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2620 Orange Street, North Little Rock, Arkansas
Age 73
"I was born in 1865 in Alabama in Sumter County on Sam Scale's place near the little town called Brushville (?).
"My father's name was Isom Blackshear. Some people call it Blackshire, but we call it Blackshear. His master was
named Uriah Blackshear. I have heard him say so many times the year he was born. He died (Isom) in 1905 and was
in his eighty-first year then. That would make him born in 1824. His birth was on the fourth day of May. People
back in them days lived longer than we do now. My grandfather, Jordan Martin, lived to be one hundred sixteen
years old. Grandpa died about nine years ago in Sumter County, Alabama. He was my grandfather on my mother's
side.
"My grandfather on my father's side was Luke Blackshear. He was born in Alabama too, and I suppose in Sumter
County too. He died in Sumter County. He died about five years before the Civil War.
"My mother was born in North Carolina. Her name was Sylvia Martin before she married my father. She was a
Blackshear when she died. She died in 1885. The white people went out in North Carolina and bought her, her
mother, Nancy, and her father, Jordan, and brought them to Sumter County, Alabama. My mother's mother was an
Indian; her hair came down to her waist.
"My grandfather on my father's side, Luke Blackshear, was a 'stock' Negro.
"Isom Blackshear, his son, was a great talker. He said Luke was six feet four inches tall and near two hundred fifty
pounds in weight. He was what they called a double-jointed man. He was a mechanic,--built houses, made keys, and
did all other blacksmith work and shoemaking. He did anything in iron, wood or leather. Really he was an architect
as well. He could take raw cowhide and make leather out of it and then make shoes out of the leather.
"Luke was the father of fifty-six children and was known as the GLANT BREEDER. He was bought and given to
his young mistress in the same way you would give a mile or colt to a child.
"Although he was a stock Negro, he was whipped and drove just like the other Negroes. All of the other Negroes
were driven on the farm. He had to labor but he didn't have to work with the other slaves on the farm unless there
was no mechanical work to do. He was given better work because he was a skilled mechanic. He taught Isom
blacksmithing, brickmaking and bricklaying, shoemaking, carpentry, and other things. The ordinary blacksmith has
to order plow points and put them on, but Luke made the points themselves, and he taught Isom to do it. And he
taught him to make mats, chairs, and other weaving work. He died sometime before the War.
"Isom Blackshear, Luke's son and my father, farmed until he was eighteen years old, and was a general mechanic as
mentioned when I was telling about my grandfather Luke, for sixty odd years.
Up to within seven months of his death, he was making chairs and baskets and other things. He never was in bed in
his life until his last sickness. That was his first and his last. Never did he have a doctor's bill to pay or for his master
to pay,--until he died. He worked on the batteries at Vicksburg during the War.
"Isom ran away three times. He was a field hand up to eighteen years. The overseer wanted to whip him. Isom
would help his wife in the field because she couldn't keep up with the others and he would help her to keep the
overseer from whipping her. He'd take her beside him and row his row and hers too. He was the fastest worker on
the place. The overseer told him to not do that. But Isom just kept on doing it anyway. Then the overseer asked
Isom for his shirt. When they whipped you them days they didn't whip you on your clothes because they didn't want
to wear them out. Isom said he was not going to take off his shirt because his mistress gave it to him and he wasn't
going to give it to anybody else. Then the overseer stepped 'round in front of him to stop him, because Isom had just
kept on hoeing. Isom just caught the overseer's feet in his hoe and dumped him down on the ground and went on
hoeing his own row and his wife's. He called his hoe 'One Eyed Aggie.'
"The overseer said, 'You think you done something smart' and he went for his master. The overseer was named
Mack Hainey. His master came out the next morning and caught Isom. Isom has often told us about it.
" 'First thing I knowed, he had his feet on my hoe and he said, "Isom, they tell me you can't be whipped." "I'd be
willing to be whipped if I'd done anything." "Huh!" 'said my master,' "Right or wrong, if my overseer asked you for
your shirt give it to him." ' "He held a pistol on him. They made him pull off his shirt and tied him up to a gin post.
The overseer hit him five times and kept him there till noon trying to get him to say that he would give his shirt to
him the next time. Finally Isom promised and the overseer untied him. When the overseer untied him, Isom took his
shirt in one hand and the overseer's whip in the other and whipped him almost all the way to the big house. Then he
ran away and stayed in the woods for three or four days until his old master sent word for him to come on back and
he wouldn't do nothing to him.
"When he went back, his master took him off the farm because he and my father was nursed together and he didn't
want Isom killed. So from that time on, my father never worked as a field hand any more. And they put Isom's wife
as a cook. She couldn't chop cotton fast enough and they couldn't handle Isom as long as she was in the field; so
they put her to washing, and ironing, and cooking, and milking.
"The second time father ran away was once when they missed some groceries out of the storeroom. Master asked
him if he took them because he made the keys to the place and not a person on the place but him could know
anything about getting in there. He didn't own it, so they tied him up and whipped him two days. When night come
they took him and tied him in his house and told his wife that if he got loose they would put the portion on her. He
didn't try to get loose because he knowed if he did they would whip her, so he stayed. At noon time when they went
to get the dinner they poured three buckets of water in his face and almost drowned him. Then after dinner they
came back and whipped him again. Finally he said, 'I didn't do it but nothing will suit you but for me to say I did, so
I will say I did it. So he owned up to it.
"A few days later Mr. Horn who owned the adjoining plantation came over and asked him if he had missed
anything,--any rations he said. Old master told him 'Yes' and went on to explain what had been taken and what he
had done about it. Then Mr. Horn took Mr. Blackshear over to his house and showed him the rations and they were
the one he had whipped my old father about. Then Blackshear came back and told my father that he was sorry, that
he never had known him to steal anything. He turned him loose and apologized to him but he made him work with
the bloody shirt that they whipped him in sticking to his back.
"The third time he ran off he was in the army working on the batteries at Vicksburg. He worked there till he got to
thinking about his wife and children, and then he ran off. He got tired and hungry and he went to Mopilis and give
himself up. The jailer written to his master, that is to his mistress, about it, and she got her father to go and see about
him and bring him home. They'd had a big storm. The houses were in bad shape. The fences was blown down. The
plows was broken or dull and needed fixin'. And they were so glad to see Isom that they didn't whip him nor nothin'
for runnin' away.
"Isom's mother was named Winnie Blackshear. She was Luke's wife. She was a light brownskin woman and
weighed about one hundred fifty pounds. I have seen her, but Luke was dead before I was born. Grandmother
Winnie has been dead about twenty years now. She labored in the field.
"My mother's mother was named Nancy Martin and her father was named Jordan Martin. We kept a Jordan in the
family all the way down. Both of them farmed. They were slaves.
"There were fourteen children of us,--eleven sisters and three brothers. The brothers were Jordan, Prince, and John.
The sisters were Margaret, Eliza, Nancy, Tempy, Bell, Abbie, Caroline, Frances, Dosia, Mattie, Lucy, Louisa, Ida.
"They say Negroes won't commit suicide, but Isom told us of a girl that committed suicide. There was a girl named
In who used to run off and go to the dances. The patrollers would try to catch her but they couldn't because she was
too fast on her feet. One day they got after her in the daytime. She had always outrun them at night. She ran to the
cabin and got her quarter which she had hid. She put the quarter in her mouth. The white folks didn't allow the
slaves to handle no money. The quarter got stuck in her throat, and she went on down to the slough and drowned
herself rather than let them beat her, and mark her up. Them patrollers sure would get you and beat you up. If they
couldn't catch you when you were running away from them, they would come on your master's place and get you
and beat you. The master would allow them to do it. They didn't let the patrollers come on the Blackshear place, but
this gal was so hard-headed 'bout goin' out that they made a 'ception to her. And they intended to make her an
example to the rest of the slaves. But they didn't get Lucy.
"Once on the Blackshear place, they took all the fine looking boys and girls that was thirteen years old or older and
put them in a big barn after they had stripped them naked. They used to strip them maked and put them in a big barn
every Sunday and leave them there until Monday morning. Out of that came sixty babies.
"They was too many babies to leave in the quarters for some one to take care of during the day. When the young
mothers went to work, Blackshear had them take their babies with them to the field, and it was two or three miles
from the house to the field. He didn't want them to lose time walking backward and forward nursing. They built a
long old trough like a great long old cradle and put all these babies in it every morning when the mother come out to
the field. It was set at the end of the rows under a big old cottonwood tree.
"When they were at the other end of the row, all at once a cloud no bigger than a small spot came up, and it grew
fast, and it thundered and lightened as if the world were coming to an end, and the rain just came down in great
sheets. And when it got so they could go to the other end of the field, that trough was filled with water and every
baby in it was floating 'round in the water drownded. They never got nary a lick of labor and nary a red penny for
any one of them babies.
"Mother had been a cook and she just kept on cooking, for the same people. My father he went to farming.
"My father said that the patrollers would run you and ketch you and whip you if you didn't have a pass, when you
was away from the pass. But they didn't bother you if you had a pass. The patrollers were mean white people who
called themselves making the niggers stay home. I think they were hired. They called their selves making the
niggers stay home. They went all through the community looking for people, and whipping them when they'd leave
home without a pass. They said you wasn't submissive when you left home without a pass. They hounded Lucy to
death. She wouldn't let 'em get her, and she wouldn't let 'em get her quarter.
"I have seen the Ku Klux. I have washed their regalia and ironed it for them. They wouldn't let just anybody wash
and iron it because they couldn't do it right. My son's wife had a job washing and ironing for them and I used to go
down and help her. I never did take a job of any kind myself because my husband didn't let me. The regalia was
white. They were made near like these singing robes the church choirs have. But they were long--come way down
to the shoe tops. That was along in the nineties,--about 1690. It was when they revived the Ku Klux the last time
before the World War. In the old days the patrollers used to whip them for being out without a pass but the Ku Klux
used to whip them for disorderly living.
"Way back yonder when I was in Alabama, too, I can remember the Ku Klux riding. I was a little child then. The
Republicans and Democrats were at war with each other then and they was killing everybody. My brother was one
of them they run. He could come out in the daytime, but in the night he would have to hide. They never got him. He
dodged them. That was 'round in 1874. In 1875, him and my uncle left Alabama and went to Louisiana. They called
him a stump speaker. They wanted to kill him. They killed Tom Ivory. He was the leader of the Republicans--he
was a colored man. His father was white but his mother was a Negro. His father educated him in slavery time. He
had been up North and was coming back. They knew he was coming back, so they went up the creek and waited for
him--his train. They flagged it down, and some one on the train commenced hollering, 'Look yonder.' Ivory stepped
out on the platform to see what they were hollering about, and all them guns started popping and Ivory fell over the
end of the platform and down on the ground.
He was already leaning over the gate when they fired. Then they come up and cut his tongue out before he died.
They said if they got him that would stop all the rest of the niggers. You see, he was a leader.
"Niggers was voting the Republican ticket 'long about that time. They just went in gangs riding every night--the Ku
Klux did. Ku Kluxing and killing them they got hold of.
"The police arrested all the men that had anything to do with Tom Ivory's killing. The leader of the killers was a
white man they called Captain Hess. I never knowed how the trial came out because we left there while they was
still in jail.
"I heard my mother say that when the Refugees came through Sumter County, Alabama, she wasn't free but was 'sot'
free later. The refugees came through along in February. Then the papers was struck and it went out that the niggers
all was free. Mother's master and my oldest brother who had stayed in the War with his master four years came
home. The refugees was in there when he got home. They went on through. They didn't tarry long there. Then the
papers came out and the next day, master called all the hands up to the big house and told them they was free.
Mother was set free in the latter part of February and I was born June 5, 1865, so I was born free.
"We left Alabama in the same year Tom Ivory got killed. More than fifty colored people left on the train and come
off when we did. People was leaving Alabama something terrible. I never did know what happened to Tom's killers.
I heard afterwards that Alabama got broke they had to pay for so many man they killed."
Page 379
Interviewer Mrs. Bernice Bowden"
