James Martin

James Martin was born in 1847 near Alexandria, Virginia, to Preston and Lizzie Martin. His grandfather had been born in Jamaica, and his mother in the West Indies. His father had been freed at sixteen under the terms of an enslaver's will. His mother was still enslaved, and when she wanted to marry Preston, her owner tried to make her choose a husband from ten or fifteen enslaved men instead, since children of a free father would be free. She refused. The owner finally agreed she could buy her freedom for $1,200, and her parents saved for years to pay it before they married. James and his siblings were born free.

He described watching enslaved people sold at auction: held in pens behind a curtain, inspected by bidders who checked their teeth, and made to walk, hop and jump across the platform while an overseer stood by with a whip and a pistol.

He trained as a saddler. After the war he served in Texas with the 9th U.S. Cavalry, one of the regiments of Black soldiers, at Fort Sill, Fort Davis, Fort Stockton and Fort Clark, and fought in two battles in the Guadalupe Mountains before his discharge in 1872. He then helped lay railroad track across South Texas and drove herds of two or three thousand cattle from South Texas as far as the Dakotas. "I don't believe any man can be educated who ain't traveled some," he said. He lived in San Antonio when he was interviewed at ninety.