Rachel Perkins
From:
Arkansas
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Rachel Perkins, Goodwin, Arkansas
Age: ? Baby during the Civil War
"I was born in Greensboro, Alabama. Sallie Houston and Peter Houston was
my parents. They had two girls and a boy. They died when they was small,
but me. They always told me mother died when I was three days old in the
cradle. I don't fur a fact know much about my own people. Miss Agnes
took me to raise me fur a house girl. She nursed me wid her Mary. My
mother's and father's owners was Alonso Brown and Miss Agnes Brown.
Their two girls was Mary and Lucy and their three boys was Bobby, Jesse,
and Frank. Miss Agnes rocked the babies to sleep in a big chair out on
the gallery. We slept there all night. Company come and say, 'Where the
babies?' Miss Agnes take them back and show us off. They say, 'Where the
little black chile?' They'd try to get me to come go live wid them. They
say they be good to me. I'd tell 'em, 'No, I stay here.' It was good a
home as I wanted. We slept on the front gallery till Lucy come on, then
we had sheep skin pallets. She got the big chair. She put us out there
because it was cool.
"I left Miss Agnes when I got to be my own woman. Didn't nobody toll me
off. I knowed I ought to go to my own race of people. They come after me
once. Then they sent the baby boy after me what I had nursed. I wanted
to go but I never went. Miss Lucy and Miss Mary both in college. It was
lonesome for me. I wanted to go to my color. I jus' picked up and walked
on off.
"My girl is half Indian. I'm fifteen years older than my girl. Then I
married Wesley Perkins, my husband. He is black fur a fact. He died last
fall. I married at my husband's brother's by a colored preacher. Tom
Screws was his name. He was a Baptist preacher.
"I never went to school a day in my life. I can't read. I can count
money. Seem lack it jus' come natural. I never learned it at no one
time. It jus' come to me.
"In warm weather I slept on the gallery and in cold weather I slept by
the fire. I made down my own bed. I cleaned the house. I took the cows
off to the pasture. I nursed the babies, washed and dried the dishes. I
made up the beds and cleaned the yards.
"Master Brown owned two farms. He had plenty hands on his farms. I did
never go down to the farms much but I knowed the hands. On Saturday
little later than other days they brought the stock to the house and
fed. Then they went to the smokehouse for their rations. He had a great
big garden, strawberries, and grape arbors.
"One thing I had to do was worm the plants. I put the worms in a bottle
and leave it in the row where the sun would dry the worms up. When a
light frost come I would water the plants that would wilt before the sun
riz and ag'in at night. Then the plants never felt the frost. Certainly
it didn't kill 'em. It didn't hurt 'em.
"Julane was the regular milk woman. She milked and strained the milk. I
churned and 'tended to the chickens. Miss Agnes sot the hens her own
self. She marked the eggs with a piece of charcoal to see if other hens
laid by the setting hen. If they did she'd take the new egg out of the
nest.
"We had flower gardens. We had mint, rosemary, tansy, sage, mullen,
catnip, horseradish, artichokes, hoarhound--all good home remedies.
"I never knowed when we moved to that farm. I was so small. I heard Miss
Agnes Brown say I was a baby when they moved to Boldan depot, not fur
from Clinton, Mississippi.
"When I left Miss Agnes I went to some folks my own color on another
farm 'joining to their farm. Of course I took my baby. I took Anna and I
been living with Anna ever since. What I'd do now without her. (Anna is
an Indian and very proud of being half Indian.) My husband done dead.
"I get eight dollars welfare help. And I do get some commodities. Anna
does all right but she got hit on the shoulder and about lost use of her
arm. One of the railroad hands up here got mad and hit her. I had
doctors. They done it a little good. It's been hurt three years or more
now.
"I wisht I knowd where to find a bed of mullen. Boil it down to a syrup
and add some molasses, boil that down. It makes a good syrup for coughs
and colds.
"I never went to white folks' church none hardly. Miss Agnes sent me
along with her cook to my own color's church.
"My husband sure was good to me. We never had but one fight. Neither one
whooped.
"This young generation is going backward. They tired of training. They
don't want no advice. They don't want to work out no more. They don't
know what they want. I think folks is trifling than they was when I come
on. The times is all right and some of the people. I'm talking about
mine and yo' color both."
Next:
Dinah Perry
Previous:
Marguerite Perkins
