Reeves Tucker

Reeves Tucker was 98 and living on his son's farm nine miles northwest of Marshall, Texas, when he was interviewed. He was born in Bibb County, Alabama, between Selma and Maplesville, to Armistead and Winnie Tucker, enslaved by George Washington Tucker Sr. His siblings were Andy, John, Peter, Anna and Dorcus. When Reeves was a small boy the old enslaver died and his property was divided: Reeves's mother and the other children went to a daughter who stayed in Alabama, and his father to a son. His father begged so hard to take Reeves with him that they finally allowed it. Reeves never saw his mother again.

The younger Tucker settled near Gilmer, Texas, and did not allow beatings, but Reeves saw people on other places whipped until blood ran onto the ground and they fell as if dead when cut loose. He saw people auctioned like stock, babies sold from their mothers' breasts, and speculators driving gangs of fifty "like convicts." His father, insisting on crossing the woods to a neighbor's alone one night, was caught by patrollers and nearly beaten to death. While the enslaver sat in church, Reeves said, the people he held were in the field stacking fodder.

At freedom the enslaver promised a horse and saddle to anyone who stayed to finish the crop, but they got nothing. Reeves left as soon as the crop was laid by, farmed near Hallsville most of his life, and raised seven children.