Charles Graham
From:
More Arkansas
--- 11 1938
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Charles Graham
616 W. 27th Street, North Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 79
[HW: [Freed in '63]]
"I was born September 27, 1859, Clarksville, Tennessee. I don't remember
the county. There are several Clarksvilles throughout the South. But
Clarksville, Tennessee is the first and the oldest.
"I got a chance to see troops after the Civil War was over. The soldiers
were playing, boxing, and the like. Then I remember hearing the cannons
roar--long toms they used to call 'em. My uncle said, 'That is General
Grant opening fire on the Rebels.'
"The first clear thing I remember was when everybody was rejoicing
because they were free. The soldiers were playing and boxing and
chucking watermelons at one another. They had great long guns called
muskets. I heard 'em say that Abraham Lincoln had turned 'em loose.
Where I was at, they turned 'em loose in '63. Lincoln was assassinated
in '65. I heard that the morning after it was done. We was turned loose
long before then.
"I was too young to pay much attention, but they were cutting up and
clapping their hands and carrying on something terrible, and shouting,
'Free, free, old Abraham done turned us loose.'
"I was here in them days! Heard those long toms roar! General Grant
shelling the Rebels!"
Patrollers
"I don't remember much about the patrollers except that when they been
having dances, and some of them didn't have passes, they'd get chased
and run. If they would get catched, them that didn't have passes would
get whipped. Them that had them, they were all right."
Amusements
"They had barbecues. That's where the barbecues started from, I reckon,
from the barbecues among the slaves.
"They would have corn shuckings. They would have a whole lot of corn to
shuck, and they would give the corn shucking and the barbecue together.
They would shuck as many as three or four hundred bushels of corn in a
night. Sometimes, they would race one another. So you know that they
must have been some shucking done.
"I don't believe that I know of anything else. People were ignorant in
those days and didn't have many amusements."
Occupations
"I used to be a regular miller until they laid the men off. Now I don't
have no kind of job at all."
Right after the War
"Some of the slaves went right up North. We stayed in Clarksville and
worked there for a year or two. In 1864, we went to Warren County,
Illinois. They put me in school. My people were just common laborers.
They bought themselves a nice little home.
"My mother's name was Anna Bailis and my father's name was Charles
Morrill. I don't remember the names of their masters.
"I was raised by my uncle, Simon Blair. His master used to be a Bailis.
My father, so I was told, went off and left my mother. She was weak and
ailing, so my uncle took me. He took me away from her and carried me up
North with them. My father ran away before the slaves were freed. I
never found out what became of him.
"I stayed in Illinois from the time I was five or six years old up until
I was twenty-one. I left there in 1880. That is about the time when
Garfield ran for President. I was in Ohio, seen him before he was
assassinated in 1882. Garfield and Arthur ran against Hancock and
English. They beat 'em too."
Little Rock
"I used to go from place to place working first one place and then
another--going down the Mississippi on boats. Monmouth, Illinois, where
I was raised--they ain't nothing to that place. Just a dry little town!"
Opinions
"The young people nowadays are all right. There is not so much ignorance
now as there was in those days. There was ignorance all over then. The
Peckerwoods wasn't much wise either. They know nowadays though. Our race
has done well in refinement.
"I find that the Negro is more appreciated in politics in the North and
West than in the South. I don't know whether it will grow better or not.
"I'll tell you something else. The best of these white people down here
don't feel so friendly toward the North."
Next:
James Graham
Previous:
Julia Grace
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