Charley Williams and Granddaughter

Charley Williams was born on January 7, 1843, on John Williams's plantation of about 300 acres two miles northwest of Monroe, Louisiana, then just a crossroads with a store and two hide houses that could be smelled a mile away. The enslaver had a second place in the White River bottoms. The overseer, Mr. Simmons, rarely whipped, but when he did he waited until evening and had the enslaver watch. Nearly everything was made on the place; supplies like coffee and needles came by stage from Shreveport. Charley's mother doctored chills and stomach aches with roots, and he never saw quinine until after freedom.

He was a big young man when the war came and old enough to vote at freedom, though he did not vote until long after. Speaking at ninety-four in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he looked back on plantation life with nostalgia, saying the enslaver had taught him how to provide for himself, but that life in town meant you needed money for everything and he rarely had any. He imagined going to heaven and hearing the old enslaver grumble, as he used to, "Charley, you ain't got no sense, but you is a good boy," and offer him brown sugar. His views reflect his own experience and are presented as he gave them.

In old age he lived in a leaking house with a rotting porch, patching it as well as his strength allowed so it would hold through another winter. He was photographed with his granddaughter.