Luke D Dixon
From:
More Arkansas
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Luke D. Dixon
DeValls Bluff, Ark.
Age: 81
"My father's owner was Jim Dixon in Elmo County, Virginia. That is where
I was born. I am 81 years old. Jim Dixon had several boys--Baldwin and
Joe. Joe took some of the slaves, his pa give him, and went to New
Mexico to shun the war. Uncle and pa went in the war as waiters. They
went in at the ending up. We lived on the big road that run to the
Atlantic Ocean. Not far from Richmond. Ma lived three or four miles from
Pa. She lived across big creek--now they call it Farrohs Run. Ma belong
to Harper Williams. Pa's folks was very good but Ma's folks was
unpleasant.
"Ma lived to be 103 years old. Pa died in 1905 and was 105 years old. I
used to set on Grandma's lap and she told me about how they used to
catch people in Africa. They herded them up like cattle and put them in
stalls and brought them on the ship and sold them. She said some they
captured they left bound till they come back and sometimes they never
went back to get them. They died. They had room in the stalls on the
boat to set down or lie down. They put several together. Put the men to
themselves and the women to themselves. When they sold Grandma and
Grandpa at a fishing dock called New Port, Va., they had their feet
bound down and their hands bound crossed, up on a platform. They sold
Grandma's daughter to somebody in Texas. She cried and begged to let
them be together. They didn't pay no 'tenshion to her. She couldn't talk
but she made them know she didn't want to be parted. Six years after
slavery they got together. When a boat was to come in people come and
wait to buy slaves. They had several days of selling. I never seen this
but that is the way it was told to me.
"The white folks had an iron clip that fastened the thumbs together and
they would swing the man or woman up in a tree and whoop them. I seen
that done in Virginia across from where I lived. I don't know what the
folks had done. They pulled the man up with block and tackle.
"Another thing I seen done was put three or four chinquapin switches
together green, twist them and dry them. They would cry like a leather
whip. They whooped the slaves with them.
"Grandpa was named Sam Abraham and Phillis Abraham was his mate. They
was sold twice. Once she was sold away from her husband to a speculator.
Well, it was hard on the Africans to be treated like cattle. I never
heard of the Nat Turner rebellion. I have heard of slaves buying their
own freedom. I don't know how it was done. I have heard of folks being
helped to run off. Grandma on mother's side had a brother run off from
Dalton, Mississippi to the North. After the war he come to Virginia.
"When freedom was declared we left and went to Wilmington and Wilson,
North Carolina. Dixon never told us we was free but at the end of the
year he gave my father a gray mule he had ploughed for a long time and
part of the crop. My mother jes picked us up and left her folks now. She
was cooking then I recollect. Folks jes went wild when they got turned
loose.
"My parents was first married under a twenty-five cents license law in
Virginia. After freedom they was remarried under a new law and the
license cost more but I forgot how much. They had fourteen children to
my knowing. After the war you could register under any name you give
yourself. My father went by the name of Right Dixon and mother Jilly
Dixon.
"The Ku Klux was bad. They was a band of land owners what took the law
in hand. I was a boy. I scared to be caught out. They took the place of
pattyrollers before freedom.
"I never went to public school but two days in my life. I went to night
school and paid Mr. J.C. Price and Mr. S.H. Vick to teach me. My father
got his leg shot off and I had to work. It kept me out of meanness. Work
and that woman has kept me right. I come to Arkansas, brought my wife
and one child, April 5, 1889. We come from Wilson, North Carolina. Her
people come from North Carolina and Moultrie, Georgia.
"I do vote. I sell eggs or a little something and keep my taxes paid up.
It look like I'm the kind of folks the government would help--them that
works and tries hard to have something--but seems like they don't get no
help. They wouldn't help me if I was bout to starve. I vote a Republican
ticket."
NOTE: On the wall in the dining room, used as a sitting room, was a
framed picture of Booker T. Washington and Teddy Roosevelt sitting at a
round-shaped hotel dining table ready to be served. Underneath the
picture in large print was "Equality." I didn't appear to ever see the
picture.
This negro is well-fixed for living at home. He is large and very black,
but his wife is a light mulatto with curly, nearly-straightened hair.
Next:
Martha Ann Dixon
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Alice Dixon
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