
          Sixty five Years in Eufaula
          By Frost, DavidDavid Frost
          Vol. 7, No. 3, 1985, pp. 30-37
          
          I am DAVID FROST, Jr.
          This is an account of my life in Eufaula, Alabama and my family
struggle for survival.
          This account parallels the struggles of Blacks in the rural south
during this period. It presents a series of my experiences and is
written with the dialect and grammatically terms of the section in
question, and in my own tongue.
          My New Year's resolution for 1977 was to finish writing the story
of my life, and the history of my family tree. I have started to write
several times in the past, but I stopped. Now I plan to write every
time I get a chance.
          I was born January 22, 1917. So I have a long story to write. Maybe
I can get it all in one book. I can remember back to the time I was
three years old.
          It was two things in particular that had lasting effect on my
life.
          No. 1--Watching my parents make moonshine in our back yard in a
washpot, which I will write about later on in this
book. No. 2--Listening to my parents tell the story of 

Willie Jenkins
being lynched here in Barbour County? And how the Peterson boy was
lynched here in Eufaula. My parents would tell it just like it had
just happened.
          However, later on I learned that the Peterson boy had been Lynched
a little before I was born.
          The Hegley girl (colored) worked for some white people on Cherry
Street here in Eufaula. The Peterson boy was her boyfriend. Every
night, the Peterson boy would meet his girl friend and walk her home
from work. The streets were not lit up with lights like they are now
and the Peterson boy would wait out in the street until his girlfriend
get off work and then they would walk home.
          But this particular night, a white girl came out the house. She was
walking straight toward him like his girlfriend had been doing and he
did not know she was white. Thinking that it was his girlfriend, he
said, "Here I am."
          It frightened the white girl because she was not expecting anybody
to be out there. So she screamed, which frightened the Peterson boy
and he ran away.
          The Peterson boy lived on the Bluff on the Chattahoochie River here
in Eufaula. A mob got together, led by Dr. Britt, who- also lived on
Cherry Street and they went to the Peterson's boy's home and took him
away from his parents and sisters and brothers, tied him behind a
wagon, and dragged him through the streets of Eufaula and took him out
near Pleasant Grove Baptist Church. They took him and castrated him
and hanged him on a large oak tree and they shot him to death.
          In those days, when I was young, you could hear talk of white
people lynching a colored person every week. I heard that in 1882
Tuskegee started to keeping records of lynchings in the United
States. I wonder if Tuskegee has the record of the of the Peterson
boy? Of course, I know it was many more lynchings that I did not hear
about.
          Listening to my parents tell about the lynching of the Peterson boy
made me very afraid of white people. My mother taught me never to
touch a white woman.
          We lived five miles out the city of Eufaula on the Old Batesville
Road. Going back and forward to town, we had to go through a place
called Prime Bottom where a white man named Mr. John Brown and his
wife used to run a store. Most of the time we would stop our wagon by
the store and buy some things. One particular time we stopped and my
mother had to hold the mule. She gave me a nickel and a stone jug and
told me to go in the store and get a gallon of kerosene. I went in the
store and the white woman drew the kerosene and went to hand it to me
and her hand almost touched my hand and I dropped the jug of kerosene
and broke it because I did not want that white lady to touch
me. Mrs. Brown got another jug and gave us another gallon of
kerosene. When I got back on the wagon, I got a good scolding from my
mother for breaking the kerosene. I could not understand me being so
afraid of white people and my mother was not.
          My mother, Mary Bishop Frost, and my father, Samuel David Frost,
Sr. married in 1916. In 1918 my parents rented a farm on the Brown
place which joins the Major Frost plantation and when I first remember
myself, my parents had a mule named Ada and a one-horse wagon and my
mother was doing the farming and my father was working at the
sawmill. I haven't been able to figure out how my mother did so much
work and, at the same time, having a baby every year. In 1919, I had
another brother born in October. At that time, I was just beginning to
remember things. My mother would take us to field on a wagon and leave
me and my sister on the wagon in a cotton basket while she picked
cotton.
          After my mother had worked all day and my father had worked all day
at the sawmill, my mother would cook and we would eat and when our
beer was ready to run, which was in a 30 gallon barrel in the closet
in the house, my parents would take it out of the house in the
backyard and cook it in a washpot and run it through a pipe about as
big as my finger and about half as long as I am tall. Sometime they
would work all night and make enough to drink. I would stay awake and
watch as much as I could.
          A little before I was six years old, my parents stopped making
moonshine for a while. My father bought a two horse wagon and by this
time he had two mules, one named Maude and the other one named
Rhodie. My father began to haul lumber for Hicks Lumber Company. I
always got to go with my father.
          We had to go through Eufaula and go through the covered bridge that
reached across the Chattahoochie River to go to the Georgia side. We
would always leave home before day in the morning. When day broke, I
would be up on the lumber hack shelving lumber down to my father for
him to load on the wagon. Every piece of lumber he loaded on that
wagon, I shelved down to him.
          Sometimes it would be so cold and frost all over the ground that
father would make a fire to warm by. My hands 

would be so cold, I
could hardly get down off the lumber hack to warm them. My mother
bought me a little pair of brown gloves which helped a little but that
lumber soon tore them up.
          On my sixth birthday, my mother told my father that she wanted me
to stay home and help her because she wanted to make me a birthday
cake. They had an argument because my father told her he needed me to
help him work. However, my mother won the argument and my father
agreed to let me stay home with mother and she cooked me a birthday
cake and that seemed to be the happiest day of my life. That was the
first time in my life I had got enough cake to eat.
          In February, 1923, my parents started to buying a small farm from
Mr. Ray Irby, who was a very fine man and always helped us. My parents
built a small two-room house of rough green lumber from the
sawmill. Everybody in the community helped and they built the house in
one day, except for the chimney which took a little longer. However,
when that lumber dried, it was cracks in the house everywhere. My
mother solved that problem by getting some paste board boxes and
sealing the house.
          That year my father went up north to Pittsburg to work in the steel
mill. Before my father left, he hired our cousin Charlie Jackson to
work and plow for us while he was away. Charlie was about eleven or
twelve years old at that time.
          We would work on the farm up until Thursday night. On Friday,
Charlie and I would take the mules and wagon and go haul a load of
lumber to the plainer mill at Lugo to get some money to help out. My
father would send money from up north, but it seemed that we would
always be in a tight.
          In 1924, my father went back up north to work for the last time. He
came back before the year was out and started to work for Reeves and
Marshall Wholesale.
          Along about then, a whole lot happened. My father started back to
making moonshine and he bought his first car for $10.00. It was a 1914
Model T Ford.
          We children would get to go to town often after my father got that
car because he would carry us along to help push up those hills and
for us to fix flat tires.
          We had our small moonshine still and we would make moonshine at
night, sometimes a quart, sometimes a half-gallon, and when we started
to make a gallon at the time, we thought we were in big business.
          Along about this time, we were still farming, also cutting and
hauling firewood to town to sell. Also burning and selling
charcoal. Also my mother would raise chickens. Every Saturday, my
mother would carry two fryers to town to sell to Mrs. Hicks for 25
cents each. That was a lot of money. The rest of the people would pay
my mother only 15 cents a chicken.
          It was against the law to have any kind of whiskey. Only the rich
white people could have whiskey and the law would not bother them.
          About the time, a white man bought my father a copper still and
taught my father how to make good moonshine. The white man would bring
my father sugar to make whiskey. Sometimes our house would be full of
white people with their girlfriends, drinking moonshine.
          We were always afraid of the law, but when these white people were
at our house they told us we did not have anything to worry about and
the law never came. However, if a crowd of colored people gathered up
around our house we would always see the law coming. Of course, when
we saw the law coming, my parents would give one of us children the
whiskey to run to the opposite side of the house from the way the law
was coming and we would run and hide the moonshine in the woods.
          One time, some of us children were in the yard and one of the laws,
Mr. Marshall Williams, told us to go in the house. However, I did not
go fast enough for him, so he kicked me. I turned around and hit him
upside his head as hard as I could. Then the whole gang came after
me. I could not get in the house, so I ran under the house. While they
were figuring out how to get me out, my father came back. I came out
then because I was now ready to fight.
          Mr. Williams told my father, "David, that boy you got yonder ain't
got good sense. I told him to go in the house and he acted like he
didn't want to go, so I kicked his butt and he turned around and hit
me and if it had not been for the good Lord, I would have killed
him."
          My father told him, "That's something I don't do, kick any of my
children and don't you kick any of them."
          Mr. Williams asked my father, "Is you got good sense?" Mr. Williams
told my father, "You teach that boy how to act when white people come
around because I don't want to hurt him."
          Somewhere down the line, after I stopped being afraid of white
people, I began to hate most white people.
          It is many colored people in their graves because they forgot to
say sir to a white man. I remember one my uncles who forgot to say sir
to a white man and the white 

man wanted to kill him. From that day on,
my uncle and me stayed as far away from the man as we could. The man
is now dead and so is my uncle.
          However, all the colored people did not always lose when they came
face to face with a white man.
          I remember Bishop D. Ward Nichols in St. Luke A.M.E. Church in
Eufaula, telling how everybody, no matter how little you think of
them, is good for something. He said once he was in a small town in
Florida, and his sister had been telling him how the white people
there were and they did not like to see colored people dress up. He
said he had to catch the train at a small station where they had to
stand outside. He said a white man came up cursing every colored
person that was there. He said the man started on just the opposite
end of where he was and came toward him, cursing and asking the
colored people where they were going. He said he was the Bishop and he
was very scared and he did not know what he was going to tell the
white man when he got to him. But, he said, just before the white man
got to him, it was a colored man sitting down that did not look like
he was fit for anything. The white man cursed him and asked him where
he was going, old nigger. The colored person did not say anything. The
white man asked again, "I say, where are you going, old nigger?"
          The colored man said, "I was going to Atlanta, but if you call me a
nigger again, I will be going to hell and I will send you on in front
of me."
          In 1932, all the people that owed the bank were being foreclosed
on. The bank was taking everything they had. When they came to our
house, my mother was in the bed sick. Mr. Beasley was the boss, so he
came in the house and told my mother how sorry he was to have to take
the little we had, which was a little corn and one mule. In the
meantime, while he was talking to my mother, he had already sent
Mr. Edmond Drewery and the other man with him to our lot to catch our
mule.
          In the meantime, Mr. Beasley was walking out the house. We told
mother that they had caught our mule. I had never seen my mother get
out of the bed and put her clothes on so fast before in my life. By
the time Mr. Beasley got out of the house and in the yard, my mother
was out there too and told them to take the bridle off that mule and
put her back in the lot. They got mad with my mother but she and all
of us was ready to fight. That same day, they took everything from my
grandfather, including his mule, wagon and buggy. That same day, they
went and cleaned out my great-uncle, Rev. Lee Jackson. Mr. Beasley
told Rev. Jackson that he had never seen such a nigger as my mother
before, but he was going back and take every chair out of her
house. Well, that has been 45 years and he hasn't been back yet.
          When my father was in prison, we still tried to make moonshine
whenever we could get as much as 10 lbs. of sugar. My mother would
send us children to make moonshine. We would make such a poor grade
until our mother had to go with us and try her hand. However, we all
failed and were no longer able to buy sugar, so we had to stop.
          That year, 1932, coming up to the 28th of May, at night we ate
everything in the house for supper. My mother thought all of us were
asleep, I heard my mother praying and asking God to please make a way
out of no way for us to get some food. I could not sleep all that
night, laying in the bed and wondering how we were going to get our
next meal of food.
          However, soon the next morning, my mother's prayer was answered. My
Uncle Henry Bishop came by and bought a yearling cow from my mother to
barbecue at Cedar Hill Church, celebrating the 28th day of May. The
cow weighed about 300 or 400 lbs. My mother sold the cow for $3.00. In
those days $3.00 was a lot of money. My mother took that $3.00 and
went to town and bought enough groceries to last a long time. My
mother knew how to make the groceries last. We never had quite enough
to eat, but it was enough to 

keep us alive.
          In our section, we did not celebrate the first of January, when we
were freed from slavery. We all celebrated the 28th of May. My mother
said, although we were freed January 1, we did not find out that we
were free until the 28th of May, and that is why we celebrate that
day. Along about this time, the government was giving away some dark
brown flour. When my mother found out about it, she would walk to town
and stand in line all day long and if she was lucky, they would give
her a 24 lb. sack of flour.
          When my father did get out of prison in August 1932, we were
gathering our crop (pulling fodder). We were thinking that things were
going to get better as soon as my father got home, but it did not work
that way because my father could not find a job and the $10.00 that
they gave him when he left prison was soon gone.
          However, my father soon got hold of 25 lbs. of sugar and he went in
with Mr. John Walker and he started back to making moonshine. Mr. John
Walker was the father of Lloyd Walker. Mr. Walker was old and a former
slave, but he knew how to make good moonshine.
          While we were sitting around the still watching the moonshine run,
Mr. Walker would tell us how things happened back there in slavery
times. Mr. Walker said they would fasten his mother up with a large,
big-limbed man and force her to breed from him. He said if she did not
want to have the man, they would take her out and beat her and put her
back with him. He said his mother had no other choice. He said his
mother had three sets of children and her master sold all of them
except him. He said he was sickly and looked puny and no one would buy
him. He said his master sold one baby out of her mother's arms to a
man in Geneva, Alabama. He said they never saw him again. Mr. Walker
said the plantation he lived on, when it rained, the slaves would
sing, "more rain, more rest." The master would ask what they said,
they said, "more rain, grass grow."
          In 1938, I married Lillian Catherine Webb. She was a schoolmate of
mine and a playmate. She went on to finish school, but I had to stop
halfway through the seventh grade and go to work. Me being the oldest
of 12 children was rough in those days.
          After I married, I got me a job at the sawmill, working for
Mr. Woodney Lawrence for $1.00 a day. I never could make ends meet, so
I put me up a small still of my own, making two and three gallons of
moonshine at a time. I would work at the sawmill at day and at night,
once a week, I would make moonshine.
          In 1939, somebody told the law that I had a whole lot of people
around me on the weekend and I was making a lot of money. So the law
set out to catch me to get some of the whole lot of money that they
thought I was making.
          One day the law came to our house searching for moonshine. After
they could not find any, they went around my yard and in my crib and
picked up all the empty bottles and jugs they could find and told me
they were going to take me down and let me pay them a little fine
because they had heard I was making a lot of money and I ought not
mind paying a little fine. I told them that I was not going with
them.
          They told me, "Oh yes you are." And told me to go in to the house
and put on my shoes. I went in the house like they told me, but I did
not come back out. I got my rifle and stepped out the back door and
went down through the woods. By that time, my wife had fainted and a
crowd had gathered around my house.
          The law gave my father a bond for me to sign and told him to tell
me when to come to court. They told my father they were not going to
hurt me because I did not have good sense. My good judgement told me
that they were mad at me and I should stay out of their way until
court.
          However, my cousin Elijah Snipes told me that he knew where a
fortune teller named Rev. Gardner could fix me so the law could not
bother me and they could not convict me in court. My cousin Elijah
took me to Rev. Gardner. Rev. Gardner told my fortune. I mean he told
me a lot of lies. He told me to give him a dime out my pocket. He took
the dime and took some kind of little roots and sprinkled some kind of
powder on it and he sewed it up in a small rag with my dime which make
a joe-moe. Rev. Gardner told me to take my joe-moe and wear it in the
toe of my shoe and when the law saw me, they would look the other
way. He also told me to catch him nine ants and bring them to him and
when the day of the trial come, he would fix those ants and take them
to the courthouse and the judge could not convict me. Rev. Gardner
charged me $3.00, which was over a half week's work at that time.
          Me being very young, I believed what Rev. Gardner told me and the
next day, I went to town. Two of the city police saw me and they did
not look the other way, like Rev. Gardner said they would. They
arrested me and took me to 

the jailhouse and told me to get out the
car and, as I was getting out the car, one of the laws knocked me down
and got in my stomach, stomped and kicked me until I was almost
unconscious. Then they put me in jail and told me they were teaching
me some sense. A few minutes later, they sent Mr. Bill Irby to turn me
out.
          That day, I started to planning and trying to figure out how I
could get all the white together who had mistreated me and kill all of
them at one time. I was never able to figure out how to get all those
people together at one time, because more than a dozen people had
mistreated me. I knew that if I killed all those people, some of them
would kill me. But I figured it was worth it.
          However, all that hate I had bunded up against white people have
disappeared now. In fact, it all did not disappear until years later
when Dr. King continued to teach to love everybody. I have found out
that I am a combination of Dr. King and Malcolm X because I will also
fight like Malcolm X would.
          
          The Supreme Court passed
the law in 1954 that the schools had to be integrated. I was at PTA
one night and Dr. T. J. Lee got up in the meeting and said the Supreme
Court had ruled that the schools be integrated and we should prepare
our children to be ready to go to integrated schools. The people
started grumbling and told Mrs. Smith to make Dr. Lee sit his crazy
self down because he knew very well that no colored and white was
going to school together in the South.
          Soon after the Supreme Court ruling, the white people got very busy
in Eufaula to buy up all the colored people's property that was close
to the school. They also built the colored a new school which was
better than the white school.
          In the meantime, I was still living in the country, but I owned
some property close to the white school in Eufaula and the Housing
Authority was trying to buy my property for only $3,200. I had heard
about Thurgood Marshall and I tried to get the group to hire him for
our lawyer. However, we contacted Mr. W. C. Patton of Birmingham and
he advised us to hire Atty. Fred D. Gray of Montgomery. We did hire
Atty. Gray.
          That was when I got a chance to meet the great Dr. M. L. King
Jr. At that time, he was at his home getting well from the stab wound
he got from that woman in New York.
          Atty. Fred Gray sent me, Rev. Lee Holmes, Rev. Adolph Cuming, and
Mr. Steven Tate by his home to see Dr. King.
          In the meantime, Atty. Patterson had outlawed the N.A.A.C.P. in
Alabama and most of the colored people were afraid to mention the name
of the N.A.A.C.P. in Eufaula, but I was not. We had to stop having our
meetings and stop paying our dues in Eufaula. That was in November,
1957. I took me out a life membership in New York. So far as I know, I
am the only lifetime member of the N.A.A.C.P. in Eufaula
la. Atty. Fred D. Gray went to work for us here in Eufaula la and,
although the white people were able to get the colored people from
around the white school, they had to pay all of us a fair price for
our property.
          In the meantime, the State of Alabama had come up with all kinds of
tricks to keep colored people from voting. I took my wife to register
to vote. They took out a book and asked her all kinds of silly
questions and then told her she could not register because she did not
pass. However, my wife and I studied and got the answer to every
question that they asked. So when the board met again in the next two
weeks, we had to drive 20 miles to Clayton to meet the board. When we
got to the board, they would not let me go in with my wife. I had to
stand out in the hall. My wife went in and soon came out. I asked her
did they register her. She said, "No."
          I went to the door and asked why they did not register my wife?
          Mr. Stokes jumped up and pointed his finger in my face and told me
they had examined her and she did not pass and he did not want to hear
any more about it. His face turned red like he wanted to fight.
          My wife said they did not ask the same questions that they had
asked before. They told her they had 200 different questions and they
could ask her any on of them they pleased. I think history will record
that those people at the board acted very childish. However, I came
home that same day and wrote the Justice Department in Washington and
Mr. Stokes did not hear any more about it until they had him in
Federal Court in Montgomery.
          When colored people started to registering to vote and we got
Atty. Fred D. Gray in Eufaula so that we could get a fair price for
our property, it made a lot of white people mad. They would ride by my
house at night and throw rocks on top of my house.
          The white people were determined to block me from making an honest
living, so they sent three carloads of law to 

my night spot on
Saturday night. My place was packed with people. The laws came in with
their rifles and pistols and got in the middle of the crowd and took
his rifle and shot two shots straight through the top of my
building. They then went across the road to my house and started
shooting at my porch light with their pistols and rifles until they
shot holes all in my house and shot out my porch light.
          That did the work for them. My customers stopped coming to my place
and I had to close up. The holes that the law shot in my house and my
night spot are still there for any one to see who wants to.
          When you have the officers of the law enforcing economic pressure
against you, you just cannot make it.
          I had no other choice but to start back making moonshine. I had
spent quite a bit of money building my night spot, so I was determined
to make it pay off. So this time, I put me up a still in the
basement. I would be making moonshine and peeping out the window and
watching the law ride along the highway looking for my still. One of
my white friends told me that the state, county, and city spent many
thousands of dollars trying to catch me and send me to prison. I knew
when I put that still in that building that sooner or later the law
was going to catch me and probably send me to prison. But I figured
that being in prison could not be any worse than being tormented by
the law all the time.
          As I said, I never gave up what I thought was right and I never
gave up trying to get colored people registered to vote, so the law
never gave up harassing me.
          Since they had outlawed the N.A.A.C.P. in Eufaula and the colored
people in Eufaula did not know what to do, so I went to Birmingham to
get some advice from Mr. W. C. Patton. Mr. Patton gave me some
information on how to organize a Barbour County Improvement
Association. I went around and got a group of people to meet me at the
Eufaula Baptist Academy. On a Thursday night, in January, 1962, we met
at the school and organized the Barbour County Improvement
Association. After organizing, they turned around and elected me
president, which I did not want to be. I wanted somebody to be
president that had more education than I had, but everybody was
afraid. So I accepted the job because I did not have enough sense to
be afraid.
          The same night I was at the school and we were organizing the
Association, the law was out to my house, setting a trap to catch
me. My wife told me the dogs were barking all while I was gone. Of
course, the law knew I was gone because they knew better than to hang
around my house at night when I was home.
          The law caught me in that trap the next morning. I had just taken
my five year old daughter to kindergarten school in Eufaula, and I was
supposed to pick her up that afternoon. However, I could not pick her
up because, when I got back home, the law came by and made me unlock
my building and they took me in to the still and put handcuffs on me
and took me to jail.
          While I was in jail my wife said it looked like everybody in town
came out to look at my still and take pictures. There were people at
the jail ready to sign my bond, but one of the deputy sheriffs took
the bond and went off and hid. They wanted to keep me in jail until
they could steal everything from around my house that they could get
their hands on. My wife watched out the window while they broke in my
workshop and took all my tools out. Mr. William Adams was the sheriff
at the time and my wife watched him take my grandfather's scales that
he used to weigh cotton with.
          Those scales had been in the family for many years and the family
wanted me to keep them because they knew I would take care of them. We
asked Mr. Adams for those scales and tools until he died, but he never
gave them back to us. Mr. Adams had a son that is an attorney in
Clayton, Alabama. We are hoping that one day his son will turn those
scales back to the family. We forgive Mr. Adams and the rest of the
laws for taking those other things, but we will never forgive them for
taking those scales.
          Judge Jack Wallace gave me a big surprise at my trial. I was
looking for him to give me a year and a day, like he had been giving
all the other people for making moonshine. But Judge Wallace gave me
three years. Then I realized that the one year was for the moonshine
and the two years were for my Civil Rights activities.
          They sent me to prison in October, 1962. While I was in Clayton
jail, waiting to be sent to Kilby, I started to writing to the
officials in Barbour County, criticizing them for mistreating colored
people. They got very mad with me while I was still in jail. While in
prison, I got a chance to learn a whole lot.
          There I was with all that concrete under my feet and over my head
and steel all around me. I was exactly like Jonah in the belly of the
whale and I did exactly like Jonah did. I began to call on God and God
answered my prayers.
          Soon I had to go before three doctors for them to examine me to see
if I was crazy. When I went before the doctors they had a stack of my
letters that I had wrote to Barbour 

County. They began to read those
letters and asked me questions about them and had me to explain
everything I had wrote on those letters. They also had a book that
they asked me questions out of. I answered all of those questions
correctly. Those doctors began to look at each other and said, "This
man is not crazy." They told me I only wrote facts and the people back
in Barbour could not stand facts. They told me the ones that thought I
was crazy, they were the ones that were crazy. They told me the
trouble was there were some people back in Barbour County that did not
want me back. Of course, I already knew that and I had planned not to
go back to Barbour County when I got out of prison. But I had fooled
on my own self, because as soon as I got out of prison, I went
straight back to Eufaula and Barbour County and I started right back
to making moonshine.
          I did not make moonshine long before the law started tearing up my
still again. But what made me stop making moonshine for good was, I
found out I cannot run fast anymore. Most of the time when I ran, I
caught a cramp and fell out. For that reason, I knew the law would
catch me. I think I will have to stop making moonshine for good.
        