When Master come back from the War and tell us that brother is dead, he said brother was the best boy in all the army.
The Tenneyson slaves wasn't bothered with patrollers, neither the Klan. The Master said we was all good Negroes—nobody going to bother a good Negro.
We was taught to work and have good manners. And to be honest. Just doing them three things will keep anybody out of trouble.
Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves
WILLIAM WALTERS
Age 85 yrs.
Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Mammy Ann (that was my mother) was owned by Mistress Betsy, and lived on the Bradford plantation in Relsford County, Tennessee, when I was born in 1852.
My daddy, Jim Walters, then lived in Nashville, where my mammy carried me when she ran away from the Mistress after the Rebs and Yanks started to fight. My daddy died in Nashville in 1875.
We were runaway slaves. The slipper-offers were often captured, but Mammy Ann and her little boy William (that's me) escaped the sharp eyes of the patrollers and found refuge with a family of northern symphatizers living in Nashville.