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2500 Center Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age About 82
"I was born in Barbour County, Alabama. When I was born, the white folks kept the children's age, not that of their
parents. When the Yankees came through our white folks' plantation, the white folks was hiding away things.
"My father was named Ben See. See was my maiden name. Thomas comes from my marriage.
"It was about twelve o'clock when the Yankees came through, because we had just gone to bring the bowls. They
used to serve us out of these gourds and wooden spoons. Me and another little girl had gone to get some bowls and
spoons and when we got back the Yankees were swarming over the place. They said, 'You are free. Go where you
please.'
"My mother had a little baby. The old women would tend to this baby and we would sit and rock the cradle till
mother would come. I know I wasn't very old, because I didn't do anything but sit and rock the baby. I had just
gotten big enough to carry the bowls.
"When the Yankees came through they stole Ben See's horse and brought him out here in Arkansas. In those days,
they used to brand horses.
Some woman out here in Arkansas recognized the horse by his brand and wrote to him about it. He came out and
got the horse. We had gone by that time.
"Ben See used to take the little darkies to the cemetery and show them where their master and missis was laying. He
never would sell none of his father's slaves.
"He would buy other slaves and sell them though. He used to buy little kids that couldn't walk. Maybe some big
white man would come that would want to buy a nigger. He used to have servants in the yard and he would have the
slaves he'd bought saved up. One of the yard servants would catch a little nigger with his head all knotty and filled
with twigs. He would swinge the hair and the little nigger would yell, but he wouldn't be hurt.
"He had a block built up high just like a meat block out in the yard. He would have the yard man bring the little
niggers out and put them on this block. I don't know nothing about their parents, who they were nor where they
were. All I know he would have this child there what he'd done bought.
"If there would be about five or six come in, here's this nigger sitting up here. Here's a lot of folks waitin' to buy
him. One would say, 'I bid so much.' Another would say, 'I bid so much.' That would go on till the biddin' got as
high as it would go. Then the little nigger would go to the highest bidder if the bid suited master.
"My mother and father didn't know their age. The white folks kept the ages, and that was something they didn't
allow the slaves to handle. I must have been four or five years old when my mother was in the field, because I
wasn't allowed to take the baby out of the cradle but just to sit and rock it.
"When I come to Arkansas, stages was running from Little Rock down toward Pine Bluff. Jesse James robbed the
Pine Bluff train. That about the first train came in. They cut down the trees across the train track. They had a
wooden gun and they went in there and robbed that train with it. They sent him to the pen and he learned a trade
making cigars.
"The Union Station was just like that hillside. It was just one street in the town. I don't know what year nor nothing
about it because when I came here it was just like somebody didn't have any sense.
"The slave quarter was a row of houses. The plantation was high land. The houses were little log houses with one
room. They had fire arches. They would hang pots over the fire. They would have spiders that you call ovens. You
would put coals on top of the spider and you would put them under it and you could smell that stuff cooking! The
door was in the top of the spider and the coals would be on top of the door.
"You couldn't cook nothin' then without somebody knowin' it. Couldn't cook and eat in the back while folk sit in the
front without them knowin' it. They used to steal from the old master and cook it and they would be burning rags or
something to keep the white folks from smelling it.
The riding boss would come round about nine o'clock to see if you had gone to bed or not. If they could steal a
chicken or pig and kill and out it up, this one would take a piece and that one would take a piece and they would
burn the cotton to keep down the scent. The rider would come round in June and July too when they thought the
people would be hunting the watermelons.
"When the soldiers came, the niggers run and hid under the beds and the soldiers came and poked their bayonets
under the bed and shouted, 'Come on out from under there. You're free!'
"The soldiers would tear down the beehives and break up the smoke houses. They wasn't tryin' to git nothin' to eat.
They was just destroying things for devilment. They pulled all the stoppers out of the molasses. They cut the
smoked meat down and let it fall in the molasses.
"Kvery Saturday, they would give my father and his wife half a gallon of molasses, so much side meat. And then
they would give half a bushel of meal I reckon. Whatever they would give they would give 'em right out of the
smoke house. Sweet potatoes they would give. Sugar and coffee they'd make. There wasn't nothing 'bout buying no
sugar then.
"The riding boss would come round before the day broke and wake you up. You had to be in the field before
sun-up---that is the man would. The woman who had a little child had a little more play than the man, because she
had to care for the child before she left. She had to carry the child over to the old lady that took care of the babies.
The cook that cooked up to the big house, she cooked bread and milk and sent it to the larger children for their
dinner. They didn't feed the little children because their mothers had to nurse them. The mother went to the field as
soon as she cared for her child. She would come back and nurse the child around about twice. She would come once
in the morning about ten o'clock and once again at twelve o'clock before she ate her own lunch. She and her
husband ate their dinner in the field. She would come back again about three p. m. Then you wouldn't see her any
more till dark that night. Long as you could see you had to stay in the field. They didn't come home till sundown.
"Then the mother would go and get the children and bring them home. She would cook for supper and feed them.
She'd have to go somewheres and get them. Maybe the children would be asleep before she would get all that done.
Then she would have to wake them up and feed them.
"I remember one time my sister and me were laying near the fire asleep and my sister kicked the pot over and
burned me from my knse to my foot. My old master didn't have no wife, so he had me carried up to the house and
treated by the old woman who kept the house for him. She was a slave. When I got so I could hobble around a little,
he would sometimes let the little niggers come up to the house and I would get these big peanuts and break them up
and throw them out to them so he could have fun seeing them scramble for them.
"After the children had been fed, the mother would cook the next day's breakfast and she would cook the next day's
dinner and put it in the pail so that everything would be ready when the riding boss would come around. Cause
when he came, it meant move.
"The old lady at the big house took care of the gourds and bowls. The parents didn't have nothing to do with them.
She fed the children that was weaned. Mother and daddy didn't have nothing to do with that at noontime because
they was in the field. White folks fed them corn bread and milk. Up to the big house besides that, she didn't have
anything to do except take care of things around the house, keep the white man's things clean and do his cooking.
"She never carried the gourds and bowls herself. She just fixed them. The yard man brought them down to the
quarters and we would take them back. She wash them and scrape them till they was white and thin as paper. They
was always clean.
"She wasn't related to me. I couldn't call her name to save my life.
"We come from Barbour, Alabama with a trainful of people that were immigrating. We just chartered a train and
came, we had so many. Of all the old people that came here in that time, my aunt is the oldest. You will find her out
on Twenty-fourth Street and Pulaski. She has been my aunt ever since I can remember. She must be nearly a
hundred or more.
"When we had the patrollers it was just like the white man would have another white man working for him. It was
to see that the Negroes went to bed on time and didn't steal nothing. But my master and missis never allowed
anybody to whip their slaves.
"I don't know what the slaves was expecting to get, but my parents when they left Ben See's place had nothing but
the few clothes in the house. They didn't give em nothing. They had some clothes all right, enough to cover
themselves. I don't know what kind or how much because I wasn't old enough to know all into such details.
"When we left Ben See's plantation and went down into Alabama, we left there on a wagon. Daddy was driving four
big steers hitched to it. There was just three of us children. The little boy my mother was schooling then, it died. It
died when we went down betwixt New Falla and Montgomery, Alabama. I don't know when we left Alabama nor
how long we stayed there. After he was told he was free, I know he didn't make nare another crop on Ben See's
plantation.
"My father, when he left from where we was freed, he went to hauling logs for a sawmill, and then he farmed. He
done that for years, driving these old oxen. He mostly did this logging and my mother did the farming.
"I can't tell you what kind of time it was right after the Civil War because I was too young to notice. All our lives I
had plenty to eat. When we first came to Arkansas we stopped at old Mary Jones down in Riceville, and then we
went down on the Cates Farm at Biscoe. Then we went from there to Atkins up in Pope County. No, he went up in
the sand hills and bought him a home and then he went up into Atkins. Of course, I was a married woman by that
time.
"I married the second year I came to Arkansas, about sixty-two or sixty-three years ago. I have lived in Little Rock
about thirty-two or thirty-three years. When I first came here, I came right up here on Seventeenth and State streets.
"I never voted. For twenty years the old white lady I stayed with looked after my taxes. None of my friends ever
voted. I ain't got nothing but some children and they ain't never been crazy enough to go to anybody's polls.
"I have two brothers dead and a sister. My mother is dead. I am not sure whether or not my father is dead. The Ku
Klux scared him out of Atkins, and he went up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I ain't never heard of him since. I don't
know whether he is dead or not.
"I have raised five children of my own.
"These Ku Klux, they had not long ago used to go and whip folks that wasn't doing right. That was mongst the
white people and the colored. Comer that used to have this furniture store on Main Street, he used to be the head of
it, they say.
"I used to work for an old white man who told me how they done. They would walk along the street with their
disguises hidden under their arms. Then when they got to the meeting place, they would put their disguises on and
go out and do their devilment. Then when they were through, they would take the disguise off again and go on back
about their business. Old man Wolf, he used to tell me about it.
"I nursed for every prominent doctor in Little Rock, --- Dr. Judd, Dr. Flynch, Dr. Flynn, Dr. Fly, Dr. Morgan Smith,
and a number of others."
Interviewer Mrs. Bernice Bowden"
