Tempie Cummins

Tempie Cummins was born at Brookeland, Texas, enslaved with her parents by William Neyland. Her father was Jim Starkins and her mother Charlotte Brooks, both from Alabama; her mother had been sold away from her own family at seventeen. Tempie had one brother and four sisters.

At eight she was given to the enslaver's daughter. She slept on a pallet on the floor, received one homespun dress a year at Christmas, and otherwise wore the white children's cast-off clothes, split from hem to neck and pinned together with thorns. She went barefoot until her feet cracked, and was handed a piece of cornbread at mealtimes and told to run along. The enslaver whipped people with twisted beech switches, and she bled from those whippings many times.

Her mother worked in the house and listened from the chimney corner. When freedom came, she overheard the enslaver telling his wife that he would not tell the enslaved they were free until he had made another crop or two. She slipped out, clicked her heels together, shouted "I's free," and ran to the field to tell everyone, who stopped working. That night she hid in a ravine and had Tempie brought to her. The enslaver came out with a gun and shot at her, but she escaped down the ravine with her daughter. In old age Tempie lived alone in Jasper, Texas.