Annie Johnson
From:
Arkansas
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Annie Johnson
804 Izard Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 78
"I was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, and I was four years old
when the Civil War closed. My parents died when I was a baby and a
white lady named Mrs. Mary Peters took me and raised me. They moved
from there to Champaign, Illinois when I was about six years old. My
mother died when I was born. Them white people only had two slaves, my
mother and my father, and my father had run off with the Yankees. Mrs.
Peters was their mistress. She died when I was eight years old and
then I stayed with her sister. That was when I was up in Champaign.
"The sister's name was Mrs. Mary Smith. She just taught school here
and there and around in different places, and I went around with her
to take care of her children. That kept up until I was twenty years
old. All of her traveling was in Illinois.
"I didn't get much schooling. I went to school a while and taken sore
eyes. The doctor said if I continued to go to school, I would strain
my eyes. After he told me that I quit. I learned enough to read the
Bible and the newspaper and a little something like that, but I can't
do much. My eyes is very weak yet.
"When I was twenty years old I married Henry Johnson, who was from
Virginia. I met him in Champaign. We stayed in Champaign about two
years. Then we came on down to St. Louis. He was just traveling 'round
looking for work and staying wherever there was a job. Didn't have no
home nor nothing. He was a candy maker by trade, but he did anything
he could get to do. He's been dead for forty years now. He came down
here, then went back to Champaign and died in Springfield, Illinois
while I was here.
"I don't get no pension, don't get nothing. I get along by taking in a
little washing now and then.
"My mother's name was Eliza Johnson and my father's name was Joe
Johnson. I don't know a thing about none of my grandparents. And I
don't know what my mother's name was before she married.
"A gentleman what worked on the place where I lived said that if you
didn't have a pass during slave times, that if the pateroles caught
you, they would whip you and make you run back home. He said he had to
run through the woods every which way once to keep them from catching
him.
"I have heard the old folks talk about being put on the block. The
colored woman I lived with in Champaign told me that they put her on
the block and sold her down into Ripley, Mississippi.
"She said that the way freedom came was this. The boss man told her
she was free. Some of the slaves lived with him and some of them
picked up and went on off somewhere.
"The Ku Klux never bothered me. I have heard some of the colored
people say how they used to come 'round and bother the church services
looking for this one and that one.
"I don't know what to say about these young folks. I declare, they
have just gone wild. They are almost getting like brutes. A woman come
by here the other day without more 'n a spoonful of things on and
stopped and struck a match and lit her cigarette. You can't talk to
them neither. I don't know what we ought to do about it. They let
these white men run around with them. I see 'em doing anything. I
think times are bad and getting worse. Just as that shooting they had
over in North Little Rock." (Shooting and robbing of Rev. Sherman, an
A. M. E. minister, by Negro robbers.)
Next:
Ben Johnson
Previous:
Allen Johnson
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