Preely Coleman

Preely Coleman was born in 1852 on the Souba farm near Newberry, South Carolina. His mother belonged to the Souba family, and one of the Souba sons was his father, so the family sold his mother to Bob and Dan Lewis, who took her and the month-old baby to Texas with a large group of enslaved people. The trip to Alto took a full month. On the way his mother married John Selman, with the enslaver's consent.

During the war, soldiers on their way to Mansfield, Louisiana, stopped overnight and held races among the children, paying a quarter to whoever slapped a mulberry tree first. Preely usually won, and the other children grew so jealous that they threw a rope around his neck and dragged him toward a spring to drown him, while his friend Billy fought to free him. A white man, Captain Berryman, cut the rope and dunked him in the spring until he revived.

When the Lewises lost their place, the Selman family bought his mother for $1,500, and Preely was "throwed in." He worked from daylight, called to the field by a conch-shell horn, with an hour off at midday and no work on Sundays. The enslaver made them wear stiff red russet shoes because of the stumps and snags. When freedom came, the enslaver walked into the field and said, "You all is free as I is," and by nightfall everyone had gone, shouting and singing. He was interviewed in Tyler, Texas, on Juneteenth, too old to attend the celebrations.