How Freedom Came

“According to my remembrance the Yankees come around and told the people they was free.  I was in Alexandria, Louisiana.  They told the colored folks they was free and to go and take what they wanted from the white folks.  They had us all out in the yard dancing and playing.  They sang the song: 

  ’They hung Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree
   While we all go marching on.’

It wasn’t the white folks on the plantation that told us we was free.  It was the soldiers their selves that came around and told us.  We called ’em Yankees.

Right After the War

“Right after the War, my folks farmed—­raised cotton and corn.  My mother had died before I left Alabama.  They claimed I was four years old when my mother died in Alabama.  My father died after freedom.

Occupation

“My first occupation was farming—­you know, field work.  Sometimes I used to work around the white people too—­clean house and like that.

Random Opinions

“The white folks ain’t got no reason to mistreat the colored people.  They need us all the time.  They don’t want no food unless a nigger cooks it.  They want niggers to do all their washing and ironing.  They want niggers to do their sweeping and cleaning and everything around their houses.  The niggers handle everything they wears and hands them everything they eat and drink.  Ain’t nobody can get closer to a white person than a colored person.  If we’d a wanted to kill ’em, they’d a all done been dead.  They ain’t no reason for white people mistreating colored people.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Alice Bratton, Wheatley, Arkansas
Age:  56

“I was born a few miles from Martin, Tennessee.  Mama was born in Virginia.  She and her sister was carried off from the Witherspoon place and sold.  She was Betty and her sister was named Addie.

“Their mama had died and some folks said they would raise them and then they sold them.  She said they never did know who it was that carried them off in a big carriage.  They brought them to Nashville, Tennessee and sold them under a big oak tree.  They was tied with a hame string to a hitching ring.  Addie wanted to set down and couldn’t.  She said, ‘Betty, wouldn’t our mama cry if she could see us off like this?’ Mama said they both cried and cried and when the man come to look at them he said he would buy them.  They felt better and quit crying.  He was such a kind looking young man.

“They lived out from Nashville a piece then.  He took them home with him, on a plank across the wagon bed.  He was Master Davy Fuller.  He had a young wife and a little baby.  Her name was Mistress Maude and the baby was Carrie.  She was proud of Betty and Addie.  They told her their mama died.  Mama said she was good to them.  She died the year of the surrender and Master Davy took them all to his mother’s and his papa put them out to live with a family that worked on his place.