I get up at 7 or 8 a. m. so I can be ready to go to Sunday
School. I cook for my own self all the time too. I am a Baptist and a
member of Tabernacle Baptist Church. I am a trustee in my church too.

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

JOANNA DRAPER
Age 83 yrs.
Tulsa, Okla.

Most folks can't remember many things happened to 'em when they only
eight years old, but one of my biggest tribulations come about dat
time and I never will forget it! That was when I was took away from my
own mammy and pappy and sent off and bound out to another man, way off
two-three hundred miles away from whar I live. And dat's the last time
I ever see either one of them, or any my own kinfolks!

Whar I was born was at Hazelhurst, Mississippi. Jest a little piece
east of Hazelhurst, close to the Pearl River, and that place was a
kind of new plantation what my Master, Dr. Alexander, bought when he
moved into Mississippi from up in Virginia awhile before the War.

They said my mammy brings me down to Mississippi, and I was born jest
right after she got there. My mammy's name was Margaret, and she was
born under the Ramson's, back in Tennessee. She belonged to Dave
Ramson, and his pappy had come to Tennessee to settle on war land, and
he had knowed Dr. Alexander's people back in Virginia too. My pappy's
name was Addison, and he always belonged to Dr. Alexander. Old doctor
bought my mammy 'cause my pappy liked her. Old doctor live in
Tennessee a little while before he go on down in Mississippi.

Old doctor's wife named Dinah, and she sho' was a good woman, but I
don't remember about old doctor much. He was away all the time, it
seem like.

When I is about six year old they take me into the Big House to learn
to be a house woman, and they show me how to cook and clean up and
take care of babies. That Big House wasn't very fine, but it was
mighty big and cool, and made out of logs with a big hall, but it
didn't have no long gallery like most the houses around there had.

They was lots of big trees in the yard, and most the ground was new
ground 'round that place, 'cause the old Doctor jest started to done
farming on it when I was took away, but he had some more places not so
far away, over towards the river that was old ground and made big
crops for him. I went to one of the places one time, but they wasn't
nobody on 'em but niggers and a white overseer. I don't know how many
niggers old Doctor had, but