Oklahoma Writers1 Project
4
..44‘.

	The negroes at our place and. all of them around there tUc1D~ t try to get away or leave when the Yankees come In. They wasntt no place to go, anyway, so they all stayed on. But they di.dn ~ t do very much wo rk. Just enough to take care of themselves and. their whltefo].ks.

	Master Sack come home before the War was quite over. I think he had. been sick, because he looked thin and. old. and. worried. All the negroee picked up and v~o rked. mighty hard after he come home, too.

~	One day he went into Arcadia and come home and. told. us the War was over a,n~ we was all free. The negroes did.ntt ]cnowwhat to make~f it, and. &td.ntt know where to go, sohe told. all that wanted to stay on that they could just go on like they had. been and. pay him shares.

	About half of hie negroes stayed on, and he marked. off land for them to farm and. mad.e arrangements with them to let them use their cabins, and. let them have mules and. tools. They paid him out of their shares, and. some of them finally bought the mules and. some of the land. But about half went on off and, tried. to do better somewheres else.

I d.idntt stay with him because I was jest a boy az4 he d.id.fltt need.

.	me at the h~uae anyway. ~ ~

	Late in the War my Pappy belonged to a man named. Sander or Zander. Might been Alexander, but the negroes called him Mr. Sander. When pappy got free he come and asked. me to go with him, and. I went along 8th lived with him. He had. a share-cropper deal wi th Mr. Sand.er • and. I helped. him work his patch.

That place was just a little east of Howna, a few miles.

	Then my Pappy was born hi s parents belonged. to a Mr. M.aTns ‚ so he took Ad.a!Ds for hie last naine, and. I did. too, because I was his son. I din1t know

	where• Mr. Adams lived.., bu.t I don1 t think my P~py ‘ias born in Louisiana. Alabama, niaybe. I think his parents come off the boat, because he was very

black -~ even blacker than I am.