Elijah Henry Hopkins
From:
More Arkansas
MAY 31 1938
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Elijah Henry Hopkins
13081/2 Ringo Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 81
"My father's master was old Tom Willingham, an awful big farmer who
owned farms in Georgia and South Carolina, both. He lived in southwest
Georgia in Baker County. Old man Willingham's wife was Phoebe Hopkins.
Her mother was old lady Hopkins. I don't know what the rest of her name
was. We never called her nothin' but old lady Hopkins or Mother Hopkins.
She was one of the richest women in the state. When she died, her estate
was divided among her children and grandchildren. Her slaves were part
of her estate. They were divided among her children and grandchildren,
too. Tom Willingham's family come in for its part. He had three sons,
Tom, Jr., John, and Robert. My father already belonged to Tom
Willingham, Sr., so he stayed with him. But my mother belonged to old
lady Hopkins, and she went to Robert, so my daddy and mother were
separated before I knew my daddy. My father stayed with old man
Willingham until freedom.
"Robert Willingham was my mother's master. He never married. When he
died he willed all his slaves free. But his relatives got together and
broke the will and never did let 'em go.
"When I saw my father to know him, I saw him out in Georgia. They told
me that was my father. Then he had another wife and a lot of children.
My mother brought me up and my father taken charge of me after she died
and after freedom--about a year after. It was close to emancipation
because the states were still under martial law.
"I was born May 15, 1856, in the Barnwell district, South Carolina. They
used to call them districts then. It would be Barnwell County now. They
changed and started calling 'em counties in 1866 [HW: 1868?] or
thereabouts. I was running around when they mustered the men in for the
Civil War, and I was about nine years old when the War ended. I was
about ten when my mother died and my father taken charge of me. I was
taken from South Carolina when I was about four years old and carried
into Georgia and stayed there until emancipation. My mother didn't tarry
long in Georgia after she was emancipated. She went back into South
Carolina; but she died in a short time, as I just said. Then my father
taken charge of me. I got married in South Carolina in 1885, and then I
came out here in 1886--to Arkansas. Little Rock was the first place I
came to. I didn't stay here a great while. I went down to the Reeder
farm on the Arkansas River just about sixteen miles above Pine Bluff. I
started share cropping but taken down sick. I never could get used to
drinking that bottom water. Then I went to Pine Bluff and went to work
with the railroad and helped to widen the gauge of the Cotton Belt Road.
Then the next year they started the Sewer Contract, and I worked in that
and I worked on the first water plant they started. In working with the
King Manufacturing Company I learned piping.
"I stayed in Pine Bluff sixteen years. My wife died August 1, 1901. A
couple of years after that, I came back to Little Rock, and have been
here ever since. I went to work on the Illinois Central Railroad just
across the river, which is now the Rock Island Railroad. After it became
the Rock Island, the bridge was built across the river east of Main
Street. They used to go over the old Baring Cross Bridge and had to pay
for it. The Missouri Pacific enjoined the Rock Island and wouldn't let
it go straight through, so they built their own bridge and belted the
city and went on around. I got stricken down sick in 1930 and haven't
been able to do heavy work since. You know, a plumber and steam-fitter
have to do awful heavy work.
"I get a little old age assistance from the state. They are supposed to
give me commodities but my card got out and they ain't never give me
another one. I went down to see about it today, and they said they'd
mail me another one."
How the Little Children Were Fed
"My mother was always right in the house with the white people and I was
fed just like I was one of their children. They even done put me to bed
with them. You see, this discrimination on color wasn't as bad then as
it is now. They handled you as a slave but they didn't discriminate
against you on account of color like they do now. Of course, there were
brutal masters then just like there are brutal people now. Louisiana and
Alabama and Mississippi always were tough states on colored people.
South Carolina and Georgia got that way after people from those places
came in and taught them to mistreat colored people. Yet in Alabama and
Louisiana where they colored people were worse treated, it seems that
they got hold of more property and money. Same way it was in
Mississippi."
Patrollers
"The patrollers was just a set of mean men organized in every section of
the country. If they'd catch a nigger out and he didn't have a pass,
they'd tie him up and whip him and then they'd take him back. You had
to have a pass to be out at night. Even in the daytime you couldn't go
no great distance without a pass. Them big families--rich families--that
had big plantations would come together and the niggers from two or
three places might go to a church on one of them. But you couldn't go no
place where there wasn't a white man looking on."
Reading and Writing in Slave Time
"Some of the white people thought so much of their slaves that they
would teach them how to write and read. But they would teach them
secretly and they would teach them not to read or write out where
anybody would notice them. They didn't mind you reading as much as they
minded you writing. If they'd catch YOU now and it was then, they'd take
you out and chop off them fingers you're doing that writing with."
Slave Occupation and Wages
"My daddy was a builder. Old man Willingham gave him freedom and time to
work on his own account. He gave him credit for what work he done for
him. He got three hundred dollars a year for my father's time, but all
the money was collected by him, because my father being a slave couldn't
collect any money from anybody. When my father's master died, he may
have had money deposited with him. But he was strictly honest with my
father. No matter how much he collected, he wouldn't take no more'n
three hundred dollars and he put all the rest to the credit of my
father. He said three hundred dollars was enough to take."
How Freedom Came
"The owners went to work and notified the slaves that they were free.
After the proclamation was issued, the government had agents who went
all through the country to see if the slaves had been freed. They would
see how the proclamation was being carried out. They would ask them,
'How are you working?' 'You are free.' 'What are you getting?' Some of
them would say, 'I ain't gettin' nothin' now.' Well, the agent would
take that up and they would have that owner up before the government.
Maybe he would be working people for a year and giving them nothin'
before they found him out. There are some places where they have them
cases yet. Where they have people on the place and ain't paying them
nothin'."
Memories of Soldiers and the War
"I have seen thousands and thousands of soldiers. Sometimes it would
take a whole day for them to pass through. When Sherman's army marched
through Atlanta, it took more than a day. I was in Atlanta then. He sent
word ahead that he was coming through and for all people that weren't
soldiers to get out of the town. I saw the Rebels, too; I saw them when
they stacked their arms. Looked like there was a hundred or more rifles
in each stack. They just come up and pitched them down. They had to
stack their arms and turn them over.
"I was taken to Georgia when I was four years old, you know. I recollect
when all the people came up to swear allegiance, and when they were
hurrying out to get away from Sherman's army. They fit in Atlanta and
then marched on toward Savannah. Then they crossed over into South
Carolina. They went on through Columbia and just tore it up. Then they
worked their way on back into Georgia. They didn't fight in Augusta
though.
"Jeff Davis was captured not far from my father's place[7]. Jeff Davis
had a big army, but the biggest thing he had was about a thousand wagons
or more piled up with silver and other things belonging to the
Confederacy. He was supposed to be taking care of that. He had to turn
it over to the North."
'Shin Plasters'
"They had a kind of money right after the Civil War--paper money gotten
out by the United States Government and supposed to be good. The
Confederate money was no good but this money--these 'shin plasters' as
they were called--was good money issued by the government. They did away
with it and called it all in. You could get more for it now than it is
worth. The old green back took its place but the 'shin plaster' was in
all sizes. It wasn't just a dollar bill. It was in pinnies, five cents,
ten cents, twenty-five cents, and then they skipped on up to fifty
cents, and they didn't have nothin' more till you got to a dollar."
Schooling
"I haven't had a great deal of schooling. I have had a little about in
places. Just after the emancipation, my mother died and my father
married again. My stepmother had other children and they kept me out of
my education. Since I have been grown, I have gotten a little training
here and there. Still I have served as supervisor of elections and done
other things that they wanted educated people to do. But it was just
merely a pick-up of my own. The first teachers I had were white women
from the North."
Politics
"I have never taken a great deal of interest in politics. Only in the
neighborhood where I lived there was a colony of colored people at
Bentley, South Carolina. They chose me to represent them at the polls
and I did the best I could. I got great credit for both the colored and
the white people for that. But I never took much interest in politics.
"My father spent a fortune in it but I never could see that it benefited
him. I never did care for any kind of office except a mail contract that
I had once to haul mail. I went through that successfully and never lost
a pouch or anything but at the end of the year I throwed it up. I
couldn't trust anyone else to handle it for me and I had to meet trains
at all hours. The longest I could sleep was two or three hours a night,
so I gave it up at the end of the year."
Care of Old People
"Some of the masters treated us worse than dogs and others treated us
fine. Colonel Robert Willingham freed his slaves but his sisters and
brothers wouldn't stand for it. They went and stole us off and sold us.
My mother being a thrifty colored woman and a practical nurse,
everywhere she went, a case gave thirty dollars and her board and mine.
My father paid his master three hundred dollars a year. He built these
gin houses and presses. The old man would write him passes and
everything and see that he was paid for his work. Some years, he would
make as much as three or four thousand dollars. His master collected it
and held it for him and gave it to him when he wanted it. That was
during slavery times."
Opinion of the Present
"Slavery days were hard but in the same time the colored people fared
better than now because the white folks taken up for them and they
raised what they needed to eat. You couldn't go nowhere but what people
had plenty to eat. Now they can't do it.
"I know what caused it too. The Jews didn't have much privilege till
after the Negro was emancipated. They used to kill Jews and bury them in
the woods. But after emancipation, he began to rise. First he began to
lend money on small interest. Then he started another scheme. People
used to not have sense. They went to work and got in with the Southern
white folks and got a law passed about the fences.
"The Greeks and Italians are next to the Jews. They don't make much off
the white man; they make it off the Negro. They come 'round and open up
a place and beg the niggers to come in; and when they get up a little
bit, they shut out the niggers and don't want nothin' but white folks.
It's a good thing they do, too; because if somebody didn't shut the
Negro out, he'd never have anything.
"The slaveholders were hard, but those people who come here from across
the water, they bring our trouble. You can't squeeze as much out of the
poor white as you can out of the darkey. The darkey is spending too much
now--when he can get hold of it. Everywhere you see a darkey with a
home, he's got a government mortgage on it. Some day the government will
start foreclosing and then the darkeys won't have anything, and the
biggest white man won't have much.
"A hundred years from now, they won't be any such thing as Negroes.
There will be just Americans. The white people are mixed up with Greeks,
Germans, and Italians and everything else now. There are mighty few pure
Americans now. There used to be plenty of them right after the War.
"The country can't hold out under this relief system.
"They're sending the young people to school and all like that but they
don't seem to me to have their minds on any industry. They have got to
have backing after they get educated. Now, they'll bring these
foreigners in and use them. In the majority of states now the colored
man ain't no good unless he can get some kind of trade education and can
go into some little business.
"In slavery times, a poor white man was worse off than a nigger. General
Lee said that he was fighting for the benefit of the South, but not for
slavery. He didn't believe in slavery."
Occupation and Present Support of Hopkins
"I came to Arkansas in 1886. I got married in 1885 in South Carolina. I
never had but the one wife. I have done a little railroading, worked in
machinery. I have planted one crop. Did that in 1887 but got sick and
had to sell out my crop. For forty-six years, I worked as a plumber and
piper. I worked in piping oil, gas, water, and I worked with mechanics
who didn't mind a colored man learning. They would let me learn and they
would send me out to do jobs.
"Nothing hurts me but my age. If I were younger, I could get along all
right. But the work is too heavy for me now.
"I get old age assistance from the state. They pay me eight dollars. I
have to pay four dollars for the use of this shack. So that don't leave
much for me to live on. I'm supposed to get commodities too, and I am
waiting for my order now."
FOOTNOTES:
[7] [HW: Jeff Davis captured May 10, 1865, outside Irwinsville, Ga.]
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Nettie Hopson
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Dora Holmes
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