the ditch." When the slaves got sick we had white doctors,
and we would wait on each other. Drink dock root tea, mullin tea, and
flaxweed tea, but we never wore charms.

I think it's a good thing that slavery's over. It ought to been over a
good while ago. But its going to be slavery all over again if things
don't git better. But I thank God I've been a Christian for 70 years,
and now is a member of Tabernacle Baptist Church and deacon of the
church, and a Christian 'cause the Bible teaches me to be.

That war was a awful thing. I used to pack them soldiers water on my
head, and then I worked at Fort Sill and Fort Dawson in Tennessee.
Those Yankees came by nights--got behind those rebels, and took their
hams, drove horses in the houses, killed their chickens and ate up the
rebels food, but the Yanks didn't bother us niggers.

When freedom come old Master called us all in from the fields and told
us, "All of you niggers are free as frogs now to go wherever you
choose. You are your own man now." We all continued working for him at
$5.00 a month. After the crops were gathered the niggers scattered
out. Some went North--and we would say when they went North that they
had "crossed the water."

I never married 'till after the War. Married at my mother's house
'cause my wife's mother didn't let us marry at her house, so I sent
Jack Perry after her on a hoss and we had a big dinner--and jest got
married.

I am the father of nine children, but jest three is living. One is a
dentist in Muskogge, Dr. Andrew Hutson. All of the children are pretty
well read. We never had schools for niggers until after slavery.

I think Abraham Lincoln was a great man, but I don't know much about
Jeff Davis. Booker T. Washington was a fine man.

Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves
[Date stamp: AUG 16 1937]

WILLIAM HUTSON
Age 98 yrs.
Tulsa, Okla.

When a feller gets as old as me it's a heap easier to forget things
than it is to remember, but I ain't never forgot that old plantation
where good old Doctor Allison lived back there in Georgia long before
the War that brought us slaves the freedom.

I hear the slaves talking about mean masters when I was a boy. They
wasn't talking about Master Allison though, 'cause he was a good man
and took part for the slaves when any trouble come up with the
overseer.

The Mistress' name was Louisa (the same name as the gal I was married
to later after the War), and she was just about as mean