Memories of Fred Douglass

“I knowed Fred Douglass.  I shook hands with him and talked with him here in Little Rock.  They give him the opera house.  We had the first floor.  The white folks had the gallery.  That was when the Republicans were in power.

“He said:  ’They all seem to be amazed and dumbfounded over me having a white woman for a wife.’  He said, ’You all don’t know that my father was my mother’s master and she was as black as a crow.  Don’t it seem natural that history should repeat itself? have often wondered why he liked such a black woman as my mother.  I was jus’ a chip off the old block.’

Voting

“I voted for U.S.  Grant.  He was the first President we had after the Civil War.  I shook hands with him twice in Little Rock.  He put up at the Capitol Hotel and I was a-cooking there.

“I voted for McKinley.  I saw him too.  I had a walking cane with his head on it.  That is about all I remember right now.  He was the one that got up this gold standard.  He liked to put this state under bayonet laws when he was working under that gold standard.  The South was bitterly against him.

Occupation

“I followed cooking all my life.  I have had the white peoples’ lives in my hand all my life.  I worked on the Government boat, Wichita.  It went out of season and they built a boat called the Arkansas.  I cooked on it.  Captain Griffin was the master of it.  When it went out of service, Captain Newcome from the War Department transferred me over to the Mississippi River on the Arthur Hider (?).  My headquarters were in Greenville, Mississippi.  It was far from home, so after nine months I quit and came home (Little Rock).  Captain Van Frank give me a position on a dredge boat and the people were so bad on there I wouldn’t stay.  I came away.  I wouldn’t stay ’mongst ’em.

Religion

“I want you to know that I am a Christian and I want you to know I ain’t got no compromise with nobody on God’s word.  I ain’t got but one way and that is the way Jesus said: 

Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  He that believeth on me shall be saved.

You all fix anything anyway you want.  I ain’t bothered ’bout you.

“My people were good Christian people.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  John Patterson, Helena, Arkansas
Age:  74

“I was born near Paducah, Kentucky.  Mother was never sold.  She belong to Master Arthur Patterson.  Mother was what folks called black folks.  I never seen a father to know.  I never heard mother say a thing about my father if I had one.  He never was no use to me nor her neither.  Mother brought me here in time of the Civil War.  I was four years old.  We come here to be kept from the Yankee soldiers.  We was sent with some of the Pattersons.  At the end of the war mother cooked for Nick Rightor (?) and his wife here in North Helena.  He was a farmer but his son is a ear, eye, nose specialist.