“My mother’s name was Mahala McElroy.  Her master’s name was Wiley McElroy.  She was living in Howard County, Arkansas near Nashville.  She worked in the field, and sewed in the house for her mistress.  One time she said she never would forget about slavery was a time when she was thirteen years old, and the overseer beat her.

“My mother was a real bright woman with great long black hair.  Her master was her father.  She told me that the overseer grabbed her by her hair and wound it ’round his arm and then grabbed her by the roots of it and jerked her down to the ground and beat her till the blood ran out of her nose and mouth.  She was ’fraid to holler.

“Mother married when she was fourteen.  I can’t remember the name of her husband.  The preacher was an old man, a faith doctor, who read the ceremony.  His name was Lewis Hill.

“I heard mother say they beat my brother-in-law (his name was Dave Denver) till he was bloody as a hog.  Then they washed him down in salt and water.  Then they beat him again because he hollered.

“She told us how the slaves used to try to pray.  They were so scared that the overseer would see them that early in the morning while they were going to their work in the field at daybreak that they would fall down on one knee and pray.  They were so ’fraid that the overseer would catch them that they would be watching for him with one eye and looking for God with the other.  But the Lord understood.

“My mother was seventy years old when she died.  She has been dead thirty years.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Liza Stiggers, Forrest City, Arkansas
Age:  70 plus

“I was born in Poplar Grove, Arkansas on Col.  Bibbs’ place.  Mama was sold twice.  Once she was sold in Georgia, once in Alabama, and brought to Tennessee, later to Arkansas.  Master Ben Hode brought her to Arkansas.  She had ten children and I’m the only one living.  Mama was a dancing woman.  She could dance any figure.  They danced in the cabins and out in the yards.

“The Yankees come one day to our house and I crawled under the house.  I was scared to death.  They called me out.  I was scared not to obey and scared to come on out.  I come out.  They didn’t hurt me.  Mr. Ben Hode hid a small trunk of money away.  He got it after the War.  The slaves never did know where it was hid.  They said the hair was on the trunk he hid his money in.  It was made out of green hide for that purpose.

“Mama had a slave husband.  He was a field hand and all kind of a hand when he was needed.  Mama done the sewing for white and black on the place.  She was a maid.  She could cook some in case they needed her.  She died first.  Papa’s foot got hurt some way and it et off.  He was so old they couldn’t cure it.  He was named Alfred Hode.  Mama was Viney Hode.  She said they had good white folks.  They lived on Ben Hode’s place two or three years after freedom.