Stephen Leacock - "Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels"

Charles Egbert Craddock - "The Young Mountaineers"

Aristotle - "Ethics"

Albert Bushnell Hart - "Formation of the Union"

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




At first some of 'em was too proud to do drudgery work, but most of
'em went right to work and build up deir homes again. Food, clothes,
and in fact everything needed, was scarce.

Mother always say, "If you visit on New Years, you'll visit all de
year." We always had black-eyed peas and hog jowl for New Year's
dinner, for it brought good luck.

The Nineteenth of June was Emancipation Day, and we always had a big
picnic and speeches.

I knowed one woman who was a conjur woman. Lots of people went to her
to git her to break a evil spell dat some one had over them. She'd
brew a tea from herbs and give to 'em to drink, and it always cured
'em.

I've seen people use all kinds o' roots and herbs for medicine, and I
also seen 'em use all kind of things for cures. I've knowed 'em to put
wood lice in a bag and tie 'em 'round a baby's neck so it'd teeth
easy.

Black-haw root, sour dock, bear grass, grape root, bull nettle,
sweet-gum bark and red-oak bark boiled separately and mixed, makes a
good blood medicine.




Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves

NANCY GARDNER
Age 79 yrs.
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma


Well, to tell you de truth I don't know my age, but I was born in
1858, in Franklin, Tennessee. Now, you can figger for yourself and
tell how old I is. I is de daughter of Prophet and Callie Isaiah, and
dey was natives of Tennessee. Dere was three of us children, two boys
and myself. I'm de only girl. My brothers names was Prophet and Billie
Isaiah. I don't 'member much about dem as we was separated when I was
seven years old. I'll never forget when me, my ma and my auntie had to
leave my pa and brothers. It is jest as clear in my mind now as it was
den, and dat's been about seventy years ago.

Oh God! I tell you it was awful dat day when old Jeff Davis had a
bunch of us sent to Memphis to be sold. I can see old Major Clifton
now. He was a big nigger trader you know. Well, dey took us on up dere
to Memphis and we was sold jest like cattle. Dey sold me and ma
together and dey sold pa and de boys together. Dey was sent to
Mississippi and we was sent to Alabama. My pa, O how my ma was grieved
to death about him! She didn't live long after dat. She didn't live
long enough to be set free. Poor ma, she died a slave, but she is
saved though. I know she is, and I'll be wid her some day.

It was thirty years before my pa knew if we was still living. Finally
in some way he heard dat I was still alive, and he began writing me.
Course I was grown and married den and me and my husband had moved to
Missouri. Well, my pa started out to see me and on his way he was
drowned in de Missouri River, and I never saw him alive after we was
sold in Memphis.

I can't tell you much 'bout work during de slave days 'cause you see I
was jest a baby you might say when de War broke out. I do remember
our Master's name though, it was Dr. Perkins, and he was a good
Master. Ma and pa sure hated to have to leave him, he was so good to
dem. He was a rich man, and had a big fine house and thousands of
acres of land. He was good to his niggers too. We had a good house
too, better dan some of dese houses I see folks living in now. Course
Dr. Perkins niggers had to work, but dey didn't mind 'cause he would
let dem have little patches of dey own such as 'tatoes, corn, cotton
and garden. Jest a little, you know. He couldn't let dem have much,
there was so many on Dr. Perkins plantation.

I don't remember seeing anybody sick in slavery time. You see I was
jest a kid and dere's a lot of things I can't remember.

I am a Christian. I jined de church nigh on seventy years ago and when
I say dat, I don't mean I jest jined de church. I mean I gave myself
up to de Heavenly Father, and I've been gwine straight down de line
for Him ever since. You know in dem days, we didn't get religion like
young folks do now. Young folks today jest find de church and den call
theyselves Christians, but they aint.

I remember jest as well when I was converted. One day I was thinking
'bout a sermon de preacher had preached and a voice spoke to me and
said, "De Holy Ghost is over your head. Accept it!" Right den I got
down on my knees and prayed to God dat I might understand dat voice,
and God Almighty in a vision told me dat I should find de church. I
could hardly wait for de next service so I could find it, and when I
was in de water getting my baptisement, dat same voice spoke and said,
"Now you have accepted don't turn back 'cause I will be wid you
always!" O you don't know nothing 'bout dat kind of religion!

I 'member one night shortly after I jined de church I was laying in
bed and dere was a vine tied 'round my waist and dat vine extended
into de elements. O my God! I can see it now! I looked up dat vine
and away in de elements I could see my Divine Master and he spoke to
me and said, "When you get in trouble shake dis vine; I'm your Master
and I will hear your cry."

I knowed old Jeff Davis good. Why I was jest as close to him as I am
to dat table. I've talked wid him too. I reckon I _do_ know dat
scoundrel! Why, he didn't want de niggers to be free! He was known as
a mean old rascal all over de South.

Abraham Lincoln? Now you is talking 'bout de niggers friend! Why dat
was de best man God ever let tramp de earth! Everybody was mighty sad
when poor old Abraham was 'sassinated, 'cause he did a mighty good
deed for de colored race before he left dis world.

I wasn't here long during slavery, but I saw enough of it to know it
was mighty hard going for most of de niggers den, and young folks
wouldn't stand for dat kind of treatment now. I know most of the young
folks would be killed, but they jest wouldn't stand for it. I would
hate to have to go through wid my little share of it again.




Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves

OCTAVIA GEORGE
Age 85 yrs.
Oklahoma City, Okla.


I was born in Mansieur, Louisiana, 1852, Avoir Parish. I am the
daughter of Alfred and Clementine Joseph. I don't know much about my
grandparents other than my mother told me my grandfather's name was
Fransuai, and was one time a king in Africa.

Most of the slaves lived in log cabins, and the beds were home-made.
The mattresses were made out of moss gathered from trees, and we used
to have lots of fun gathering that moss to make those mattresses.

My job was taking care of the white children up at the Big House (that
is what they called the house where our master lived), and I also had
to feed the little Negro children. I remember quite well how those
poor little children used to have to eat. They were fed in boxes and
troughs, under the house. They were fed corn meal mush and beans. When
this was poured into their box they would gather around it the same as
we see pigs, horses and cattle gather around troughs today.

We were never given any money, but were able to get a little money
this way: our Master would let us have two or three acres of land each
year to plant for ourselves, and we could have what we raised on it.
We could not allow our work on these two or three acres to interfere
with Master's work, but we had to work our little crops on Sundays.
Now remind you, all the Negroes didn't get these two or three acres,
only good masters allowed their slaves to have a little crop of their
own. We would take the money from our little crops and buy a few
clothes and something for Christmas. The men would save enough money
out of the crops to buy their Christmas whiskey. It was all right for
the slaves to get drunk on Christmas and New Years Day; no one was
whipped for getting drunk on those days. We were allowed to have a
garden and from this we gathered vegetables to eat; on Sundays we
could have duck, fish, and pork.

We didn't know anything about any clothes other than cotton;
everything we wore was made of cotton, except our shoes, they were
made from pieces of leather cut out of a raw cowhide.

Our Master and Mistress was good, they let us go to church with them,
have our little two- or three-acre crops and any other thing that the
good masters would let their slaves do. They lived in a big fine house
and had a fine barn. Their barn was much better than the house we
lived in. Master Depriest (our master) was a Frenchman, and had eight
or nine children, and they were sure mean. They would fight us, but we
were not allowed to fight our little Master or Mistress as we had to
call them.

The overseer on Master's plantation was a mean old fellow, he carried
his gun all the time and would ride a big fine horse and go from one
bunch of slaves to the other. Some poor white folks lived close to us.
They could not own slaves and they had to work for the rich plantation
owners. I believe that those poor white folk are to blame for the
Negroes stealing because they would get the Negroes to steal their
master's corn, hogs, chickens and many other things and sell it to
them for practically nothing.

We had to work plenty hard, because our Master had a large plantation.
Don't know just how many acres it was, but we had to be up at 5
o'clock in the morning and would work until dark than we would have to
go home and do our night work, that is cook, milk, and feed the stock.

The slaves were punished for stealing, running off, not doing what
their master told them and for talking back to their master. If any of
these rules were disobeyed their feet and hands were chained together
and they were put across a log or a barrel and whipped until the blood
came from them.

There were no jails; the white man was the slaves' jail. If whipping
didn't settle the crime the Negro committed--the next thing would be
to hang him or burn him at stake.

I've seen them sell slaves. The whites would auction them off just as
we do cattle and horses today. The big fine healthy slaves were worth
more than those that were not quite so good. I have seen men sold from
their wives and I thought that was such a crime. I knew that God would
settle thing someday.

Slaves would run away but most of the time they were caught. The
Master would put blood hounds on their trail, and sometimes the slave
would kill the blood hound and make his escape. If a slave once tried
to run away and was caught, he would be whipped almost to death, and
from then on if he was sent any place they would chain their meanest
blood hound to him.

Funerals were very simple for slaves, they could not carry the body to
the church they would just take it to the grave yard and bury it. They
were not even allowed to sing a song at the cemetery. Old Mistress
used to tell us ghost stories after funerals and they would nearly
scare me to death. She would tell of seeing men with no head, and see
cattle that would suddenly turn to cats, and she made us believe if a
fire was close to a cemetery it was coming from a ghost.

I used to hear quite a bit about voodoo, but that some thing I never
believed in, therefore, I didn't pay any attention to it.

When a slave was sick, the master would get a good doctor for him if
he was a good slave, but if he wasn't considered a good slave he would
be given cheap medical care. Some of the doctors would not go to the
cabin where the slaves were, and the slave would have to be carried on
his bed to his master's back porch and the doctor would see him there.

When the news came that we were free, all of us were hid on the
Mississippi River. We had been there for several days, and we had to
catch fish with our hands and roast them for food. I remember quite
well when old Master came down to there and hollered, Come on out
niggers; you are free now and you can do as you please! We all went to
the Big House and there we found old Miss crying and talking about how
she hated to lose her good niggers.

Abraham Lincoln! Why we mourned three months for that man when he
died! I wouldn't miss a morning getting my black arm band and placing
it on in remembrance of Abraham, who was the best friend the Negroes
ever had. Now old Jeff Davis, I didn't care a thing about him. He was
a Democrat and none of them mean anything to the Negro. And if these
young Negroes don't quit messing with the democratic bunch they are
going to be right back where we started from. If they only knew as I
know they would struggle to keep such from happening, because although
I had a good master I wouldn't want to go through it again.




Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves

MARY GRAYSON
Age 83 yrs.
Tulsa, Oklahoma


I am what we colored people call a "native." That means that I didn't
come into the Indian country from somewhere in the Old South, after
the War, like so many negroes did, but I was born here in the old
Creek Nation, and my master was a Creek Indian. That was eighty three
years ago, so I am told.

My mammy belonged to white people back in Alabama when she was
born--down in the southern part I think, for she told me that after
she was a sizeable girl her white people moved into the eastern part
of Alabama where there was a lot of Creeks. Some of them Creeks was
mixed up with the whites, and some of the big men in the Creeks who
come to talk to her master was almost white, it looked like. "My white
folks moved around a lot when I was a little girl", she told me.

When mammy was about 10 or 13 years old some of the Creeks begun to
come out to the Territory in little bunches. They wasn't the ones who
was taken out here by the soldiers and contractor men--they come on
ahead by themselves and most of them had plenty of money, too. A Creek
come to my mammy's master and bought her to bring out here, but she
heard she was being sold and run off into the woods. There was an old
clay pit, dug way back into a high bank, where the slaves had been
getting clay to mix with hog hair scrapings to make chinking for the
big log houses that they built for the master and the cabins they made
for themselves. Well, my mammy run and hid way back in that old clay
pit, and it was way after dark before the master and the other man
found her.

The Creek man that bought her was a kind sort of a man, mammy said,
and wouldn't let the master punish her. He took her away and was kind
to her, but he decided she was too young to breed and he sold her to
another Creek who had several slaves already, and he brought her out
to the Territory.

The McIntosh men was the leaders in the bunch that come out at that
time, and one of the bunch, named Jim Perryman, bought my mammy and
married her to one of his "boys", but after he waited a while and she
didn't have a baby he decided she was no good breeder and he sold her
to Mose Perryman.

Mose Perryman was my master, and he was a cousin to Legus Perryman,
who was a big man in the Tribe. He was a lot younger than Mose, and
laughed at Mose for buying my mammy, but he got fooled, because my
mammy got married to Mose's slave boy Jacob, the way the slaves was
married them days, and went ahead and had ten children for Mr. Mose.

Mose Perryman owned my pappy and his older brother, Hector, and one of
the McIntosh men, Oona, I think his name was, owned my pappy's brother
William. I can remember when I first heard about there was going to be
a war. The older children would talk about it, but they didn't say it
was a war all over the country. They would talk about a war going to
be "back in Alabama", and I guess they had heard the Creeks talking
about it that way.

When I was born we lived in the Choska bottoms, and Mr. Mose Perryman
had a lot of land broke in all up and down the Arkansas river along
there. After the War, when I had got to be a young woman, there was
quite a settlement grew up at Choska (pronounced Choe-skey) right
across the river east of where Haskell now is, but when I was a child
before the War all the whole bottoms was marshy kind of wilderness
except where farms had been cleared out. The land was very rich, and
the Creeks who got to settle there were lucky. They always had big
crops. All west of us was high ground, toward Gibson station and Fort
Gibson, and the land was sandy. Some of the McIntoshes lived over that
way, and my Uncle William belonged to one of them.

We slaves didn't have a hard time at all before the War. I have had
people who were slaves of white folks back in the old states tell me
that they had to work awfully hard and their masters were cruel to
them sometimes, but all the Negroes I knew who belonged to Creeks
always had plenty of clothes and lots to eat and we all lived in good
log cabins we built. We worked the farm and tended to the horses and
cattle and hogs, and some of the older women worked around the owner's
house, but each Negro family looked after a part of the fields and
worked the crops like they belonged to us.

When I first heard talk about the War the slaves were allowed to go
and see one another sometimes and often they were sent on errands
several miles with a wagon or on a horse, but pretty soon we were all
kept at home, and nobody was allowed to come around and talk to us.
But we heard what was going on.

The McIntosh men got nearly everybody to side with them about the War,
but we Negroes got word somehow that the Cherokees over back of Ft.
Gibson was not going to be in the War, and that there were some Union
people over there who would help slaves to get away, but we children
didn't know anything about what we heard our parents whispering about,
and they would stop if they heard us listening. Most of the Creeks who
lived in our part of the country, between the Arkansas and the
Verdigris, and some even south of the Arkansas, belonged to the Lower
Creeks and sided with the South, but down below us along the Canadian
River they were Upper Creeks and there was a good deal of talk about
them going with the North. Some of the Negroes tried to get away and
go down to them, but I don't know of any from our neighborhood that
went to them.

Some Upper Creeks came up into the Choska bottoms talking around among
the folks there about siding with the North. They were talking, they
said, for old man Gouge, who was a big man among the Upper Creeks. His
Indian name was Opoeth-le-ya-hola, and he got away into Kansas with a
big bunch of Creeks and Seminoles during the War.

Before that time, I remember one night my uncle William brought
another Negro man to our cabin and talked a long time with my pappy,
but pretty soon some of the Perryman Negroes told them that Mr. Mose
was coming down and they went off into the woods to talk. But Mr. Mose
didn't come down. When pappy came back Mammy cried quite a while, and
we children could hear them arguing late at night. Then my uncle
Hector slipped over to our cabin several times and talked to pappy,
and mammy began to fix up grub, but she didn't give us children but a
little bit of it, and told us to stay around with her at the cabin and
not go playing with the other children.

Then early one morning, about daylight, old Mr. Mose came down to the
cabin in his buggy, waving a shot gun and hollering at the top of his
voice. I never saw a man so mad in all my life, before nor since!

He yelled in at mammy to "git them children together and git up to my
house before I beat you and all of them to death!" Mammy began to cry
and plead that she didn't know anything, but he acted like he was
going to shoot sure enough, so we all ran to mammy and started for Mr.
Mose's house as fast as we could trot.

We had to pass all the other Negro cabins on the way, and we could see
that they were all empty, and it looked like everything in them had
been tore up. Straw and corn shucks all over the place, where somebody
had tore up the mattresses, and all the pans and kettles gone off the
outside walls where they used to hang them.

At one place we saw two Negro boys loading some iron kettles on a
wagon, and a little further on was some boys catching chickens in a
yard, but we could see all the Negroes had left in a big hurry.

I asked mammy where everybody had gone and she said, "Up to Mr. Mose's
house, where we are going. He's calling us all in."

"Will pappy be up there too?" I asked her.

"No. Your pappy and your Uncle Hector and your Uncle William and a lot
of other menfolks won't be here any more. They went away. That's why
Mr. Mose is so mad, so if any of you younguns say anything about any
strange men coming to our place I'll break your necks!" Mammy was sure
scared!

We all thought sure she was going to get a big whipping, but Mr. Mose
just looked at her a minute and then told her to get back to the cabin
and bring all the clothes, and bed ticks and all kinds of cloth we had
and come back ready to travel.

"We're going to take all you black devils to a place where there won't
no more of you run away!" he yelled after us. So we got ready to leave
as quick as we could. I kept crying about my pappy, but mammy would
say, "Don't you worry about your pappy, he's free now. Better be
worrying about us. No telling where we all will end up!" There was
four or five Creek families and their Negroes all got together to
leave, with all their stuff packed in buggies and wagons, and being
toted by the Negroes or carried tied on horses, jack asses, mules and
milk cattle. I reckon it was a funny looking sight, or it would be to
a person now; the way we was all loaded down with all manner of
baggage when we met at the old ford across the Arkansas that lead to
the Creek Agency. The Agency stood on a high hill a few miles across
the river from where we lived, but we couldn't see it from our place
down in the Choska bottoms. But as soon as we got up on the upland
east of the bottoms we could look across and see the hill.

When we got to a grove at the foot of the hill near the agency Mr.
Mose and the other masters went up to the Agency for a while. I
suppose they found out up there what everybody was supposed to do and
where they was supposed to go, for when we started on it wasn't long
until several more families and their slaves had joined the party and
we made quite a big crowd.

The little Negro boys had to carry a little bundle apiece, but Mr.
Mose didn't make the little girls carry anything and let us ride if we
could find anything to ride on. My mammy had to help lead the cows
part of the time, but a lot of the time she got to ride an old horse,
and she would put me up behind her. It nearly scared me to death,
because I had never been on a horse before, and she had to hold on to
me all the time to keep me from falling off.

Of course I was too small to know what was going on then, but I could
tell that all the masters and the Negroes seemed to be mighty worried
and careful all the time. Of course I know now that the Creeks were
all split up over the War, and nobody was able to tell who would be
friendly to us or who would try to poison us or kill us, or at least
rob us. There was a lot of bushwhacking all through that country by
little groups of men who was just out to get all they could. They
would appear like they was the enemy of anybody they run across, just
to have an excuse to rob them or burn up their stuff. If you said you
was with the South they would be with the North and if you claimed to
be with the Yankees they would be with the South, so our party was
kind of upset all the time we was passing through the country along
the Canadian. That was where old Gouge had been talking against the
South. I've heard my folks say that he was a wonderful speaker, too.

We all had to move along mighty slow, on account of the ones on foot,
and we wouldn't get very far in one day, then we Negroes had to fix up
a place to camp and get wood and cook supper for everybody. Sometimes
we would come to a place to camp that somebody knew about and we
would find it all tromped down by horses and the spring all filled in
and ruined. I reckon old Gouge's people would tear up things when they
left, or maybe some Southern bushwhackers would do it. I don't know
which.

When we got down to where the North Fork runs into the Canadian we
went around the place where the Creek town was. There was lots of
Creeks down there who was on the other side, so we passed around that
place and forded across west of there. The ford was a bad one, and it
took us a long time to get across. Everybody got wet and a lot of the
stuff on the wagons got wet. Pretty soon we got down into the
Chickasaw country, and everybody was friendly to us, but the Chickasaw
people didn't treat their slaves like the Creeks did. They was more
strict, like the people in Texas and other places. The Chickasaws
seemed lighter color than the Creeks but they talked more in Indian
among themselves and to their slaves. Our masters talked English
nearly all the time except when they were talking to Creeks who didn't
talk good English, and we Negroes never did learn very good Creek. I
could always understand it, and can yet, a little, but I never did try
to talk it much. Mammy and pappy used English to us all the time.

Mr. Mose found a place for us to stop close to Fort Washita, and got
us places to stay and work. I don't know which direction we were from
Fort Washita, but I know we were not very far. I don't know how many
years we were down in there, but I know it was over two for we worked
on crops at two different places, I remember. Then one day Mr. Mose
came and told us that the War was over and that we would have to root
for ourselves after that. Then he just rode away and I never saw him
after that until after we had got back up into the Choska country.
Mammy heard that the Negroes were going to get equal rights with the
Creeks, and that she should go to the Creek Agency to draw for us, so
we set out to try to get back.

Copyright (c) 2007. topboookz.com. All rights reserved.