Esther King Casey

Esther King Casey was living with her grandchildren at 801 Washington Avenue in Birmingham, Alabama, when she was interviewed. Her grandmother had told her of a long voyage across the ocean, arrival at Mobile, and being sold at public auction. When Esther was four or five, she, her parents and her brother were brought to Americus, Georgia, enslaved by Captain Henry King, who held eight or ten people. Her mother was the cook, and her father a mechanic who built houses and made tools. Esther was given to the captain's wife, who taught her along with the white children; the interviewer noted she spoke without dialect.

She remembered Confederate troops gathering at the courthouse a block away, and walking past with her father to see an effigy of Abraham Lincoln hanging in the square, which the soldiers riddled with bullets before they left. Before King went to war, an appraiser came to value his property, including the people he enslaved, and King lifted her above his head and said he wouldn't take a thousand dollars for her. Her father stayed to care for the household. Her brother ran off to join the troops. He came home after the war, but Captain King did not; years later Esther met a man who said he had been standing near King when he was killed.

After emancipation she stayed with her mother and the captain's widow.