James Reeves
From:
Arkansas
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: James Reeves
2419 W. Twentieth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 68
Occupation: Preacher
"I was born in 1870 down in Ouachita County about fourteen miles south
of Camden going on toward El Dorado. They didn't have no railroad then.
I was a young man when they put the branch through. You see, I was born
five years after slavery, but I remember my mother, my grandmother, and
my great-grandmother. They taken me and talked to me freely and I know
everything they knew.
Great-Grandmother on Mother's Side
"My great-grandmother belonged to the Goodmans. Her master was named
Bob Goodman. She lived to get one hundred thirteen years old. From the
children of the old master, I got the information concerning her age.
I looked it up after emancipation. One of old master's sons was named
Frank Goodman, and another was named Norphleet Goodman, and there was
another whose name I don't recall.
"My grandmother, great-grandmother, was named Frankie Goodman. I wasn't
here in slavery time, but I knew her after emancipation.
Grandmother on Mother's Side
"My grandmother was named Hannah Goodman. These were different Goodmans
but they were kin to these others. There was a large family of them.
I don't know the correct age of my grandmother but she was up in the
eighties when she died.
Mother
"My mother was born a Goodman, but she married Reeves, my father. The
record of their marriage I ain't got. Back there, they didn't keep up
like you and I do, and we don't keep up like these younger folks do.
Near as I could get it, she lived to be about seventy-one years old.
Father
"My father was named Adam Reeves. His master was named Rick Reeves. My
father was born in Union County about ten miles from El Dorado. You
might say north of El Dorado because he lived south of Camden. He lived
there all his life. I have known him to move out of Ouachita County into
Union, and from Union back to Ouachita.
Grandfather on Mother's Side
"My grandfather on my mother's aide was Henry Goodman. His mistress was
a woman by the name of Lucy Goodman. She was the same woman who owned my
mother. There was a big family of them Goodmans.
"His age--he lived to be about eighty years old. He died in Hot Spring
County.
Grandmother on Father's Side
"My grandmother on my father's side was named Hetty. Her master was
named Sam Abbott. She lived right close to seventy-four or seventy-five
years. She been gone quite a while now. She used to live with papa.
Other Ancestors
"I don't know so much about another of my ancestors.
Wife
"My wife didn't have many people. She knows her mother, her mother's
mistress, and all. Her ma was named Martha Henson. That was her married
name. Her mistress' last name was Stribling. Martha Henson was a
well-treated slave. The Striblings lived in Rockport, Arkansas, but
their native home was Georgia. I don't know where the Striblings are
now. The old man died before the Civil War broke out. I guess they are
all dead and in torment. My wife's grandmother and grandfather on her
mother's side were gone so far back that neither she nor I know anything
about them.
Whippings
"My great-grandmother on my mother's side was in Union County when I
knew anything of her--close to El Dorado. I was about twenty-two years
old when she died. She was tall and spare built, dark ginger cake color.
Coarse straight black hair that had begun to mingle with gray. She never
did get real gray, and her hair was never white. Even when she died, at
a hundred and thirteen years, her hair was mostly black mingled with
gray.
"The overseer knocked her in the head in slavery times, and they had to
put a silver half-dollar in her head to hold her brains in. I have seen
the place myself. When I was a little fellow she used to let me feel the
place and she would say, 'That's where the overseer knocked granny in
the head, son. I got a half-dollar in there.' I would put her hair
aside--my but she had beautiful hair!--and look at the place.
"My wife could tell you what my mother told her. She has seen the marks
on my mother's back and has asked, 'Mama, what's all these marks on your
back?' And mama would say, 'That's where I was whipped in slavery times,
daughter.' She never did like to tell the details. But the scars were
awful.
"My grandmother was roughly treated and she had pretty near lost her
eyesight from the ill treatment. She got so before she died that she
could hardly see to go nowhere. I don't know what it was they done to
her that made her eyesight bad, but she insisted that it was due to bad
treatment in slavery time.
Patrollers
"I have heard that the pateroles used to run the slaves if they didn't
have a pass from their mistress and master. The pateroles would run them
and catch them and whip them.
How Freedom Came
"All my mother knew was that it got out that the Negroes were free. The
day before the old woman told them that they were free, my grandfather,
Henry Goodman who was a teamster, old mis' called him and told him to
tell all the darkies to come up to the house the next day.
"Next morning, she said, 'Henry, you forgot what I told you. I want you
to call all the darkies up here this morning.' Henry had a voice like a
fog-horn. He started hollering. I wish I could holler the way he did,
but I got to consider the neighbors. He hollered. 'Tention, 'tention,
hey; Miss Lucy says she wants you all up to the big house this morning.
She's got somepin to tell you.'
"They all come up to the yard before the house. When they got there, she
says to him--not to them; she wouldn't talk to them that morning; maybe
she was too full--'Henry, you all just as free now as I am. You can stay
here with Miss Lucy or you can go to work with whomsoever you will. You
don't belong to Miss Lucy no more.'
"She had been sick for quite a bit, and she was just able to come to the
door and deliver that message. Three weeks after that time, they brought
her out of the house feet foremost and took her to the cemetery. The
news killed her dead. That's been seventy years ago, and they just now
picking up on it!
Slave Time Amusements
"The old people say they used to have breakdowns in slave
time--breakdown dances with fiddle and banjo music. Far after slavery,
they had them. The only other amusement worth speaking about was the
churches. Far as the churches was concerned, they had to steal out and
go to them. Old man Balm Whitlow can tell you all about the way they
held church. They would slip off in the woods and carry a gang of
darkies down, and the next morning old master would whip them for it.
Next Sunday they would do the same thing again and get another whipping.
And it went on like that every week. When old man Whitlow came out from
slavery, he continued to preach. But the darkies didn't have to steal
out then. He's dead now, him and the old lady both.
Houses
"The slaves lived in old log houses. Some of them would be hewed and put
up well. I have seen lots of them. Sometimes they would dob the cracks
with mud and would have box planks floors, one by eight or one by ten,
rough lumber, not dressed. Set 'em as close together as they could but
then there would be cracks in them. I can carry you to some old log
houses down in Union County now if they haven't been torn down recently.
"One old log house there used to be old lady Lucy Goodman's home. It
has four rooms. It has a hall running through it. It was built in slave
times. There is a spring about two hundred yards from it. That is about
ten or twelve feet deep. There is a big cypress tree trunk hollowed out
and sunk down in it to make a curbing. That cypress is about two or
three feet across. The old man, Henry Goodman, sunk that cypress down in
there in slavery time. He drove an ox team all the time. That is all the
work he done. She would tell all the overseers, 'Now, don't you fool
with Henry because we ain't never whipped him ourselves.'
"I don't know who it is that is living now. It's been fifty years ago
since I was there.
Right After Freedom
"Right after freedom, when the surrender came, my mother was just a girl
'bout fifteen or sixteen. She married after freedom. Her and her husband
farmed for a living--you know, sharecropped.
Ku Klux Klan
"The Ku Klux and the pateroles were the same thing, only the Klan was
more up to date. It's all set up with a hellish principle. It's old
Pharaoh exactly.
"The Ku Klux Klan didn't have no particular effect on the Negro except
to scare him.
"When the emancipation came about, the people of the South went to work
to see what they could do about it. The whole South was under martial
law. Some of the people formed the Ku Klux Klan to keep the Negro down.
I never remember that they bothered any of our family or the people in
our house. But they scared some and whipped more, and killed some.
Political Trouble about 1888
"The darkies and the white folks in Union County had an insurrection
over the polls about the year 1888. In them days, when you wanted to put
a Republican man in, you didn't have to do much campaigning. They
just went to the polls and put him in. Everybody that could vote was
Republican. In the fall of 1888 they had a great trouble down there, and
some of them got killed. They went around and commanded the Negroes not
to go to the polls the next day. Some of the Negroes would tell them,
'Well, I am going to the polls tomorrow if I have to crawl.' And then
some of them would say, 'I'd like to know how you goin' to vote.' The
nigger would ask right back, 'How you goin' to vote?' The white man
would say, 'I'm goin' to vote as I damn please.' Then the nigger would
say, 'I'm going to do the same thing.' That started the trouble.
"On Sunday before the election on Monday, they went around through that
county in gangs. They shot some few of the Negroes. As the Negroes
didn't have no weapons to protect theirselves, they didn't have no
chance. In that way, quite a few of the Negroes disbanded their homes
and went into different counties and different portions of the state and
different states. Henry Goodman, my grandfather, came into Hot Spring
County in this way.
Opinions
"Roosevelt has got himself in a predicament. They are drunk and don't
know what to do. The whole world is stirred up over why one-fourth of
the world should rule the other three-fourths. One-fourth of the world
is white. The Bible says a house divided can't stand. The people don't
know what to do. Look how they fight the Wage Hour Bill. Look at the
excitement they raised when it was first suggested that the Union and
Confederate veterans meet together.
"We were savages when we came over here. Everything we got and
everything we know, good and bad, we got from the white folks. Don't
know how they can get impatient with us when everything we do they
learnt us.
"Roosevelt has done more than any Democrat that has ever been in the
Chair. He had to do something to keep down a rebellion. Then we like to
had one as it is through the labor question.
"The poor white man always has been in a tight [HW: place]. He was
almost as much oppressed as the Negro.
"The young people of today ain't got no sense. They don't give no
thought to nothing. They don't know how to think at all. All the
schools and education they give don't make them think. If I had as much
education as they have, I would be able to accomplish something. The
teachers don't press down on them and make them know what they go over.
There is a whole lot of things happening now.
Old People in Pulaski County
"Out in Pulaski County, going west out the Nineteenth Street Pike till
you strike the Saline County line, there are quite a few old colored
people. I guess you would find no leas than twenty-five or thirty out
that way. There is one old man named Junius Peterson out that way who
used to run a mill. If you find him, he is very old and has a good
memory. He is a mulatto. You could get out to him by going down till you
come to a place that is called the Henderson Lane. You turn to the right
and go off the pike less than a mile and you come to a big one-story
house settin' on a hill where Peterson lives. Right on beyond that about
three-fourths of a mile on the right side of the road, you come to
George Gregory's. The mother of my church is about eighty-one years old
but she is over in Saline County. Her name is Jane Joyner.
"There are quite a few old persons around Woodson that can give you
information. But that is in Saline County, I think. Sweet Home,
Wrightsville, Toltec--all of them have a few old colored persons on the
farm that was here in slavery times."
Interviewer's Comment
Reeves' story was taken because of his clear memories of his parents
and grandparents. He described to me an old log house still standing in
Union County.
I got all agog with excitement. I asked him for the exact location. He
gave it. Then I suggested that maybe he would go down with me sometime
to visit it. He agreed. Then at the last moment caution began to assert
itself, and I said, "When was the last time you saw the cabin?"
He reflected a moment; then he said, "Waal, I guess it was a little more
'an fifty years ago."
I lost my enthusiasm.
Reeves told the Phill-la-me-york story which was told by Austin Pen
Parnell. You will find it in his story. The only difference between his
story and Parnell's is that Reeves had the conclusion. He claimed that
the old master got in a fight with one of the slaves present and yelled
out his identity when he was getting badly beaten. The story sounds
like it came from the Arkansas folklore collection or from someone who
contributed it to that collection.
An aftermath of Reeves' story is finding out that most people consider
Henry Banner, whose story has been previously given and whose age was
given as eighty-nine, is considered by many persons to be ninety-four.
Neely, one of the adult school-teachers, says that he has gone over
Banner's life carefully with him, and that he must have been twenty-one
or twenty-two at the close of the War because during slavery, he had
experience at logging, or rather at logrolling, a work so difficult that
only full-grown men were used at it. Since Banner is slightly built,
there is scarcely a possibility that he did such work before the normal
time.
[HW: Cf. 30715 for interview with Parnell.]
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