Interviewer:  Samuel S. Taylor
Person Interviewed:  Robert Farmer
                    1612 Battery Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age:  84

[HW:  Tale of a “Nigger Ruler”]

“I was born in North Carolina.  I can’t tell when.  Our names are in the Bible, and it was burnt up.  My old master died and my young master was to go to the war, the Civil War, in the next draft.  I remember that they said, ‘If them others had shot right, I wouldn’t have had to go.’

“He talked like they were standing up on a table or something shooting at the Yankees.  Of course it wasn’t that way.  But he said that they didn’t shoot right and that he would have to do it for them.  They all came back, and none of them had shot right.  One sick (he died after he got home); the other two come back all right.

“When my old master died, the son that drawed me stayed home for a little while.  When he left he said about me, ’Don’t let anybody whip him while I am gone.  If they do, I’ll bury them when I come back.’  He was a good man and a good master.

Brutal Beating

“There were some that weren’t so good.  One of his brothers was a real bad man.  They called him a nigger ruler.  He used to go from place to place and handle niggers.  He carried his cowhide with him when he went.  My master said, ’A man is a damn fool to have a valuable slave and butcher him up.’  He said, ’If they need a whipping, whip them, but don’t beat them so they can’t work.’  He never whipped his slaves.  No man ever hit me a lick but my father.  No man.  I ain’t got no scar on me nowhere.

“My young master was named Wiley Grave Sharpe.  He drawed me when my old master, Teed Sharpe, Sr., died.  He’s been dead a long time.  Teed Sharpe, Jr., Gibb Sharpe, and Sam Sharpe were brothers to Wiley Grave Sharpe.  Teed Sharpe, Jr. was the brutal one.  He was the nigger ruler that did the beating up and the killing of Negroes.

“He beat my brother Peter once till Peter dropped dead.  Wiley Graves who drawed me said, ‘My brother shouldn’t have done that.’  But my brother didn’t belong to Wiley and he couldn’t do nothing about it.  That was Teed, Jr.’s name.  He got big money and was called a nigger ruler.  Teed had said he was going to make Peter do as much work as my sister did.  She was a young girl—­but grown and stout and strong.  In the olden time, you could see women stout and strong like that.  They don’t grow that way now.  Peter couldn’t keep up with her.  He wasn’t old enough nor strong enough then.  He would be later, but he hadn’t reached his growth and my sister had.  Every time that Peter would fall behind my sister, Teed would take him out and buckle him down to a log with a leather strap and stand ’way back and then he would lay that long cowhide down, up and down his back.  He would split it open with every stroke and the blood would run down.  The last time he turned Peter loose, Peter went to my sister and asked her for a rag.  She thought he just wanted to wipe the blood out of his face and eyes, but when she gave it to him, he fell down dead across the potato ridges.