“My papa named Abe Robertson.  His owner named Tom Robertson.  I was born in middle Tennessee.  My mama named Isabela Brooks.  Her master named Billy Brooks.  His wife name Mary Brooks.  My master boys come through here six years ago wid a tent show.  My papa went off wid the Yankees.  Last I seed of him he was in Memphis.  They took my mama off when I was a baby to Texas to keep the Yankees from gettin’ her.  My grandma raised me.  We stayed on the big plantation till 1880.

“I don’t want no Sociable Welfare help till I ain’t able to work.  I don’t want none now.”

(To be continued) [TR:  no continuation found.]

Interviewer:  Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed:  Augustus Robinson
                    2500 W. Tenth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age:  78

“I was born in Calhoun County, Arkansas in 1860, January 15th.  I am going according to what my daddy told me and nothing else.  That is all I could do.

How the Children Were Fed

“My grandmother on my mother’s side said when I was a little fellow that she was a cook and that she would bring stuff up to the cabin where the little niggers were locked up and feed them through the crack.  She would hide it underneath her apron.  She wasn’t supposed to do it.  All the little niggers were kept in one house when the old folks were working in the field.  There were six or seven of us.

Sold

“My daddy was a white man, my master.  His wife was so mean to me that my master sold me to keep her from beating me and kicking me and knocking me ’round.  She would have killed me if she could have got the chance.  He [HW:  My daddy] sold me to a preacher who raised me as though I were his own son.  Whenever he sat down to the table to eat, I sat down.  He made no difference at all.  He raised me in El Dorado, Arkansas.  His name was James Goodwin.  He sent me to school too.

Visited by Father

“When Harrison and Cleveland ran for President, my [HW:  white] father came to Little Rock.  Some colored people had been killed in the campaign fights, and he had been summoned to Little Rock to make some statements in connection with the trouble.  He stopped at a prominent hotel and had me to come to see him.  When I went up to the hotel to meet him, there were a dozen or more white men at that place.  When I shook hands with him, he said, ‘Gentlemen, he’s a little shady but he’s my son.’  His name was Captain I.T.  Robinson.  He lived in Lisbon, Arkansas.

Mother

“My mother’s name was Frances Goodwin.  She belonged to Captain Robinson.  I don’t know but I think that when they came to Arkansas, they came from Georgia.  They were refugees.  When the War started, people that owned niggers ran from state to state to try to hold their niggers.