Anthony Taylor
From:
Arkansas
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Anthony Taylor
2424 W. Ninth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 68, or 78?
"I was born in Clark County adjoining Hot Spring County, between Malvern
and Arkadelphia. Clark County was named after old man General Clark. He
was worth four or five thousand acres of land.
"My father's name was Anthony McClellan. Why they called me Anthony
Taylor was my stepfather was named Taylor. My mother's name was Lettie
Sunnaville. My mother has been dead thirty or forty years and my father
died six months before I was born. He died a natural death. Sickness. He
was exposed and died of pneumonia.
"Fayette Sunnaville was my grandfather on my mother's side. That was
my mother's father. Rachel Sunnaville was my mother's mother's name. I
don't know the names of my father's people. They was sole[HW:?]
in slavery. But it is been so far back; I don't remember nothing, and I
don't know whether they would or not if they was living.
"We stayed on the old plantation for seven or eight years before we had
sense enough or knowed enough to get away from there and git something
for ourselves. That is how I come to raise such big potatoes. I been
raising them fifty years. These are hill potatoes. You have to know how
to raise potatoes to grow 'em this big. (He showed me some potatoes,
sweet, weighing about seven pounds--ed.)
"I have heard my mother and my grandfather tell lots of stories about
slavery. I can't remember them.
"Old man Bullocks had about eight or ten families that I knew about.
Those were the families that lived right near us in the quarters. I
didn't say eight or ten hands--I said eight or ten families. Them was
the ones that was right near us. We was awful small after freedom but
them what was with him stayed with him quite a while--stayed with the
old master. He would pay them so much after freedom come.
"Lawd. I could tell you things about slavery. But I'm forgitful and I
can't do it all at once. He had the whole county from Arkadelphia clean
down to Princeton and Tulip--our old mars did. Lonoke was between
Princeton and Tulip. Princeton was the county-seat. He must have had a
large number of slaves. Those ten families I knew was just those close
'round us. Most of the farm was fur pine country land. There
would be thirty or forty acres over here of cultivation and then thirty
or forty acres over there of woods and so on. He had more land than
anybody else but it wasn't all under cultivation.
"He's been dead now twenty or thirty years. I don't know that he was
mean to his slaves. If he had been, they wouldn't have gone on after
freedom. They would have moved out. You see, they didn't care for
nothing but a little something to eat and a fine dress and they would
have gone on to somebody else and got that.
"Wasn't no law then. He was the law. I worked all day long for ten cents
a day. They would allowance you so many pounds of meat, so much meal, so
much molasses. I have worked all day for ten cents and then gone out at
night to get a few potatoes. I have pulled potatoes all day for a peck
of meal and I was happy at that. I never did know what the price of
cotton was.
"Where we was, the Ku Klux never did bother anybody. All there was,
every time we went out we had to have a pass.
"My grandfather and grandmother were both whipped sometimes. I don't
know the man that whipped them. I don't know whether it was the agent or
the owner or who, but they were whipped. Lots of times they had work to
do and didn't do it. Naturally they whipped them for it. That was what
they whipped my grandparents for. Sometimes too, they would go off and
wouldn't let the white folks know where they was going. Sometimes they
would neglect to feed the horses or to milk the cows--something like
that. That was the only reason I ever heard of for punishing them.
"I heard that if the boss man wanted to be with women that they had, the
women would be scared not to be with him for fear he would whip them.
And when they started whipping them for that they kept on till they got
what they wanted. They would take them 'way off and have dealings with
them. That is where so much of that yellow and half-white comes from.
"There was some one going through telling the people that they was free
and that they was their own boss. But yet and still, there's lots of
them never did leave the man they was with and lots of them left. There
was lots of white people that wouldn't let a nigger tell their niggers
that they was free, because they wanted to keep them blind to that for
years. Kept them for three or four years anyway. Them that Bullocks
liked was crazy about him. He would give them a show--so much a month
and their keeps. I don't remember exactly how much it was but it was
neighborhood price. He was a pretty good man. Of course, you never seen
a white man that wouldn't cheat a little.
"He'd cheat you out of a little cotton. He would have the cotton carried
to the gin. He would take half the corn and give us five or six shoats.
After he got the cotton all picked and sold, the cotton it would all go
to him for what you owed him for furnishing you. You never saw how much
cotton was ginned, nor how much he got for it, nor how much it was worth
nor nothing. They would just tell you you wasn't due nothing. They did
that to hold you for another year. You got nothing to move on so you
stay there and take what he gives you.
"Of all the crying you ever heard, one morning we'd got up and the pigs
and hogs in the lot that we had fattened to go on that winter, he was
catching them. After we'd done fattened them with the corn that was
our share, he took 'em and sold 'em. We didn't even know we owed him
anything. We thought the crops had done settled things. Nobody told us
nothin'. All we children cried. The old man and the old woman didn't say
nothing, because they was scared. My mother would get up and go down and
milk the cows and what she'd get for the milking would maybe be a bucket
of buttermilk.
"We'd have a spoonful of black molasses and corn bread and buttermilk
for breakfast. We got flour bread once a week. We would work hard all
the week talkin' 'bout what good biscuits we'd have Sunday morning. Sack
of flour would last two or three months because we wouldn't cook flour
bread only once a week--Saturday night or Sunday morning.
"We had no skillet at that time. We would rake the fireplace and push
the ashes back and then you would put the cake down on the hearth or on
a piece of paper or a leaf and then pull the ashes over the cake to cook
it. Just like you roast a sweet potato. Then when it got done, you would
rake the ashes back and wash the cake and you would eat it. Sometimes
you would strike a little grit or gravel in it and break your teeth. But
then I'm tellin' you the truth about it.
"When our hogs was taken that time, we didn't have nothing to go on that
winter. They would compel us to stay. They would allowance us some meat
and make us split rails and clear up land for it. It was a cinch if he
didn't give it to you you couldn't get nothin'. Wasn't no way to get
nothing. Then when crop time rolled 'round again they would take it all
out of your crops. Make you split rails and wood to earn your meat and
then charge it up to your crop anyhow. But you couldn't do nothin' 'bout
it.
"Sometimes a barrel of molasses would set up in the smokehouse and turn
to sugar. You goin' hungry and molasses wastin'. They was determined not
to give you too much of it.
"I made my way by farming. After I got to be some size, I started at it.
I farmed all my life. While I could work, things was pretty good. Wisht
I was on a farm now. Even when I'm 'round here sick, I can git these
potatoes raised with a little help from the neighbors.
"I don't belong to church. I oughter, but I don't. Then again, I figure
that a man can be just as good out of it as he can in it. I've got good
desires, but I never confessed to the public.
"I have had three hundred dollars worth of stuff stolen from me.
Everything I produced is stolen from me because I have no way to protect
myself. What I raise if I don't get shet of it right away, the people
get shet of it for me. I had eighty head of chickens in the barn out
there runnin' 'round. When I got sick and was in the bed and couldn't
help myself, the chickens went. In the daytime, they would fix traps and
jerk a string and pull a board down on them and then go out in the weeds
and get them. I never reported nothin' to the police. I wasn't able to
report nothing. I was just batching, and now and then people would come
in and report them to me. They would wait till they saw somebody come
in and when they saw that I was talking and wouldn't notice them, they
would steal anything they wanted. The police came by here and ran them
once. But that didn't do no good.
"Once somebody stole an automatic shotgun. They stole a colt one time.
They stole all my clothes and pawned them to a whiskey dealer. He got
sent to the pen for selling whiskey, but I didn't get my clothes.
They come in the yard and steal my potatoes, collards, turnips, ochre
(okra?), and so on. I lay there in the bed and see them, but I can't
stop them. All I can do is to holler, 'You better go on and let them
things alone.' Ever since the last war, I haven't been able to work. I
am bare-feeted and naked now on account of not bein' able to support
myself.
"I just come out of the hospital. I been too sick even to work in my
garden. After I come home I taken a backset[TR: ?] but I am still
staying here. I am just here on the mercies of the people. I don't
get nothing but what the people give me. I don't get no moddities nor
nothin' from the Government.
"I ain't never been able to get no help from the Government. Long time
ago, I went down to the place and asked for help and they told me that
since I was alone, I oughta be able to help myself. They gimme a ticket
for twenty meals and told me by the time I ate them up, they might have
something else they could do for me. I told them I couldn't go back and
forth to git the meals. I have the ticket now. I couldn't git to the
place to use it none, so I keep it for a keepsake. It is 'round here
somewheres or other. I was past the pension age. I ain't been able to do
no steady work since the war. I was too old for the war--the World War."
Interviewer's Comment [HW: omit]
The spelling of the name Sunnaville is phonetic. I don't recognize the
name and he couldn't spell it of course.
When I called, he had potatoes that weighed at least seven pounds. They
were laid out on the porch for sale. He had a small patch in his yard
which he cultivated, and had gotten about ten bushels from it.
His account of slavery times is so vivid that you would consider his age
nearer eighty than sixty-eight. A little questioning reveals that he
has no idea of his age although he readily gives it as sixty-eight--a
memorized figure.
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Lula Taylor
Previous:
Fannie Tatum
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