James Jackson

James Jackson was born on December 18, 1850, on Dr. Alexander's plantation in Caddo Parish, Louisiana. When he was about two, the enslaver moved everyone to Travis County, Texas. Not long after, a man rode up one night on horseback, kidnapped James and his two brothers, and took them to Bastrop County, where he sold them to Dr. Duvall. Duvall sold one brother right away; James and his brother John stayed until freedom.

Duvall had more than 500 acres in cotton and kept people in the fields every day except Saturday afternoon and Sunday. James herded sheep and served as houseboy before he was old enough to pick cotton. He remembered Saturday-night dances with a fiddle that played all night, and Sunday services with a white preacher in the morning and a Black preacher in the evening. He saw people auctioned at the courthouse, some for around $3,000, and noted that anyone with scars was hard to sell. He also saw people driven past in chained droves.

When freedom came, the enslaver offered fifty cents a day to those who stayed. James and his brother walked to Austin instead and found their mother working for Judge Paschal. She hired them out. Over his life he worked as a hotel porter and waiter, factory hand, carpenter's helper, roundhouse worker, cotton picker and farmer. He was married sixty-one years and raised twelve children, five of whom were living when he was interviewed. He lived in Taylor and Kaufman before moving to Fort Worth in 1929.