"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.
While this old Negro may be mistaken at some points (the universal failing of witnesses), his impressions are certainly not more involved than the welter of local records. Mrs. Currie states that if Sam said he saw a thing happen thus, it may be depended upon that he is telling exactly what he really saw.
Sam McAllum, ex-slave, lives in Meridian, Lauderdale County. Sam is five feet three inches tall and weighs 140 pounds.
"De firs' town I ever seen were DeKalb in Kemper County. De Stephenson Plantation where I were born warnt but 'bout thirteen miles north o' DeKalb. I were born de secon' o' September in 1842. My mammy b'longed to de Stephensons an' my pappy b'longed to Marster Lewis Barnes. His plantation wasn't so very far from Stephenson. De Stephensons an' Barneses were kin' white people. My pappy were a old man when I were born—I were de baby chil'. After he died, my mammy marry a McAllum Nigger.
"Dey were 'bout thirty slaves at Stephenson. My mammy worked in de fiel', an' her mammy, Lillie, were de yard-woman. She looked after de little cullud chillun.