ade dese. We sure kept
healthy and fat.

I will be 83 years of age September 10, 1937 and am enjoying my second
eyesight. I could not see a thing hardly for some few years, but now I
can read sometimes without glasses. I keep my lawn in first class
shape and work all the time. I think this is 'cause I never was
treated bad during slavery.

Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves
[Date stamp: AUG 19 1937]

ALLEN V. MANNING
Age 87
Tulsa, Okla.

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 seem 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 hosses, and if they act like they his work hosses
they git along all right. But if they don't--Oh, oh!

Like the Dixie song say, I was born "on a frosty mornin'" 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 u