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Clark, Rena
Rena Clark, an old "black mammy", who says she is eighty-seven years old, but really looks much older, came to this country with the "Mr. Nick Pegues family", when she was two years old. "Aunt Rena", almost blind now, is very religious; she has always read the Bible, all of her spare time, ever since Miss Rebecca Pegues taught her to read when she was twelve years old, until she lost her eye-sight a few years ago. Even though her poor old eyes are sightless now and she can no longer read the "blessed Book", "it lives on in her heart" and she quotes many passages of scripture from memory. She is a genial, kind old soul "who loves her fellow man". This is a mighty fine religion for Black or White, it seems.
One remarkable thing about Rena is that even though she is nearly ninety years old, she has never lost a tooth and says she has never had the toothache in her life. She smokes a corncob pipe and she thinks this has preserved her teeth.
Rena has always been a wealthy white folks darkie which makes her circumstances seem very pitiful now; at present she is dependent upon her daughter who looks almost as old as she, herself. There are four generations of them living in a little two-room cabin down in Negro Hollow. This morning her daughter, Carrie was washing on the front porch and hanging clothes on a line in the front yard, and her little great grand-child, Lulie, was pulling up weeds in a flower bed by the doorstep. Lulie's mother, Lillie, has a job cooking for some white folks.
Rena says she has acted as midwife ever since she was fifteen years old and has "done brought a passel" of babies into this world. She says she has attended both white and colored for over fifty years. The first thing when a baby is born, Rena says, she would bathe and dress him and then she would tie a mole's right foot around his neck. This was to keep him in good health and to bring him good luck. No conscientious "black mammy" would neglect this "charm". When Rena's babies began teething she always tied six small white buttons around their necks along with the mole's foot. If this was done a child would never feel any pain and would not know he was cutting teeth. If he should have colic, Rena's remedy was a mixture of soot and sugar from the tenth brick in the chimney. Rena says when a baby is six months old he ought to have the "hives", if he failed to break out with them, the best thing to do would be to give him a dose of warm catnip tea.
To keep away such diseases as measles, mumps, whooping cough, etc. Rena says she always tied on a little bag of asafetida, this also around his neck. On being asked if she didn't think this was a good deal to tie around the neck of one baby she said, "No mam, you'd better do dis dan let em die without no 'tention".
Rena calls herself an "herb doctor". She says she can cure most everything that ails the women folks. When asked how about the men, she said, "I don't fool wid doctoring no mens. I don't know nuthin about dere ailments. It always looked lak dey could take care ob dey selves anyhow". "I jist doctors women troubles".
Rena, on being asked how darkies were married before the war said, "Dey jest jumped over de broom stick and some ob dem didn't have dat much ceremony". Rena's white folks, however, believed in doing things right and she was married by a white preacher.
When asked about funeral wakes she said she didn't know anything about wakes, but colored folks always "set up"
with their "daid". They have, she says, "songs, prayers and mournin' all night". According to Rena, all the kin folks and friends come and take part in this "set up". Sometimes during the night they cook and eat. She goes on to tell how, when a colored person dies, the pictures in the room are covered up and the mirrors turned to the wall; also the clocks are always stopped in the room. On being asked why the clocks were stopped, she said, she reckoned it was so Niggers could hear noises around the house, that they didn't want no haints slipping up on them.
Rena strongly disapproves of the young colored people of this day and generation. She says, "They don't have the proper respect for funerals no mo'".
By Ruth W. Price, Supervisor Historical Research Project
Matilda Clifton from SOURCE MATERIAL FOR MISSISSIPPI HISTORY, Itawamba County, from microfilm; Races and Nationalities; Interviews"
