Nathan Beauchamp

Nathan Beauchamp was digging in his vegetable garden beside his cabin near Eufaula, Alabama, when the interviewer arrived, and they sat on a homemade bench under an oak to talk. His father, also named Nathan Beauchamp, was enslaved by Green Beauchamp at White Oak Springs near Eufaula, a state legislator from the days when Tuscaloosa was the capital, who held hundreds of people.

His father drove the supply wagon into Eufaula, and along the way he would meet a young Native woman from a nearby village carrying big baskets to sell in town and offer her a ride. One day he asked the enslaver for permission to marry her, and he married Mimi. Nathan said he was half Black and half Native. His mother died about five years after freedom, and he remembered her long black hair and the way the sun sparkled on her teeth when she smiled. She kept selling her baskets in Eufaula, sometimes walking the whole 24 miles there and back.

Nathan had lived in Eufaula fifty years or more and owned his cabin, the land around it, and a small store, which he said was enough to keep him going.