Richard Crump
From:
More Arkansas
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Richard Crump
1801 Gaines Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 82
[HW: Father Takes a "Deadening"]
"I was born right here in Aberdeen, Mississippi about five miles from
the town on the east side of the Tom Bigbee River in Monroe County,
Mississippi.
"My father's name was Richard Crump. My mother was named Emily Crump. My
grandmother on my father's side was named Susan Crump. My mother came
from Middleton, Tennessee. But I don't know nothing about any of her
people. My father said he come from South Carolina when he was a boy
eight or ten years old. That was way before I was born. They brought him
to Mississippi from South Carolina.
"My father's master was old man Johnnie Crump. My mistress was named
Nina Crump. That was Johnnie Crump's wife. My mars had four boys to my
remembrance. One was named Wess, one was named Rufe, one was named Joe,
and one was named Johnnie. He had a girl named Annie and one named Lulu.
"My mother was the mother of thirteen children. I am the onliest one
living, that I know of. The way they gwine with us now, I ain't goin' a
be here long. Just got four dollars to pay rent and bills and git
somethin' to eat for a month. You don't git nothin' much when you git
the commodities--no grease to cook with.
"We never had no trouble much when I was coming along. My mars was a
pretty good old man. He didn't allow no overseer to whip his slaves. The
overseer couldn't whip my old mother anyhow because she was a kind of
bully and she would git back in a corner with a hoe and dare him in. And
he wouldn't go in neither.
"My grandmother had three or four sons. One was name Nels Crump, another
was named Miles and another was named Henry and another Jim. She had two
or three more but I can't think of them. They died before I was old
enough to know anything. Then she had two or three daughters. One was
named Lottie. She had another one but I can't think of her name. I was
so little. All of them are dead now. All of my people are dead but me.
They are trying to find a sister of mine, but I ain't found her yet. She
oughter be down here by Forrest City somewheres. But there ain't nobody
here that I know about but me. And the way they're carryin' them now I
ain't goin' to be here long. All of them people you hear me talk about,
they're supposed to be dead.
"I was born in 1858. At least the old man told me that. I mean my father
of course. The first thing I knowed anything about was picking cotton. I
was a little bitty old fellow with a little sack hangin' at my side. I
was pickin' beside my mother. They would grab us sometimes when we
didn't pick right. Shake us and pull our ears.
"I didn't know anything about sellin' and buying. I never was sold.
"The next thing I remember was being told I was free. My daddy said old
mars told them they were free. I didn't hear him tell it myself. They
come 'round on a Monday morning and told papa and the rest that they
were free as he was and that they could go if they wanted to or they
could stay, 'cause they were free as he was and didn't have no master no
more, didn't have no one to domineer over them no more.
"Right after freedom, my folks worked on old man Jim Burdyne's farm.
That is the first place I remember after freedom. Father taken a little
deadening. You don't know what a deadening is? That's a lease. He
cleaned up some land. We boys were just gettin' so we could pick up
brush and tops of trees--and burn it, and one thing and another. Two
years after the War was over, I got big enough to plow. I was plowing
when I was nine years old. We had three boys and four girls older than
me. The balance of them was born after freedom. We made crops on shares
for three years after freedom, and then we commenced to rent. Shares
were one-third of the cotton and one-fourth of the corn. They didn't pay
everything they promised. They taken a lot of it away from us. They said
figures didn't lie. You know how that was. You dassent dispute a man's
word then. Sometimes a man would get mad and beat up his overseer and
run him away. But my daddy wouldn't do it. He said, 'Well, if I owe
anything I'll pay it. I got a large family to take care of.'
"I never got a chance to go to school any. There was too much work to
do. I married when I was twenty-one. I would go off and stay a month or
two and come back. Never left home permanent for a long while. Stayed
'round home till I was forty years old. I come to Arkansas in 1898. I
made a living by farming at first.
"I didn't shoot no craps. I belong to the church. I have belonged to the
church about forty years or more. I did play cords and shoot craps and
things like that for years before I got religion.
"I come to Little Rock in 1918 and been here ever since. I worked 'round
here in town first one thing and then another. Worked at the railroad
and on like that.
"We used to vote right smart in Mississippi. Had a little trouble
sometimes but it would soon die down. I haven't voted since I been here.
Do no good nohow. Can't vote in none of these primary elections. Vote
for the President. And that won't do no good. They can throw your ballot
out if they want to.
"I believe in the right thing. I wouldn't believe in anything else. I
try to be loyal to the state and the city. But colored folks don't have
much show. Work for a man four or five years and go back to him and he
don't know nothin' about you. They soon forget you and a white man's
word goes far.
"I was able to work as late as 1930, but I ain't been no 'count since to
do much work. I get a pension for old age from the Welfare and
commodities and I depend on that for a living. Whatever they want to
give me, I'll take it and make out with it. If there's any chance for me
to git a slave's pension, I wish they would send it to me. For I need it
awful bad. They done cut me way down now. I got heart trouble and high
blood pressure but I don't give up.
"My mother sure used to make good ash cake. When she made it for my
daddy, she would put a piece of paper on it on top and another on the
bottom. That would keep it clean. She made it extra good. When he would
git through, she would give us the rest. Sometimes, she wouldn't put the
paper on it because she would be mad. He would ask, 'No paper today?'
She would say, 'No.' And he wouldn't say nothin' more.
"There is some of the meanest white people in the United States in
Mississippi up there on the Yellow Dog River. That's where the Devil
makes meanness.
"There's some pretty mean colored folks too. There is some of them right
here in Little Rock. Them boys from Dunbar give me a lot of trouble.
They ride by on their bicycles and holler at us. If we say anything to
them, they say, 'Shut up, old gray head.' Sometimes they say worse. I
used to live by Brother Love. Christmas the boys threw at the house and
gave me sass when I spoke to them. So I got out of that settlement. Here
it is quiet because it is among the white folks."
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Zenia Culp
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Mildred Thompson
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