Sol Walton

Sol Walton was born in 1849 in Mobile, Alabama, enslaved by Sam and Mary Lampkin. His father had been bought by the Lampkins but always kept the name of his first enslaver, Walton. His mother was Martha, and his siblings were Robert, Jim, Richard, Alex, Anna, Dora, Isabella and Bettie. When he was about six the Lampkins moved to Salt Water Creek in Mississippi. His first job was carrying water and dinner to the field hands in gourd buckets.

He saw people whipped until their shirts stuck to their backs, and he saw his mother stripped to the waist and whipped with a bullwhip for shouting at a white church meeting. "Heaps of 'em was whipped just because they could be whipped," he said, and some owners half-fed their workers and then whipped them for begging. The Lampkins had only one white overseer: when he knocked down an old man and had others hold him for a bullwhipping, the old man got up and killed him. After that the enslaver made Sol's cousin the foreman. Prayer meetings were the greatest pleasure they had. About the time the war got going, the Lampkins moved to Texas with sixty enslaved people.

After freedom Sol and his father farmed on shares on the Lampkin place at Mooringsport, Louisiana, until 1873. From 1876 to 1923 he worked in the Texas & Pacific shops in Marshall, Texas. When interviewed at 88, he and his wife lived on odd jobs and money from a son in a Civilian Conservation Corps camp.