Mary Teel
From:
Arkansas
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Mary Teel
Holly Grove, Ark.
Age: 74
"Our Masters was Wade and Curls. Miss Fannie was Master Wade's wife.
They was kin somehow. I heard Ma say they wouldn't let their boys work.
We girls growd up together. They called Ma 'Cousin'.
"Ma say she come from Marshal County Tennessee to Holly Springs
Mississippi. She never did see her pa. My papa's papa was a white
man. My pa was Lewis Brittman. He was a carriage driver. He made and
mended shoes. My Ma was a fine cook. She had nine children but jes three
living now. One of the girls--Miss Fannie's girls--married bout when
I did. We jes growd up lack that. I left the girls at Mt. Pleasant,
Mississippi. I stayed on their place a while. I wish I had money to go
back to my old home and see all 'em livin'. I never heard 'em say if
they give 'em somepin. Pa lernt us to do all kinds of work. He knowd how
to do nearly everything cause he was brought up by white folks. Measles
broke out, then small pox and the white folks put us in a room all
together at the white house so we could be seen after. We lay on the
same beds. My brother would whistle. I was real little but I member it
well as yesterday. Ma say stop whistlin' in that bed and Miss Fannie say
let him whistle I want to hear him cause I know he better. They say it
bad luck to sing in bed or look in the lookin'-glass (mirror) if you in
the bed. We all got over it.
"Pa made us go clean. He made me comb and wrop my hair every night. I
had prutty hair then. I had tetter and it all come out. I has to wear
this old wig now. When I was young my eye-sight got bad, they said
measles settled in em and to help em Ma had these holes put in em (in
her ears). I been wearin' earbobs purt nigh all my life.
"The Ku Klux never bothered us. They never come nigh our house no time.
Pa died and Ma married a old man. They stayed in the same place a while.
When Pa died he had cattle and stock that why I don't know if he got
somepin at Freedom. He had plenty.
"We lived at Holly Springs (Miss.) when they started the first colored
schools. There was three lady teachers. I think a man. One of the white
teachers boarded at my Ma's. On Saturday the other two eat there. I
recollect Ma cooking and fixing a big dinner Saturday. No white folks
let em stay with em or speak to em. They was sent from up north to teach
the darky chaps. I was one went to school. They wasn't nice like my
white folks then neither. They paid high board and white folks sent em
to Ma so she get the money. I was 14 years old when I married. I lived
wid my husband more an 50 years. We got long what I'ze tellin' you. This
young set ain't got no raisin' reason they cain't stand one nother. I
don't let em come in my yard. I cain't raise no children, I'm too old
and they ain't got no manners and the big ones got no sense. Jes wild.
They way they do. They live together a while and quit. Both them soon
livin' wid somebody else. That what churches fer, to marry in. Heap of
em ain't doin' it. No children don't come here tearin' up what I work
and have. I don't let em come in that gate, I have to work so hard in my
old days. I picked cotton. I can, by pickin' hard, make a dollar a day.
I cooked ten years fore I stopped, I cain't hold up at it. I washed and
ironed till the washing machines ruined that work fer all of us black
folks. Silk finery and washin' machines ruint the black folks.
"Ma named Elsie Langston and Lewis Langston. They took that name somehow
after the old war (Civil War), I recken it was her old master's name.
"After I was married and had children I was hard up. I went to a widow
woman had a farm but no men folks. She say, 'If you live here and leave
your little children in my yard and take my big boys and learn em to
work, I will cook. On Saturday you wash and iron.' She took me in that
way when my color wouldn't help me. I stayed there--between Memphis and
Holly Springs.
"I live hard the way I live. I pick cotton when I can't go hardly. They
did give me a little commodity but I lose half day work if I go up there
and wait round. Don't know what they give me. I don't get a cent of the
penshun."
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Wade Thermon
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Sneed Teague
