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Lue Anna Brown Sanders Clark & Isaac Sanders
 
Born in 1892 in Kenucky, Mrs. Clark lived over 100 years. She has strong memories of her father who was born a slave house boy in the home of his master and father. She recalls much about turn of the century social life, politics and racial identity. She came to Bloomington in 1916 and has clear memories of the community at the early period. Later she boarded ISNU students in her home aiding them in their efforts to graduate from college.

Isaac Sanders left the employ of the Adlai Stevenson family in the early 1900's to try his hand at the restaurant business. He had a restaurant on South Main Street in Bloomington. Later he ran what was called the Working Man's Club on West Washington, also in Bloomington. In 1917, he married the much younger Lue Anna Brown. He gave up his business activity when the club closed in 1919.
 
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Transcription of Oral History - Tape 1
 
 
Narrator: Lue Anna Brown Sanders Clark
Interviewers: Mildred Pratt and Stephanie Shaw
Date: 1986
Side A
MP All right, would you tell us your full name Ms. Clark?
AC Lue Anna Clark
MP When were you born, Ms. Clark?
AC 1892.
MP Where?
AC Ballard County, Kentucky.
MP Valley (sic) County, Kentucky?
AC Un-huh.
SS Could you tell us about your family and life there in Kentucky? Did you grow up there?
AC Yeah, I grew up there. My mother died when I was five years old, and my father and my older sister raised me. And so I stayed there until I was twelve years old.
MP How many brothers and sisters did you have?
AC I had two brothers and one sister.
MP What did your father do for a living?
AC He was a farmer. He worked for kind of a sharecropper farm. It was a farm, but it wasn't big enough to-he had to go out to work for other farmers, too. It wasn't big enough to feed the family.
SS Did you children help on the farm? Did you and your sisters and brothers help on the farm?
AC Yes, my brother and sister did. I didn't do much, because I was afraid of everything.
MP You were the baby?
AC I wasn't the baby, but they kind of babied me 'cause I stayed in the house most of the time.
SS Did you start school in Kentucky? You went to a public school?
AC Yes, I just went to eighth grade.
MP Tell us about that. Was that a large school? Was it an all Black school?
AC It was an all Black school, a small school. I have pictures of it. The school wasn't a very good school. It was just six months.
MP Six months a year?
SS So the farm children could work on the farm the rest of the year?
AC Un-huh. Six months. Then when there was anything to do at home, we'd always have to-probably once a week we'd have to take a day off.
MP Did your father ever tell you anything about his life experiences?
AC Oh, yes. He told us a lot about it.
MP Could you tell us about anything he told you?
AC He said he was ten years old when the war broke up.
MP The Civil War?
AC Yes, and he was a houseboy on the plantation. His father was white. They sold his mother. He didn't remember his mother too well. All he remembered was that she was a large brown-skinned woman. He thought he had a sister, but he wasn't sure. They sold his mother and kept him as a houseboy.
MP What state was that in, that he grew up as a houseboy? Did he tell you what state that was?
AC I think it was Tennessee.
MP And so he worked as a houseboy?
AC Yes.
MP Anything else you remember?
AC They used to have barrels of sugar, barrels of white sugar and barrels of brown sugar. So he used to take some of the white sugar and take it down to the cabins where the other people, you know, the slaves lived. And they began to miss the sugar. He couldn't write. So they'd write on the sugar, and he couldn't take no more down there.
SS They would write on top of the actual sugar, in the sugar?
AC Right.
SS He'd have to mess up the writing if he took anything.
AC Right, so he couldn't take any more down there.
MP That's interesting.
AC All they had was the brown sugar and molasses. And he said he was just a small boy. This woman would have company and his job was to-I don't know if you want me to tell this or not, but his job was to-there was a big rocking chair like that. She would sit in the rocking chair and rock. She would pick a louse out of her hair-everybody had lice at that time-and hand it back to him to kill. She was entertaining her guests. (soft laughter)
MP That's strange.
AC He said they were nice to him, but he was so small, you know, but if she had company, he'd have to sit behind this rocking chair and she'd pinch up there.
SS Are there any other things that you remember about your father's family or in his early life or in your own family life?
AC No, I didn't know any of his people. But my mother's people, I met some of them after I was grown.
MP Is that right?
AC They lived in Missouri.
SS How did you eventually meet them after you grew up?
AC Well, there was a carnival in Cairo, Illinois, and my sister had been writing to them, and they said they was coming to this carnival. And so we went down there, and that's where we met at. I met my aunt and her family. She had about five or six large grown children.
SS How old were you when you met him?
AC I must of been about sixteen-fourteen, fifteen, sixteen or something like that. Then I kind of kept up with them. Some of them live in Peoria, Chicago, and down in Saint Louis. I kind of kept up with the kids afterwards.

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