Laura Rowland
From:
Arkansas
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person Interviewed: Laura Rowland
(Bright Mulatto)
Age: 65?
Address: Brinkley, Arkansas
"My parents name was Mary Ann and Sam Billingslea. Mother's father lived
with us when I first remember. His name was Robert Todd. He was a brown
skin Negro. They said he was a West Indian. He talked of olden times but
I don't remember well enough to tell you. Father owned a home that we
was living on when I first remember. Mother was bright color, too.
Vaden, Mississippi was our trading post. Mother had twenty children. She
was a worker. She would work anywhere she was put. My folks never talked
much about slavery. I don't know how they got our place.
"I know they was bothered by the Ku Klux. One night they heard or saw
the Ku Klux coming. The log house set low on the ground but was dug out
to keep potatoes and things in--a cellar like. The planks was wide, bout
a foot wide, rough pine, not nailed down. They lifted the planks up and
all lay down and put the planks back up. The house look like outside
nothing could go under it, it was setting on the hard ground. When they
got there and opened the doors they saw nobody at home and rode off.
"Another time, one black night, a man--he must have been a
soldier--strided a block step with his horse and ordered supper. She
told him she didn't have nothing cooked and very little to cook. He
cursed and ordered the supper. Told her to get it. She pretended to be
fixing it and slipped out the back door down the furrows and squatted
in the briers in a fence corner. Long time after she had been out there
hid, he come along, jumped the fence on his horse, jumped over her back,
down into the lane and to the road he went. If the horse hadn't jumped
over her and had struck her he would have killed her. Now I think he was
a soldier, not the Ku Klux. I heard my father say he was a yard boy.
"I married in Mississippi and came to Malvern and Hot Springs. He was a
mill hand. I raised three children of my own and was a chamber maid.
I kept house and cooked for Mrs. Bera McCafity, a rich woman in Hot
Springs. My husband died and was buried at Malvern. I married again, in
Hot Springs, and lived there several years. We went to the steel mill at
Gary, Indiana. He died. I come back here and to Brinkley in 1920. One
daughter lives in Detroit and one in Chicago. The youngest one is
married, has a family and a hard time; the other makes her living. It
takes it all to do her. I get $8.00 on the P.W.A.
"They all accuse me around here of talking mighty proper. I been around
fine city folks so much I notice how they speak.
"I don't fool with voting. I don't care to vote unless it would be some
town question to settle. I would know something about it and the people.
"I don't know my age. I was grown when I married nearly sixty years ago.
We have to show our license to get on the W.P.A. or our age in the Bible
you understand."
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Landy Rucker
Previous:
Mattie Ross
Informational
