Bearing Witness: Memories of Arkansas Slavery

Lonoke County

Lonoke County Jones, Evelyn Age: 70? 815 Arch Street Little Rock, Arkansas Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor [M:9: pt. 4: 145–47] “I was born in Lonoke County right here in Arkansas. My father’s name—I don’t know it. I don’t know nothin’ ’bout my father. My mother’s name was Mary Davis. “My daddy died when I was five weeks old. I don’t know nothin’ ’bout ’im. Just did manage to git here before he left. I don’t know the date of my birth. I don’t know nothin’ ’bout it and I ain’t goin’ to tell no lie. “I have nineteen children. My youngest living child is twenty-eight years old. My oldest living is fifty-three. I have four dead. I don’t know how old the oldest’s one is. That one’s dead. “I have a cousin named Harry Jordan. He lives ’round here somewheres. You’ll find him. I don’t know where he lives. He says he knows just how old I am, and he says that I’m sixty-eight. My daughter here says I’m seventy. And my son thinks I’m older. Don’t nobody know. My daddy never told me. My mama was near dead when I was born; what could she tell me? So how am I to know? “My mother was born in slavery. She was a slave. I don’t know nothing’ ’bout it. My mother came from Tennessee. That’s what she told me. I was born in a log cabin right here in Arkansas. I was born in a log cabin right in front of the white folks’ big house. It was not far from the white folks’ graveyard . You know they had a graveyard of their own. Old Bill Pemberton, that was the name of the man owned the place I was born on. But he wasn’t my mother’s owner. “I don’t know where my father come from. My mother said she had a good time in slavery. She spoke of lots of things but I don’t remember them. “My granma told me about when she went to church she used to carry her good clothes in a bundle. When she got near there, she would put them on,and hide her old clothes under a rock.When she come out from the meeting , she would have to put on her old clothes again to go home in. She didn’t dare let the white folks see her in good clothes. “I think my mother’s white people were named Jordans. My mother and 235 Lankfordtext:Lankford / Final Pages 7/14/09 10:06 AM Page 235 them all belonged to the young mistress. I think her name was Jordan. Yes, that’s what it was—Jordan. “Grandmammy had so many children. She had nineteen children—just like me. My grandmammy was a great big old red woman. She had red hair too. I never heard her say nothin’ ’bout nobody whippin’ her and my granddaddy . They whipped all them children though. My mama just had six children. “Mama said her master tried to keep her in slavery after freedom. My mama worked at the spinning-wheel. When she heard the folks say they was through with the War, she was at the spinning-wheel. The white folks ought a tol’ them they was free but they didn’t. Old Jordan carried them down in De Valls Bluff. He carried them down there—called hisself gittin’ away from theYankees. But theYankees told mama to quit workin’. They tol’her that she was free. My mama said she was in there at the wheel spinning and the house was full of white men settin’ there lookin’ at her. You don’t see that sort of thing now. “They had a man—I don’t know what his name was. He stalled them steers, stalled ’em twice a day. They used to pick cotton. I dreamed about cotton the other night. “My father farmed after slavery.I never heard them say they were cheated out of nothin’. I don’t know whether they was or not. I’ll tell you the truth. I didn’t pay them no ’tention. Mighty little I can remember.” Waddill, Emiline Age: 106 (deceased) Lonoke County, Arkansas Interviewer: Mrs. Blanche Edwards Interviewee: Mrs. John G. High 20 October 1938 [M:11: pt. 7: 13–13B] Emiline Waddell, a former slave...