Molly Hudgens
From:
Arkansas
JAN 29 1938
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Molly Hudgens
DeValls Bluff, Arkansas
Age: Born in 1868
"I was born in Clarendon in 1868. My mother was sold to Judge Allen at
Bihalia, N. C. and brought to Arkansas. The Cunninghams brought father
from Tennessee when they moved to this State. His mother died when he
was three months old and the white mistress had a baby three weeks older
en him so she raised my father. She nursed him with Gus Cunningham. My
father had us call them Grandma, Aunt Indiana, and Aunt Imogene.
"When I was seven or eight years old I went to see them at Roe. When I
first come to know how things was, father had bought a place--home and
piece of land west of Clarendon and across the river. I don't know if
the Cunninghams ever give him some land or a mule or cow or not. He
never said. His owner was Moster John Henry Cunningham.
"My father was a medium light man but not as light as I am. My mother
was lighter than I am. I heard her say her mother did the sewing for all
on her owner's place in North Carolina. My mother was a house girl. The
reason she was put up to be sold she was hired out and they put her in
the field to work. A dispute rose over her some way so her owner sold
her when she was eighteen years old. Her mother was crying and begging
them not to sell her but it didn't do no good she said. After the war
was over she got somebody to write back and ask about her people. She
got word about her sister and aunt and uncle. She never seen none of
them after she was sold. Never did see a one of her people again. She
was sold to Judge Allen for a house girl. His wife was dead. My mother
sewed at Judge Allen's and raised two little colored children he bought
somewhere cheap. He had a nephew that lived with him.
"Mr. Felix Allen and some other of his kin folks, one of them made me
call him 'Tuscumby Bob.' I said it funny and they would laugh at me.
Judge Allen went to Memphis and come home and took smallpox and died. I
heard my mother say she seen him crying, sitting out under a tree. He
said he recken he would give smallpox to all the colored folks on his
place. Some of them took smallpox.
"We have been good living colored folks, had a right smart. I farmed,
cooked, sewed a little along. I washed. I been living in DeValls Bluff
38 years. I got down and they put me on the relief. Seems I can't get
back to going agin.
"Don't get me started on this young generation. I don't want to start
talking about how they do. Times is right smartly changed somehow.
Everybody is in a hurry to do something and it turns out they don't do
nuthin'. Times is all in a stir it seem like to me.
"I don't vote. I get $8 and demodities and I make the rest of my
keepin'."
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Charlie Huff
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Pauline Howell Nickname Pearl
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