Rev. E. Donald Carr - "A Night in the Snow"

Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.) - "Celtic Fairy Tales"

Vance, Louis Joseph - "The False Faces"

Elinor Glyn - "Man and Maid"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Slave Narratives, Oklahoma

V >> Various >> Slave Narratives, Oklahoma




Maybe the old Master was sickened of whippings from the stories the
slaves told about the plantation that joined ours on the north.

If they ever was a living Devil that plantation was his home and the
owner was It! That's what the old slaves say, and when I tell you
about it see if I is right.

That man got so mean even the white folks was scared of him,
'specially if he was filled with drink. That's the way he was most of
the time, just before the slaves was freed.

All the time we hear about slaves on that place getting whipped or
being locked in the stock--that one of them things where your head and
hands is fastened through holes in a wide board, and you stands there
all the day and all the night--and sometimes we hears of them staying
in the stock for three-four weeks if they trys to run away to the
north.

Sometimes we hears about some slave who is shot by that man while he
is wild with the drink. That's what I'm telling about now.

Don't nobody know what made the master mad at the old slave--one of
the oldest on the place. Anyway, the master didn't whip him; instead
of that he kills him with the gun and scares the others so bad most of
'em runs off and hides in the woods.

The drunk master just drags the old dead slave to the graveyard which
is down in the corner away from the growing crops, and hunts up two of
the young boys who was hiding in the barn. He takes them to dig the
grave.

The master stands watching every move they make, the dead man lays
there with his face to the sky, and the boys is so scared they could
hardly dig. The master keeps telling them to hurry with the digging.

After while he tells them to stop and put the body in the grave. They
wasn't no coffin, no box, for him. Just the old clothes that he wears
in the fields.

But the grave was too short and they start to digging some more, but
the master stop them. He says to put back the body in the grave, and
then he jumps into the grave hisself. Right on the dead he jumps and
stomps 'til the body is mashed and twisted to fit the hole. Then the
old nigger is buried.

That's the way my Mammy hears it and told it to us children. She was a
Christian and I know she told the truth.

Like I said, Mammy was never sold only to Master Jackson. But she's
seen them slave auctions where the men, women and children was
stripped naked and lined up so's the buyers could see what kind of
animals they was getting for their money.

My pappy's name was Jacob Keller and my mother was Maria. They's both
dead long ago, and I'm waiting for the old ship Zion that took my
Mammy away, like we use to sing of in the woods:

"It has landed my old Mammy,
It has landed my old Mammy,
Get on board, Get on board,
'Tis the Old Ship of Zion--
Get on board!"




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

NELLIE JOHNSON


I don't know how old I is, but I is a great big half grown gal when
the time of the War come, and I can remember how everything look at
that time, and what all the people do, too.

I'm pretty nigh to blind right now, and all I can do is set on this
little old front porch and maybe try to keep the things picked up
behing my grandchild and his wife, because she has to work and he is
out selling wood most of the time.

But I didn't have to live in any such a house during the time I was
young like they is, because I belonged to old Chief Rolley McIntosh,
and my pappy and mammy have a big, nice, clean log house to live in,
and everything round it look better than most renters got these days.

We never did call old Master anything but the Chief or the General for
that's what everybody called him in them days, and he never did act
towards us like we was slaves, much anyways. He was the mikko of the
Kawita town long before the War and long before I was borned, and he
was the chief of the Lower Creeks even before he got to be the chief
of all the Creeks.

But just at the time of the War the Lower Creeks stayed with him and
the Upper Creeks, at least them that lived along to the south of where
we live, all go off after that old man Gouge, and he take most of the
Seminole too. I hear old Tuskenugge, the big man with the Seminoles,
but I never did see him, nor mighty few of the Seminoles.

My mammy tells me old General ain't been living in that Kawita town
very many years when I was borned. He come up there from down in the
fork of the river where the Arkansas and the Verdigris run together a
little while after all the last of the Creeks come out to the
Territory. His brother old Chili McIntosh, live down in that forks of
the rivers too, but I don't think he ever move up into that Kawita
town. It was in the narrow stretch where the Verdigris come close to
the Arkansas. They got a pretty good sized white folks town there now
they call Coweta, but the old Creek town was different from that. The
folks lived all around in that stretch between the rivers, and my old
Master was the boss of all of them.

For a long time after the Civil War they had a court at the new town
called Coweta court, and a school house too, but before I was born
they had a mission school down the Kawita Creek from where the town
now is.

Earliest I can remember about my master was when he come to the slave
settlement where we live and get out of the buggy and show a preacher
all around the place. That preacher named Mr. Loughridge, and he was
the man had the mission down on Kawita Creek before I was born, but at
that time he had a school off at some other place. He git down out the
buggy and talk to all us children, and ask us how we getting along.

I didn't even know at that time that old Chief was my master, until my
pappy tell me after he was gone. I think all the time he was another
preacher.

My pappy's name was Jackson McInotsh, and my mammy name was Hagar. I
think old Chief bring them out to the Territory when he come out with
his brother Chili and the rest of the Creek people. My pappy tell me
that old Master's pappy was killed by the Creeks because he signed up
a treaty to bring his folks out here, and old Master always hated that
bunch of Creeks that done that.

I think old man Gouge was one of the big men in that bunch, and he
fit in the War on the Government side, after he done holler and go on
so about the Government making him come out here.

Old Master have lots of land took up all around that Kawita place, and
I don't know how much, but a lot more than anybody else. He have it
all fenced in with good rail fence, and all the Negroes have all the
horses and mules and tools they need to work it with. They all live in
good log houses they built themselves, and everything they need.

Old Master's land wasn't all in one big field, but a lot of little
fields scattered all over the place. He just take up land what already
was a kind of prairie, and the niggers don't have to clear up much
woods.

We all live around on them little farms, and we didn't have to be
under any overseer like the Cherokee Negroes had lots of times. We
didn't have to work if they wasn't no work to do that day.

Everybody could have a little patch of his own, too, and work it
between times, on Saturdays and Sundays if he wanted to. What he made
on that patch belong to him, and the old Chief never bothered the
slaves about anything.

Every slave can fix up his own cabin any way he want to, and pick out
a good place with a spring if he can find one. Mostly the slave houses
had just one big room with a stick-and-mud chimney, just like the poor
people among the Creeks had. Then they had a brush shelter built out
of four poles with a roof made out of brush, set out to one side of
the house where they do the cooking and eating, and sometimes the
sleeping too. They set there when they is done working, and lay around
on corn shuck beds, because they never did use the log house much only
in cold and rainy weather.

Old Chief just treat all the Negroes like they was just hired hands,
and I was a big girl before I knowed very much about belonging to him.

I was one of the youngest children in my family; only Sammy and
Millie was younger than I was. My big brothers was Adam, August and
Nero, and my big sisters was Flora, Nancy and Rhoda. We could work a
mighty big patch for our own selves when we was all at home together,
and put in all the work we had to for the old Master too, but after
the War the big children all get married off and took up land of they
own.

Old Chief lived in a big log house made double with a hall in between,
and a lot of white folks was always coming there to see him about
something. He was gone off somewhere a lot of the time, too, and he
just trusted the Negroes to look after his farms and stuff. We would
just go on out in the fields and work the crops just like they was our
own, and he never come around excepting when we had harvest time, or
to tell us what he wanted planted.

Sometimes he would send a Negro to tell us to gather up some chickens
or turkeys or shoats he wanted to sell off, and sometimes he would
send after loads of corn and wheat to sell. I heard my pappy say old
Chief and Mr. Chili McIntosh was the first ones to have any wheat in
the Territory, but I don't know about that.

Along during the War the Negro men got pretty lazy and shiftless, but
my pappy and my big brothers just go right on and work like they
always did. My pappy always said we better off to stay on the place
and work good and behave ourselves because old Master take care of us
that way. But on lots of other places the men slipped off.

I never did see many soldiers during the War, and there wasn't any
fighting close to where we live. It was kind of down in the bottoms,
not far from the Verdigris and that Gar Creek, and the soldiers would
have bad crossings if the come by our place.

We did see some whackers riding around sometimes, in little bunches
of about a dozen, but they never did bother us and never did stop.
Some of the Negro girls that I knowed of mixed up with the poor Creeks
and Seminoles, and some got married to them after the War, but none of
my family ever did mix up with them that I knows of.

Along towards the last of the War I never did see old Chief come
around any more, and somebody say he went down into Texas. He never
did come back that I knows of, and I think he died down there.

One day my pappy come home and tell us all that the Creek done sign up
to quit the War, and that old Master send word that we all free now
and can take up some land for our own selves or just stay where we is
if we want to. Pappy stayed on that place where he was at until he
died.

I got to be a big girl and went down to work for a Creek family close
to where they got that Checotah town now. At that time it was just all
a scattered settlement of Creeks and they call it Eufaula town. After
while I marry a man name Joe Johnson, at a little settlement they call
Rentesville. He have his freedmen's allotment close to that place, but
mine is up on the Verdigris, and we move up there to live.

We just had one child, named Louisa, and she married Tom Armstrong.
They had three-four children, but one was named Ton, and it is him I
live with now. My husband's been dead a long, long time now.




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

MS. JOSIE JORDAN
Age 75 yrs.
840 East King St.,
Tulsa, Oklahoma.


I was born right in the middle of the War on the Mark Lowery
plantation at Sparta, in White County, Tennessee, so I don't know
anything much about them slave days except what my mammy told me long
years ago. 'Course I mean the Civil War, for to us colored folks they
just wasn't no other war as meanful as that one.

My mother she come from Virginia when a little girl, but never nobody
tells me where at my pappy is from. His name was David Lowery when I
was born, but I guess he had plenty other names, for like my mammy he
was sold lots of times.

Salina was my mammy's name, and she belonged to a Mister Clark, who
sold her and pappy to Mark Lowery 'cause she was a fighting,
mule-headed woman.

It wasn't her fault 'cause she was a fighter. The master who owned her
before Mister Clark was one of them white mens who was always whipping
and beating his slaves and mammy couldn't stand it no more.

That's the way she tells me about it. She just figgured she would be
better off dead and out of her misery as to be whipped all the time,
so one day the master claimed they was something wrong with her work
and started to raise his whip, but mammy fought back and when the
ruckus was over the Master was laying still on the ground and folks
thought he was dead, he got such a heavy beating.

Mammy says he don't die and right after that she was sold to Mister
Clark I been telling you about. And mammy was full of misery for a
long time after she was carried to Mark Lowery's plantation where at
I was born during of the War.

She had two children while belonging to Mister Clark and he wouldn't
let them go with mammy and pappy. That's what caused her misery. Pappy
tried to ease her mind but she jest kept a'crying for her babies, Ann
and Reuban, till Mister Lowery got Clark to leave them visit with her
once a month.

Mammy always says that Mark Lowery was a good master. But he'd heard
things about mammy before he got her and I reckon was curious to know
if they was all true. Mammy says he found out mighty quick they was.

It was mammy's second day on the plantation and Mark Lowery acted like
he was going to whip her for something she'd done or hadn't, but mammy
knocked him plumb through the open cellar door. He wasn't hurt, not
even mad for mammy says he climbed out the cellar a'laughing, saying
he was only fooling to see if she would fight.

But mammy's troubles wasn't over then, for Mark Lowery he got himself
a new young wife (his first wife was dead), and mammy was round of the
house most of the time after that.

Right away they had trouble. The Mistress was trying to make mammy
hurry up with the work and she hit mammy with the broom stick. Mammy's
mule temper boiled up all over the kitchen and the Master had to stop
the fighting.

He wouldn't whip mammy for her part in the trouble, so the Mistress
she sent word to her father and brothers and they come to Mister
Lowery's place.

They was going to whip mammy, they was good and mad. Master was good
and mad, too, and he warned 'em home.

"Whip your own slaves." He told them. "Mine have to work and if
they're beat up they can't do a days work. Get on home--I'll take care
of this." And they left.

My folks didn't have no food troubles at Mark Lowery's like they did
somewheres else. I remember mammy told me about one master who almost
starved his slaves. Mighty stingy I reckon he was.

Some of them slaves was so poorly thin they ribs would kinder rustle
against each other like corn stalks a-drying in the hot winds. But
they gets even one hog-killing time, and it was funny too, mammy said.

They was seven hogs, fat and ready for fall hog-killing time. Just the
day before old master told off they was to be killed something
happened to all them porkers. One of the field boys found them and
come a-telling the master: "The hogs is all died, now they won't be
any meats for the winter."

When the master gets to where at the hogs is laying, they's a lot of
Negroes standing round looking sorrow-eyed at the wasted meat. The
master asks: "What's the illness with 'em?"

"Malitis." They tell him, and they acts like they don't want to touch
the hogs. Master says to dress them anyway for they ain't no more meat
on the place.

He says to keep all the meat for the slave families, but that's
because he's afraid to eat it hisself account of the hogs' got
malitis.

"Don't you-all know what is malitis?" Mammy would ask the children
when she was telling of the seven fat hogs and seventy lean slaves.
And she would laugh, remembering how they fooled the old master so's
to get all them good meats.

"One of the strongest Negroes got up early in the morning," Mammy
would explain, "long 'fore the rising horn called the slaves from
their cabins. He skitted to the hog pen with a heavy mallet in his
hand. When he tapped Mister Hog 'tween the eyes with that mallet
'malitis' set in mighty quick, but it was a uncommon 'disease', even
with hungry Negroes around all the time."

Mammy had me three sisters and a brother while on the Lowery
plantation. They was Lisa, Addie, Alice and Lincoln. It was a long
time after the War and we was all freed before we left old Master
Lowery.

Stayed right there where we was at home, working in the fields, living
in the same old cabins, just like before the War. Never did have no
big troubles after the War, except one time the Ku Klux Klan broke up
a church meeting and whipped some of the Negroes.

The preacher was telling about the Bible days when the Klan rode up.
They was all masked up and everybody crawled under the benches when
they shouted: "We'll make you damn niggers wish you wasn't free!"

And they just about did. The preacher got the worst whipping, blood
was running from his nose and mouth and ears, and they left him laying
on the floor.

They whipped the women just like the men, but Mammy and the girls
wasn't touched none and we run all the way back to the cabin. Layed
down with all our clothes on and tried to sleep, but we's too scairt
to close our eyes.

Mammy reckoned old Master Lowery was a-riding with the Klan that
night, else we'd got a flogging too.

We first moved about a mile from Master Lowery's place and ever week
we'd ask mammy if we children could go see old Master and she'd say:
"Yes, if you-all are good niggers."

The old Master was always glad to see us children and he would give us
candy and apples and treat us mighty fine.

The old plantations gone, the old Masters gone, the old slaves is
gone, and I'll be a going some of these days, too, for I been here a
mighty long time and they ain't nobody needs me now 'cause I is too
old for any good.




Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves

"UNCLE" GEORGE G. KING
Age 83 yrs
Tulsa, Oklahoma


"Prayers for sale.... Prayers for sale...." Uncle George chants in
sing-song fashion as he roams around Tulsa's Greenwood Negro
district--pockets filled with prayer papers that are soiled and dirty
with constant handling.

But they are potent, Uncle George tells those who fear the coming of
some trouble, disaster or just ordinary misery, and there's a special
prayer for each and every trouble--including one to keep away the bill
collector when the young folks forget to make payments on the radio,
the furniture, the car, or the Spring outfit purchased months ago from
the credit clothier.

Its all in the Bible and the Bible is his workshop--'cause folks don't
know how to pray.

He's mighty old, is Uncle George King, and he'll tell you that he was
born on two-hundred acres of Hell, but the whitefolks called it Samuel
Roll's plantation (six miles N.E. of Lexington, South Carolina).

Kinder small for a plantation, Uncle George explains, but plenty room
for that devil overseer to lay on the lash, and plenty room for the
old she-devil Mistress to whip his mammy til' she was just a piece of
living raw meat!

The old Master talked hard words, but the Mistress whipped. Lot's of
difference, and Uncle George ought to know, 'cause he's felt the lash
layed on pretty heavy when he was no older than kindergarten children
of today.

The Mistress owned the slaves and they couldn't be sold without her
say-so. That's the reason George was never sold, but the Master once
tried to sell him 'cause the beatings was breaking him down. Old
Mistress said "No", and used it for an excuse to whip his Mammy. Uncle
George remembers that, too.

They crossed her wrists and tied them with a stout cord. They made her
bend over so that her arms was sticking back between her legs and
fastened the arms with a stick so's she couldn't straighten up.

He saw the Mistress pull his Mammy's clothes over her head so's the
lash would reach the skin. He saw the overseer lay on the whip with
hide busting blows that left her laying, all a shiver, on the ground,
like a wounded animal dying from the chase.

He saw the Mistress walk away, laughing, while his Mammy screamed and
groaned--the old Master standing there looking sad and wretched, like
he could feel the blows on Mammy's bared back and legs as much as she.

The Mistress was a great believer in the power of punishment, and
Uncle George remembers the old log cabin jail built before the War,
right on the plantation, where runaway slaves were stowed away 'till
they would promise to behave themselves.

The old jail was full up during most of the War. Three runaway slaves
were still chained to its floor when the Master gave word the Negroes
were free.

They were Prince, Sanovey (his wife), and Henry, who were caught and
whipped by the patrollers, and then brought back to the plantation for
another beating before being locked in jail.

The Mistress ordered them chained, and the overseer would come every
morning with the same question: "Will you niggers promise not to
runaway no more?"

But they wouldn't promise. One at a time the overseer would loosen the
chains, and lead them from the jail to cut them with powerful blows
from the lash, then drag them back to be chained until the next day
when more lickings were given 'cause they wouldn't promise.

The jail was emptied on the day Master Roll called together all the
men, women and children to tell them they wasn't slaves no more. Uncle
George tells it this way:

"The Master he says we are all free, but it don't mean we is white.
And it don't mean we is equal. Just equal for to work and earn our own
living and not depend on him for no more meats and clother." [TR: clothes?]

Food was scarce before the War; it was worse after the shooting and
killing was over, and Uncle George says: "There wasn't no corn bread,
no bacon--just trash eating trash, like when General Sherman marched
down through the country taking everything the soldiers could lug
away, and burning all along the way.

"Wasn't nothing to eat after he march by. Darkies search 'round the
barns, maybe find some grains of corn in the manure, and they'd parch
the grains--nothing else to eat, except sometimes at night Mammy would
skit out and steal scraps from the Master's house for the children.

"She had lots of hungry mouths, too. They was seven of us then, six
boys and a girl, Eliza. The boys was Wesley, Simeon, Moses, Peter,
William and me, George. This pappy's name was Griffin.

"But they was other pappys (Mammy told him) when Eva was born long
before any of us, and Laura come next, but from a white daddy. Mammy
lost them when she was sold around on the markets.

"The Klan they done lots of riding round the country. One night the
come down to the old slave quarters where the cabins is all squared
round each other, and called everybody outdoors. They's looking for
two women.

"They picks 'em out of the crowd right quick and say they been with
white men. Says their children is by white men, and they're going to
get whipped so's they'll remember to stay with their own kind. The
women kick and scream, but the mens grab them and roll them over a
barrel and let fly with the whip."

It was a long time after the Civil War that Uncle George got his first
schooling or attended regular church meetings. Like he says:

"Getting up at four o'clock in the morning, hoeing in the fields all
day, doing chores when they come in from the fields, and then piddling
with the weaver 'til nine or ten every night--it just didn't leave no
time for reading and such, even if we was allowed to."

And religion, that came later too, for during the old plantation days
Uncle George's white folks didn't think a Negro needed religion--there
wasn't a Heaven for Negroes anyhow.

Finally, though, the Master gave them right to hold meetings on the
plantation, and old Peter Coon was the preacher. The overseer was
there with guards to keep the Negroes from getting too much riled up
when old Peter started talking about Paul or some of the things in the
Old Testament. That's all he would talk about; nothing 'bout Jesus,
just Paul and the Old Testament.

His Mammy went to every meeting. Like he says: "She knew them good
things was good for her children and she told us about the Bible."

Like his old Mammy, Uncle George is a firm believer in the power of
the word. "Prayers are saving!" Uncle George says, "But they's lots of
folks' don't know how to pray."

That's why he has prayers for sale--and he knows they are never
failing, "If you tack 'em up on the wall and say 'em over and over
every day they's sure to be answered."




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

MARTHA KING
Age 85 yrs.
McAlester, Oklahoma


"They hung Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree!
They hung Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree!
They hung Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree!
While we go marching on!"

Dat was de song de Yankees sang when they marched by our house. They
didn't harm us in any way. I guess de War was over then 'cause a few
days after dat old Master say, "Matt", and I say, "Suh?" He say, "Come
here. You go tell Henry I say come out here and to bring the rest of
the niggers with him." I went to the north door and I say, "Henry,
Master Willis say ever one of you come out here." We all went outside
and line up in front of old Master. He say, "Henry". Henry say, "Yes
sah". Old Master say, "Every one of you is free--as free as I am. You
all can leave or stay 'round here if you want to."

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