Ruben Woods

Ruben Woods was 84, hale and strong, when he was interviewed in El Paso, Texas. He was born in Talladega County, Alabama, the oldest of seven children of John and Laura Woods. His mother was the cook for the family of John Woods, who held 96 people on a thousand-acre plantation and raised mostly hogs and cattle, growing only enough cotton for the women to make clothes. Rations were handed out weekly, and each family had a basket that the children came to collect when the evening horn blew. People worked from first light until dark, and both overseers and patrollers whipped.

He often drove two yoke of oxen to the mill with corn and wheat, and remembered how the oxen would bolt for the creek on hot days once they smelled water. He watched soldiers drilling, and when Union troops came with guns and cannon, everyone ran and hid "squatting like partridges," some in a cave stocked with food. When freedom came, the enslaver gathered everyone at the gate, told them they were as free as he was, and cried, which Ruben admitted tickled him. Some stayed to finish the crop; others left, not knowing how to fend for themselves, "but they couldn't whip 'em no more."

Ruben stayed as a house boy until he was 21, then went to Tyler, Texas, with one of the enslaver's children. He learned to read and write after freedom.