William Colbert

William Colbert was born in 1844 on Jim Hodison's plantation at Fort Valley, Georgia, where at one point 165 people were enslaved. "He wasn't good to none of us," Colbert said; everyone around hated being bought by him because he was so mean, and his overseer was meaner still. He told of his brother January, four years older, a big, fine-looking young man, who was caught an hour late returning from seeing a girl on the next plantation. The enslaver tied him to a pine tree, stripped off his shirt, and lashed him while trying to make him cry out. January said nothing, lips quivering and body shaking, as blood ran down his chest, while William sat on his parents' steps crying and some of the others had to go inside because they couldn't watch. At last January whispered, "Master, Master, have mercy on this poor nigger."

When the war came, Union soldiers stayed only a few days, eating the fruit, hams and corn but burning no houses. All three of the enslaver's sons went to war and none came home. The enslaver lost his money and the house fell to ruin as the freedpeople left one by one. The last time William saw the place, the old man sat alone in a wicker chair looking over a small field, beside four graves, one of them his wife's. William's own wife had died 37 years before the interview, and he said he had been living like that old man ever since, all alone. He was interviewed in Alabama.