Charity Anderson

Charity Anderson believed she was 101 when she was interviewed in her home in Toulminville, on the outskirts of Mobile, Alabama. She was born at Bell's Landing on the Alabama River, where her enslaver, Leslie Johnson, ran a woodyard that fueled the river steamers and a tavern for travelers waiting on uncertain boat schedules. She was one of six house servants, along with Sarai, Lou, Hester, Jerry and Joe. Her job was the dessert table; she later had charge of the household keys and waited on her mistress and the children.

She never worked in the fields. She washed, ironed, knitted and wove, sometimes six or seven yards of cloth a day on top of her housework, and she taught those skills to the children of the family through four generations. She called her own enslaver kind, but said she had seen enslaved people torn by dogs and whipped until they bled elsewhere. She remembered the bustle of the landing, never knowing how many travelers to set breakfast for, and riding the steamboats free.

In old age, rheumatic and rarely leaving her rocking chair, she said she had never been in trouble or in a courtroom in her life. She had seen her first show only the year before, when a carnival set up right in front of her house.