Felix Haywood

Felix Haywood was born in St. Hedwig, near San Antonio, Texas, the son of enslaved parents bought in Mississippi by William Gudlow. Before and during the Civil War he herded sheep and worked cattle. He was ninety-two and completely blind when interviewed, and opened by teasing the interviewer, asking whether he was white or Black.

He said the war changed little on the ranch. Church went on under a preacher named Mow Johnson, children played marbles, and he rode an ox named Buster. Enslaved people still received whippings. He said escape to the North made no sense from Texas: "All we had to do was to walk, but walk South, and we'd be free as soon as we crossed the Rio Grande." Hundreds did go to Mexico, he said, and raised their children speaking Spanish.

The end of the war, he said, came "like you snap your fingers." Soldiers appeared everywhere, and everyone was singing "Hallelujah" and "The Battle Cry of Freedom." "Everybody went wild. We all felt like heroes, and nobody had made us that way but ourselves. We was free." He went to Mexico for a while after the war, then returned to San Antonio and worked for the waterworks handling pipes. He lived with his youngest sister, Ella Thompson, on Arabella Alley in San Antonio. His interview is one of the most quoted in the collection, especially his reflection that freedom brought liberty but not land or money, and that freed people had to make their own way.