as they could be. I ain’t got no kick to make about my white people.The boys was all brave.I was raised on the farm. I staid with my boss till I was nearly grown.When the war got so hot my boss was afraid the ‘Feds’ would get us. He sent my mammy to Texas and sent me in the army with Col. Bashom to take care of his horses. I was about eleven or twelve years old. Col. Bashom was always good to me. He always found a place for me to sleep and eat. Sometimes after the colonel left the folks would run me off and not let me stay but I never told the colonel. I went to Boston, Texas, with the colonel and his men and when he went on the big raid into Missouri he left me in Sevier County, Arkansas, with his horses ‘Little Baldy’ and ‘Orphan Boy.’ They was race horses. The colonel always had race horses. He was killed at Pilot Knob, Missouri. After the colonel was killed his son George (I shore did think a lot of George) come after me and the horses and brought us home. “While I was in Arkadelphia with Col. Bashom’s horses, I went down to the spring to water the horses. The artillery was...