Person Interviewed: Allen V. Manning
Location: Tulsa, Oklahoma
Place of Birth: Clarke County Mississippi
Date of Birth: 1850
Age: 87
Occupation: Sells Milk
I always been somewhar in the South, mostly in Texas when I was a young man, and of course us Negroes never got much of a show in court matters, but I reckon if I had of had the chance to set on a jury I would of made a mighty poor out at it.
No sir. I jest can’t set in judgement on nobody, ’cause I learned when I was jest a little boy that good people and bad people, makes no difference which, jest keep on living and doing like they been taught, and I jest can’t seen to blame them none for what they do iffen they been taught that way.
I was born in slavery, and I belonged to a Baptist preacher. Until I was fifteen years old I was taught that I was his own chattel-property, and he could do with me like he wanted to, but he had been taught that way too, and we both believed it. I never did hold nothing against him for being hard on Negroes sometimes, and I don’t think I ever would of had any trouble even if I had of growed up and died in slavery.
The young Negroes don’t know nothing ’bout that today, and lots of them are rising up and amounting to something, and all us Negroes is proud of them. You see, it’s because they been taught that they got as good a show to be something as anybody, if they tries hard.
Well, this old Negro knows one thing; they getting somewheres ’cause the young whitefolks is letting them and helping them to do it, ’cause the whitefolks has been taught the same way, and I praise God its getting to be that way, too. But it all go to show, people do like they been taught to do.
Like I say, my master was a preacher and a kind man, but he treated the Negroes jest like they treated him. He been taught that they was jest like his work bosses, and if they act like they his work bosses they git along all right. But if they don’t Oh, oh!
Like the Dixie song say. I was born “on a frosty Dornin” at the plantation in Clarke County, Mississippi, in the fall of 1850 they tell me. The old place looked the same all the time I was a child. clean up to when me pull out and leave the second year of the war.
I can shet my eyes and think about it and it seen to come right up in front of me jest like it looked. From my Pappy’s cabin the Big House cas off to the rest, close to the big road, and most of the fields stretched off to the north. They was a big patch of woods off to the east, and no much open land between us and the Chickesanhey River. Off to the southwest a few miles was the Bucatunna Crock, and the plantation was kind of in the forks between them, a little ways east of Quitman, Mississippi.
Old Master’s people been living at that place a might long time, and most the houses and barns was old and been repaired time and time again, but it was a mighty pretty place. The Big Eouse was built long, with a lot of rooms all in a row and a long porch, but it wasn’t fine like a lot of the houses we seen as we passed by when we left that place to go to Louisiana.
Old Master didn’t have any overseer hired, but him and his boys looked after the place and had a Negro we called the driver. We-all shore hated that old black man, but I forget his name now. That driver never was allowed to think up nothing for the slaves to do, but jest was told to make them work hard at what the master and his boys told them to do. Whitefolks had to set them at a job and then old driver would whoopity and whoopity around, and egg them and egg them until they finish up, so they can go at something else. He worked hard hisself, though, and set a might hard pattern for the rest to keep up with. Like I say, he been taught he didn’t know how to think, so he didn’t try.
Old Mistress name was Mary, and they had two daughters, Levia and Betty. Then they had three sons. The oldest was named Bill Junior, and he was plumb grown when I was a boy, but the other two, Jedson and Jim, was jest a little older then me.
Old Master didn’t have but two or three single Negroes, but he had several families, and most of them was big ones. My own family was pretty good size, but three of the children was born free. Pappy’s name was William and Mammy’s was Lucy. My brother Joe was the oldest child and then come Adeline, Harriet, and Texana and Betty before the surrender, and then Henry, Hattie and Louisa after it.
When the war come along old Master jest didn’t know what to do. He always been taught not to raise his hand up and kill nobody-no matter how come and he jest kept holding out against all them that was talking about fighting, and he wouldn’t go and fight. He been taught that it was all right to have slaves and treat them like he want to, but he been taught it was sinful to go fight and kill to keep them, and he lived up to what he been taught.
They was some Choctaw people lived ’round there, and they flew up and went right off to the war, and Mr. Trot Hand and Mr. Joe Brown that had plantations on the big road towards Quitman both went off with their grown boys right at the start, but old Master was a preacher and he jest stayed out of it. I remember one day I was sent up to the Big House and I heard old Master and some men out at the gate ’rounding about the war. Some of the man had on soldier clothes, and they acted like they was mad. Somebody tell me later on that they was getting up a home guard because the yankees done got down in Alabama not far away, but old Master wouldn’t go in with them.
Two, three days after that, it seems like, old Master come down to the quarters and say git everything bundled up and in the wagons for a long trip. The Negroes all come in and everybody pitch in to help pack up the wagons. Then old Master look around and he can’t find Andy. Andy was one Negro that never did act like he been taught, and old Master’s patience about wore out with him anyways.
We all know that Andy done run off again, but we didn’t know where to. Leastwise all the Negroes tall old Master that. But old Master soon show us we done the work and he done the thinking! He jest goes ahead and keeps all the Negroes busy firing up the wagons end bundling up the stuff to travel, end keeps us all in his sight all the time, and says nothing about Andy being gone.
Then that night he sends for a white man name Clements that got some blood hounds, and him and Mr. Clements takes time about staying awake and watching all the cabins to see nobody slips out of them. Everybody was afraid to stick their head out.
Early next morning he has all the wagons ready to drive right off. and old Master call Andy’s brother up to him. He say, “You go down to that spring and wait, and when Andy come down to the spring to fill that cedar bucket you stole out’n the smokehouse for him to git water in you tell him to come on in here. Tell him I know he is hiding out way down the branch whar he can come up wading the water clean up to the cornfield and the melon patch, so the hounds won’t git his scent, but I’m going to send the hounds down there if he don’t come on in right now.” Then we all knowed we was for the work and old Master was for the thinking, ’cause pretty soon Andy come on in. He’d been right whar old Master think he is.
About that time Mr. Sears come riding down the big road. He was a deacon in old Master’s church, and he see us all packed up to leave and so he light at the big gate and walk up to whar we is. He ask old Master where we all lighting out for, and old Master say for Louisiana. We Negroes don’t know where that is. Then old deacon say what old Master going to do with Andy, ’cause there stood Mr. Clements holding his bloodhounds and old Master had his cat-o-nine-tails in his hand.
Old Master say just watch him, and he tell Andy if he can make it to that big black gun tree down at the gate before the hounds git him he can stay right up in that tree and watch us all drive off. Then he tell Andy to git!
Poor Andy jest git hold of the bottom limbs when the blood hounds grab him and pull him down onto the ground. Time old Master and Mr. Clements git down there the hounds done tore off all Andy’s clothes and bit him all over bad. He was rolling on the ground and holding his shirt up ’round his throat when Mr. Clements git there and pull the hounds off of him.
Then old Master light in on him with that cat-o-nine-tails, and I don’t know how many lashes he give him, but he jest bloody all over and done fainted pretty soon. Old Deacon Sears stand it as long as he can and then he step up and grab old Master’s arm and say, “Time to stop, Brother! I’m speaking in the name of Jesus!” Old Master quit then, but he still powerful mad. I don’t think he believe Andy going to make that tree when he tell him that.
Then he turn on Andy’s brother and give him a good beating too, and we all drive off and leave Andy setting on the ground under a tree and old Deacon standing by him. I don’t know what ever become of Andy, but I reckon maybe he went and live with old Deacon Sears until he was free
When I think back and remember it. it all seems kind of strange, but it seen like old Master and old Deacon both think the same way. They kind of understand that old Master had a right to beat his Negro all he panted to for running off. and he had a right to set the hounds on him if be did, but he shouldn’t of beat him so hard after he told him he was going let him off if he made the tree, and he ought to keep his word even if Andy was his own slave. That’s the way both them white men had been taught, and that was the way they both lived.
Old Master had about five wagons on that trip down into Louisiana, but they was all fell of stuff and only the old slaves and children could ride in then. I was Big enough to walk most of the time. but one time I walked in the sun so long that I got sick and they put me in the wagon for most the rest of the way.
We would come to places where the people said the Yankees had been end gone, but we didn’t run into any Yankees. They was most to the north of us I reckon, because we went on down to the south part of Mississippi and ferried across the big river at Beton Rouge. Then we went on to Lafayette, Louisiana, before we settled down anywhere.
All us Negroes thought that was a mighty strange place. We would hear whitefolks talking and we couldn’t understand what they said, and lots of the Negroes talked the same way, too. It was all full of French people around Lafayette. but they had all their menfolks in the Confederate Army just the same. I seen lots of men in butternut clothes coming and going higher and you, but they wasn’t in bunches. They was mostly coming home to see their folks.
Everybody was scared all the time, and two-three times when old Master hired his Negroes out to work the man that hired them quit his place and went on west before they got the crop in. But old Master got a place and we put in a cotton crop, and I think he got some money by selling his place in Mississippi. Anyway, pretty soon after the cotton was all in he moves again and goes to a place on Simonette Lake for the winter. It aint a bit cold in that place, and we didn’t have no fire ‘cepting to cook, and sometimes a little charcoal fire in some crock pots that the people left on the place when they went on out to Texas.
The next spring old Master loaded up again and we struck out for Texas, when the Yankees got too close again. But Master Bill didn’t go to Texas, because the Confederates done come that winter and made him go to the army. I think they took him to New Orleans, and old Master was hopping mad, but he couldn’t do anything or they would make him go too, even if he was a preacher.
I think he left out of there partly because he didn’t like the people at that place. They wasn’t no Baptists around anywheres, and they was all Catholics, and old Master didn’t like them..
About that time it look like everybody in the world was going to Texas. When we would be going down the road we would have to walk along the side all the time to let the wagons go past, all loaded with folks going to Texas.
Pretty soon old Master say git the wagons loaded again, and this time we start out with some other people, going north. We go north a while and then turn west, and cross the Sabine River and go to Nachedoches, Texas. Me and my brother Joe and my sister Adeline walked nearly all the way, but my little sister Harriet and my mammy rid in a wagon. Mammy was mighty poorly, and jest when we got to the Sabine bottoms she had another baby. Old Master didn’t like it ’cause it was a girl, but he named her Texana on account of where she was born and told us children to wait on Mammy good and maybe we would get a little brother next time.
But we didn’t. Old Master went with a whole bunch of wagons on out to the prairie country in Coryell County and set up a farm where we just had to break the sod and didn’t have to clear off much. And the next baby Mammy had the next year was a girl. We named her Betty because Mistress jest have a baby a little while before and its name was Betty.
Old Master’s place was right at the corner where Coryell and McHennan and Bosque Counties come together, and we raised mostly cotton and jest a little corn for feed. He seen like he changed a lot since we left Mississippi, and seen like he paid more attention to us and looked after us better. But most the people that already live there when we git there was might hard on their Negroes. They was mostly head drinkers and hard talkers, and they work and fight jest as hard as they talk, too!
One day Old Master come out from town and tell us that we all been set free, and we can go or stay jest as we wish. All of my family stay on the place end he pay us half as shares on all we make. Pretty soon the whitefolks begin to cut down on the shares, and the renters git only a third and some less, and the Negroes begin to drift out to other places, but old Master stick to the halves a year or so after that. Then he come down to a third too.
It seem like the white people can’t git over us being free, and they do everything to hold us down all the time. We don’t git no-schools for a long time, and I never see the inside of a school. I jest grow up on hard work. And we can’t go ’round where they have the voting, unless we want to ketch a whipping some night, and we have to jest keep on bowing and scraping when we are ’round white folks like we did when we was slaves. They had us down and they kept us down. But that was the way they been taught. and I don’t blame them for it none. I reckon.
When I git about thirty years old I marry Betty Sadler close to Waco, and we come up to the Creek Nation forty years ago. We come to Muskogee first, and then to Tulsa about thirty seven years ago.
We had ten children but only seven are alive. Three girls and a boy live here in Tulsa and we got one boy in Muskogee and one at Frederick, Oklahoma.
I sells milk and makes my living, and I keeps so busy I don’t think back on the old days much, but if anybody ask me why the Texas Negroes been kept down so much I can tell them. If they set like I did on the bank at that ferry across the Sabine, and see all that long line of covered wagons, miles and miles of them, crossing that river and going west with all they got left out of the war, it aint hard to understand.
Them whitefolks done had everything they had tore up, or had to run away from the places they lived, and they brung their Negroes out to Texas and then right away they lost them too. They always had them Negroes, and lots of them had mighty fine places back in the old states, and then they had to go out and live in sod houses and little old boxed shotguns and turn their Negroes loose. They didn’t see no justice in it then, and most of them never did until they died. The folks that stayed at home and didn’t straggle all over the country had their old places to live on and their old friends around then, but them Texans was different.
So I says, when they done us the way they did they was jest doing the way they was taught. I don’t blame them, because anybody will do that.
Whitefolks mighty decent to me now, and I always tried to teach my children to be respectful and act like they think the whitefolks they dealing with expects them to act. That the way to git along, because some folks been taught one way and some been taught another, and folks always thinks the way they been taught.
