Published By:
Lamont Jack Pearley
This Episode we will be going over the Laura Abromsom R.F.D. Holly Grove Arkansas Slave Narrative.
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Interviewer Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed Laura Abromsom Holly Grove* Arkansas
Receives mail at Clarendon* Arkansas
Age 74
*My mama was named Eloise Rogers* She was born in Missouri* She was
sold and brought to three or four miles from Brownsville, Tennessee* Alex
Rogers bought her and my papa* She had been a house girl and well cared
for* She never got in contact wid her folks no more after she was sold*
She was a dark woman* Papa was a ginger cake colored man* Mama talked like
Alex Rogers had four or five hundred acres of land and lots of niggers to
work it* She said he had a cotton factory at Brownsville*
“Mistress Barbara Ann was his wife* They had two boys and three girls*
One boy George went plumb crazy and outlived fem all* The other boy died
early* Alex Rogers got my papa in Richmond. Virginia. He was took outer a
gang* We had a big family* I have eight sisters and op& brother*
*Pa say they strop fem down at the carriage house and give fem five
hundred lashes* He say they have salt and black pepper mixed up in er old
bucket and put it all on flesh cut up with a rag tied on a stick (mop)*
Alex Rogers had a nigger to put it on the place they looped* The lord puts
up wid such wrong doings and den he comes and rectifies it* He does that
very way*
*Pa say they started to whoop him at the gin house* He was a sorter
favorite* He cut up about it* That didn’t make no difference 9bout it*
Somehow they scared him up but he didn’t git whooped thater time*
“They fed good on Alex Rogers
place* They’d buy a barrel of coffee, a
barrel molasses, a barrel sugar* Some great big barrels*
2*
“Alex Rogers wasn’t a good man* He* tell them to steal a hog and git
home wid it* If they ketch you over there they
11 whoop you« He
d help v
eat hogs they’d steal*
“One time papa was working on the roads* The neighbor man and road
man was fixing up their eating* He purty nigh starved on that road work*
He was hired out*
“Mama and papa spoke like they was mighty glad to get sat free* Some
believed they’d git freedom and others didn’t* They had places they met and
prayed for freedom* They stole out in some of their houses and turned a
waahpot down at the door* Another white man, not Alex Rogers f tole mtw* and
papa and a heap others out in the field working* She say they quit and had
a regular bawl in the field* They cried and laughed and hollered and danced*
Lot of them run offen the place soon as the man tole Yem* My folks stayed
that year and another year*
“What is I been doing? Ast me is I been doing? lhat ainvt I been doing
be more like it* I raised fifteen of my own children* I got four living*
I living wid one right here in dis house wid me now* I worked on the farm
purty nigh all my life* I come to dis place** Wild, honey, it was! I come
in 1901* Heap of changes since then*
•Present times~«Not as much union ‘mongst young black and white as the
old black and white* They growing apart* Nobody got nothin’
to give* Ho
work* I used to could buy second~handed clothes to do my little children a
year for a little or nothin’ Won’t sell fem now nor give fem
way neither*
They don’t work hard as they used to* They say they don’t git nothin’ outen
it* They don’t want to work* Times harder in winter f cause it cold and
things to eat killed out* I cans meat* We dry beef* In town this Nickellodian
playing wild wid young colored folks—these Sea Bird music boxes*
9
They play all kind things* Folks used to stay home Saturday nights* Too
much running f round, excitement t wickedness in the world now* This generation is worst one* They trying to cut the Big Apple dance nhen we old folks
used to be down singing and praying* f Cause die is a wicked age times is
bad and hard**
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