s a
Creek negro and the first preacher I ever heard preach. Everybody
ought to be in the church and ready for that better home on the other
side.

All the old slaves I know are dead excepting two, and I will be going
pretty soon I reckon, but I'm glad I lived to see the day the Negroes
get the right treatment if they work good and behave themselves right.
They don't have to have no pass to walk abroad no more, and they can
all read and write now, but it's a tarnation shame some of them go and
read the wrong kind of things anyways.

Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves
10-19-38
1,534 words

TOM W. WOODS
Age 83.
Alderson, Okla.

Lady, if de nigger hadn't been set free dis country wouldn't ever been
what it is now! Poor white folks wouldn't never had a chance. De slave
holders had most of de money and de land and dey wouldn't let de poor
white folks have a chance to own any land or anything else to speak
of. Dese white folks wasn't much better off den we was. Dey had to
work hard and dey had to worry 'bout food, clothes and shelter and we
didn't. Lots of slave owners wouldn't allow dem on deir farms among
deir slaves without orders from de overseer. I don't know why, unless
he was afraid dey would stir up discontent among de niggers. Dere was
lots of "underground railroading" and I rekon dat was what Old Master
and others was afraid of.

Us darkies was taught dat poor white folks didn't amount to much.
Course we knowed dey was white and we was black and dey was to be
respected for dat, but dat was about all.

White folks as well as niggers profited by emancipation. Lincoln was a
friend to all poor white folks as well as black ones and if he could
a' lived things would a'been different for ever'body.

Dis has been a good old world to live in. I always been able to make a
purty good living and de only trouble I ever had has been sickness and
death. I've had a sight of dat kind of trouble. I've outlived two
wives and eight children. I had 13 brothers and sisters and I was de
oldest, and I'm de only one left.

I sits here at night by myself and gits to wondering what de good
Lord is sparing me for. I reckon it's for some good reason, and I'd
like to live to be a hundred if He wants me to. I'm not tired of
living yet!

I was born in Florence, Alabama. My father's name was Thomas Woods and
my mammy was Frances Foster. Mammy belonged to Wash Foster and father
was owned by Moses Woods, who lived on an adjoi