George Young

George Young was born on August 10, 1846, on the Chapman place five miles northwest of Livingston, Alabama, one of more than 300 people enslaved on the three plantations of Reuben Chapman, a governor of Alabama. His mother was Mary Ann Chapman and his father Sam Young. He had five brothers and three sisters. The governor lived mostly in Huntsville, leaving the people under overseers named Smith and Lawler, both cruel.

He described iron bands locked around people's ankles and waists, connected by a rod up the leg so they could not bend their knees or run; the bands were sometimes so tight that sores festered under them. When his brother Harrison ran away, the overseers hunted him with dogs until night, brought him bloody to his mother's door, and then turned the dogs on him again while his mother screamed for God to save her child. "De Lord ain't got nothin' do wid dis here," Lawler said. George saw a man staked face-down to the ground and beaten with a board for visiting another plantation after hours. People were threatened with having a hand cut off if caught learning to read. They held secret prayer meetings on dirt floors so no sound carried, some praying with their heads in wash pots.

As a calf-tender, George ran away once to avoid a whipping after the overseer accused him of lying about seeing runaways, hid in a woodshop in Livingston, and was caught and sent to the fields. He later helped drive a thousand head of cattle to Atlanta. He said he was glad to be freed: "I was under burden an' boun'." In old age he lived in Livingston and offered his own view of Scripture: God would never have given Peter all the keys to heaven, or Peter would have kept people out for spite.