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Oklahoma Slave Narrative
Buck Colbert Franklin
My people came from Mississippi. My grandfather belonged to the Burneys back there and when they came to this country in the '40's they brought my grandfather with them, as a slave. My father, David,
belonged to Wesley C. Burney, brother of Ben Burney, who later became governor of the Chickasaws. My mother was Minnie; she was a most unusual colored woman. She was owned by the Colberts
and Pitchlynns of Mississippi. They were Choctaws. They raised my mother and allowed her every privilege of their own people. She was a Bible student. My parents were married after the war.
I received my first schooling at the Dawes academy, twelve miles north of Ardmore. This negro school was founded by white missionaries of the Baptist church. We had some white missionary teachers. After that I attended Roger Williams University at Nashville,
Tennessee. It burned down and the site was bought by whites and the Peabody Institute is there today. My wife was a teacher. We are both college graduates. I completed my law course long ago.
We have three children of which I am very proud. Mozella Franklin Jones, A.B. West Virginia State College, a teacher at Dunbar School, Tulsa, Oklahoma, for four years; Buck
Colbert Franklin, Jr. an A.B. from Fiske University and a principal of a six-room school at Bixby; John Hope Franklin, twenty-three and got his A.B. from Fiske in 1935, master's degree from Harvard in 1936, has completed his residence work at Harvard and is
now ready to get his Ph. D. That is not a bad record for grandchildren of slaves.
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