“How I gwine-a dreen an’ clear a lot o’ lan’ wid nothin’ to do it wid?  Reckon somebody livin’ on my lan’ now.

“One of de rights of bein’ free was dat us could move ‘roun’ and change bosses.  But I never cared nothin’ ’bout dat.

“I hear somebody say us gwine-a vote.  What I wanta vote for?  I don’ know nothin’ ‘bout who is runnin’.

“I draws a Federal pension now.  If I lives’ til nex’ year I’ll git $125 a mont’.  It sho’ comes in handy.  I paid $800 for my house an’, if I’d-a thought, I’d-a got one wid mo’ lan’.  I don’ wan’ to plant nothin’.  I do want to put a iron fence a-roun’ it an’ gild it wid silver paint.  Den when I’s gone, dar it will be.

“Yes’m.  I’se raised a big fambly.  Dem what aint dead, some of’ em looks as old as I does.  I got one gran-chil’ I loves jus’ lak my own chillun.  I don’ rightly ’member dis minute how many chillun I had, but I aint had but two wives.  De firs’ one died long ‘bout seventeen years ago, an’ I done what de Good Book say.  It say, ’when you goes to de graveyard to bury yo’ firs’ wife, look over de crowd an’ pick out de nex’ one.’

“Dat’s jus’ what I done.  I picked Janie McCoy, ’cause she aint never been married b’fore.  She’s a good cook, even if she does smoke a pipe, an’ don’ know much’ bout nothin’.

“I sho’ don’ live by no rules.  I jus’ takes a little dram when ever I wants it, an’ I smokes a pipe ’ceptin when de Mistis give me a seegar[FN:  cigar].  I can’t chew tobacco on ’count my teeth is gone.  I aint been sick in bed but once in seventy years.

“I is five feet, five inches tall.  I used to weigh 150 pounds, but dis old carcass o’ mine done los’ fifty pounds of meat.

“Now-a-days I has a heap of misery in my knee, so I can’t ride ‘roun’ no mo’.  Durin’ de War I got a muskit ball in my hip an’ now dat my meat’s all gone, it jolts a-roun’ an’ hurts me worse.  I’s still right sprightly though.  I can jump dat drainage ditch in front of de house, an’ I sho’ can walk.  Mos’ every day I walks to de little sto’ on Union Street.  Dar I rests long enough to pass de time-o-day wid my neighbors.  My eyes is still good, but I wears glasses for show an’ for seein’ close.

“De longer I lives de plainer I see dat it ain’ right to want mo’ dan you can use.  De Lawd put a-plenty here for ever’body, but shucks!  Us don’ pay no min’ to his teachin’.  Sometimes I gits lonesome for de frien’s I used to know, ‘cause aint nobody lef’ but me.  I’s sho’ been lef a fur piece[FN:  long way] b’hin’.  De white folks say, ’Old Jim is de las’ leaf on de tree,’ an’ I ’spec dey’s ’bout right.”

Sam McAllum, Ex-slave, Lauderdale County
FEC
Marjorie Woods Austin
Rewrite, Pauline Loveless
Edited, Clara E. Stokes

SAM McALLUM
Meridian, Mississippi

To those familiar with the history of “Bloody Kemper” as recorded, the following narrative from the lips of an eye-witness will be heresy.  But the subject of this autobiography, carrying his ninety-five years more trimly than many a man of sixty, is declared sound of mind as well as of body by the Hector Currie family, prominent in Mississippi, for whom he has worked in a position of great trust and responsibility for fifty years or more.