Sylvester Brooks

Sylvester Brooks was born about 1850 near the Tombigbee River in Greene County, Alabama, the only child at the time of Henderson and Martha Brooks. They were enslaved by Josiah Collier, who held seventy families in quarters a mile from the big house. He said the patrollers whipped him every time they caught him without a pass. The old enslaver often told him about the night the stars fell in 1833, when everyone fell on their knees and the women hid in the cellar until morning.

When freedom came, Collier lined everyone up two deep and told them they were as free as he was, offering wages that year and a crop the next. All but two stayed. One of the two was Sylvester's father, who left his wife and six children and never came back. The family stayed until the Colliers died and then with their eldest daughter, until the children were grown. About a year after freedom, Collier gave land for a church that was also a school, where a preacher named Christmas Crawford and a teacher named Nimron taught from blueback spellers. On Thanksgiving and Christmas, Black families went serenading at the white houses, singing "The nigger make the cotton and corn, and the white folks git the money."

He later moved to Texas and was living in Mart when interviewed at 87. He said he would like to die in Alabama, but there was no use going back now.