Stephen Mccray
From:
Oklahoma
Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves
[Date stamp: AUG 19 1937]
STEPHEN McCRAY
Age 88 yrs.
Oklahoma City, Okla.
I was born in Huntsville County, Alabama, right where the Scottsboro
boys was in jail, in 1850.
My parents was Wash and Winnie McCray. They was the mother and father
of 22 chillun. Jest five lived to be grown and the rest died at baby
age. My father's mother and father was named Mandy and Peter McCray,
and my mother's mother and father was Ruthie and Charlie McCray. They
all had the same Master, Mister McCray, all the way thoo'.
We live in log huts and when I left home grown, I left my folks living
in the same log huts. Beds was put together with ropes and called rope
beds. No springs was ever heard of by white or cullud as I knows of.
All the work I ever done was pick up chips for my grandma to cook
with. I was kept busy doing this all day.
The big boys went out and got rabbits, possums and fish. I would sho'
lak to be in old Alabama fishing, 'cause I am a fisherman. There is
sho' some pretty water in Alabama and as swift as cars run here. Water
so clear and blue you can see the fish way down, and dey wouldn't bite
to save your life.
Slaves had their own gardens. All got Friday and Sadday to work in
garden during garden time. I liked cornbread best and I'd give a
dollar to git some of the bread we had on those good old days and I
ain't joking. I went in shirt tail all the time. Never had on no pants
'til I was 15 years old. No shoes, 'cept two or three winters. Never
had a hat 'til I was a great big boy.
Marriage was performed by getting permission from Master and go where
the woman of your choice had prepared the bed, undress and flat-footed
jump a broom-stick together into the bed.
Master had a brick house for hisself and the overseer. They was the
only ones on the place. The overseer woke up the slaves all the way
from 2 o'clock till 4 o'clock of mornings. He wasn't nothing but white
trash. Nothing else in the world but that. They worked till they
couldn't see how to work. I jest couldn't jedge the size of that big
place, and there was a mess of slaves, not less'n three hundred.
I doesn't have no eggycation, edgecation, or ejecation, and about all
I can do is spell. I jest spell till I get the pronouncements.
We had church, but iffen the white folks caught you at it, you was
beat most nigh to death. We used a big pot turned down to keep our
voices down. When we went to hear white preachers, he would say, "Obey
your master and mistress." I am a hard shell-flint Baptist. I was
baptised in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Our baptizing song was mostly "On
Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand" and our funeral song was "Hark From The
Tomb."
We had some slaves who would try to run off to the North but the white
folks would catch 'em with blood hounds and beat 'em to death. Them
patrollers done their work mostly at night. One night I was sleeping
on cotton and the patrollers come to our house and ask for water.
Happen we had plenty. They drunk a whole lot and got warm and told my
father to be a good nigger and they wouldn't bother him at all. They
raided till General Grant come thoo'. He sent troops out looking for
Klu Klux Klanners and killed 'em jest lak killing black birds. General
Grant was one of the men that caused us to set heah free today and
able to talk together without being killed.
I didn't and don't believe in no conjure. No sensible person do
either. We had a doctor on the place. Ever master had a doctor who
waited on his slaves, but we wore asafetida or onion 'round our necks
to keep off diseases. A dime was put 'round a teething baby's neck to
make it tooth easy, and it sho' helped too. But today all folks done
got 'bove that.
The old folks talked very little of freedom and the chillun knew
nothing at all of it, and that they heard they was daresome to mention
it.
Bushwhacker, nothing but poor white trash, come thoo' and killed all
the little nigger chillun they could lay hands on. I was hid under the
house with a big rag on my mouf many a time. Them Klu Klux after
slavery sho' got enough from them soldiers to last 'em.
I was married to Kan Pry in 1884. Two chillun was born. The girl is
living and the boy might be, but I don't know. My daughter works out
in service.
I wish Lincoln was here now. He done more for the black face than any
one in that seat. Old Jeff Davis kept slavery up till General Grant
met him at the battle. Lincoln sho' snowed him under. General Grant
put fire under him jest lak I'm fixing to do my pipe. Booker T.
Washington was jest all right.
Every time I think of slavery and if it done the race any good, I
think of the story of the coon and dog who met. The coon said to the
dog "Why is it you're so fat and I am so poor, and we is both
animals?" The dog said: "I lay round Master's house and let him kick
me and he gives me a piece of bread right on." Said the coon to the
dog: "Better then that I stay poor." Them's my sentiment. I'm lak the
coon, I don't believe in 'buse.
I used to be the most wicked man in the world but a voice converted me
by saying, "Friend, friend, why is you better to everybody else than
you is to your self? You are sending your soul to hell." And from that
day I lived like a Christian. People here don't live right and I don't
lak to 'tend church. I base my Christian life on: "Believe in me,
trust my work and you shall be saved, for I am God and beside me there
is no other."
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