The fieldworker said that Ralph Kates spoke fluent English, “using no southern accent. His story was told in a straightforward way, expressing no prejudice toward race distinction.” Until a year before the interview, Ralph was in good health and worked as a paperhanger and interior decorator, but by the time of the interview he had developed a bronchial cough and often was unable to work.
The fieldworker reported that Ralph “has never been a believer in ghosts, haunts, or spiritual visitations, and in his youth scoffed when other blacks told stories of goblins. He has no fear of graveyards, cats, nor rats and harbors no superstitions. His parents always told him that those things were only believed by ignorant persons.”
Ralph said that he enjoyed hunting, “but I am always sorry to kill anything and kill only when it was necessary. I have gone hunting many times in Indiana. I caught rabbits, coons, foxes, and small game in Indiana and small game and deer in Tennessee.”
Ralph was equally proud of his white father, Thomas Cates, “who was never his master,” and his Guinean mother, who was “kindly disposed.” He described his early childhood and youth as a time of complete happiness.
I came to the world a year too late to be born a slave. I wouldn’t have been a slave even if I had been born several years earlier because my father bought my mother from an unkind master and soon gave her freedom. The former master of my mother was named “Fox.” I’ve never heard his given name; my mother called him “Marse Fox.” Thomas Cotes was a white man of Indian and Spanish extraction, and he lived, studied, and practiced the habits of the white man. He saw Marse Fox abuse the slaves, so he bought my mother, Viney [Lavina], from him. They lived together and raised a family. Mother lived to be sixty-seven years old, or perhaps older. Her life was passed in Tennessee, and she always spoke with affection when talking of my father because he was always good to all of us.
I was born fourteen miles from Clarksville, Tennessee, on the farm of Thomas Gates, and while we were young children and needed his care, he never failed us. He was always willing to give me money to spend and provided the necessary things for all of us. After the Civil War, our family was broken up. That is, our father left us, but often visited us and brought gifts and money to the children. He was a smart man, working as a stonecutter or stone mason and interior decorator. He was also a good accountant and bookkeeper. He helped to build the new Vanderburgh County courthouse, working in stone and mortar. I was away from the city and didn’t get to see him, but would have been happy to have talked with him again. The last time I heard from him, he was in California keeping books for a gold mining corporation. I am proud my people are free and glad my father gave his family freedom from a tyrannical master.