Chapter 1: Born in Bondage – The Early Life of James Samuel King

James Samuel King was born into slavery in the spring of 1851, at the edge of a nation on the brink of upheaval. His mother, Catherine Harper King, was enslaved in Tennessee. Of his father, history remains silent—his name lost to time—but James carried the surname King, a name that may have originated with the men who once claimed ownership of his bloodline. Some census records list Alabama as his birthplace, others Tennessee, but most roads lead back to the rugged red soil of West Tennessee, where Catherine's roots ran deep. It is likely that James was born there, on a modest farm or plantation, under the control of white landowners whose names are no longer remembered but whose power once shaped the lives of every Black child born on their land.

James' earliest memories may have been of his mother’s voice, soft and steady, singing to him beneath a patchwork quilt of sky and stars. But even those tender moments were overshadowed by the grim machinery of the slave system. When he was just a boy—perhaps no older than four or five—James and Catherine were sold to a plantation owner in Marshall County, Mississippi. It was a journey that would shape the course of his life, not only for where it took him, but for who was left behind. The new owner refused to purchase James’ father. With that decision, the fragile family unit was split, and James never saw his father again.

In that one transaction—common in the domestic slave trade—James learned the first brutal lesson of bondage: that Black families could be broken apart at the whim of another man’s wealth. Whether the sale took place in a bustling slave market in Memphis or by private contract on a plantation porch, the result was the same. James and his mother were loaded into a wagon or forced to walk the muddy road south toward Mississippi. For Catherine, the trauma of losing her partner was one of many wounds inflicted by a system that viewed her only in terms of her labor and reproductive value. For James, the separation from his father was a wound too early to fully understand—but one that would never fully heal.

They arrived in Marshall County and were placed on the plantation of D.H. Mims, a man who, like many Mississippi planters, had built his fortune on the bodies and backs of enslaved laborers. The Mims plantation, near the area later known as Wall Hill, was part of the vast cotton empire that blanketed the region. Mississippi, in the 1850s, had become one of the wealthiest states in the Union—its wealth not in gold or industry, but in the flesh and forced labor of people like James.

There, young James spent his formative years. The days began before the sun crested the horizon, the air already thick with humidity. As a small child, he may have been tasked with carrying water jugs to the fields or gathering firewood for the kitchens. By the time he was seven or eight, he might have been tending livestock or helping sweep the quarters. Enslaved children were expected to work early, though their tasks were tailored to their size. His bare feet would have hardened against the red clay, his ears attuned to the rhythms of the field: the rustle of cotton plants, the groan of wooden wagons, the weary spirituals hummed by the older workers.

Despite the constant surveillance and physical labor, enslaved families carved out moments of humanity. In the evenings, after the overseer's shadow had passed, James may have sat by the hearth in a rough log cabin, listening to his mother Catherine whisper stories—some from her Tennessee childhood, some made up to soothe him. If she was able, she would have taught him to recognize the constellations or sing the hymns passed down in secret church gatherings. In these moments, she gave James something that no enslaver could strip away: a sense of identity, of memory, of sacred connection.

At some point during their early years in Mississippi, Catherine remarried. Her new husband, Gib Mims, was likely another enslaved laborer on the same plantation. Their union, like many among enslaved people, was informal in the eyes of the law but deeply meaningful. For James, Gib may have become a father figure—a protector, a teacher, someone to show him how to survive in a world ruled by white power. With the addition of half-siblings in the years that followed, James’ childhood became one of shared resilience, rooted in familial bonds that endured even without legal recognition.

By the time James was ten years old, war clouds gathered across the nation. Mississippi, one of the earliest states to secede, was preparing for battle. Enslaved people like James were not ignorant of the growing tension—they overheard the hushed conversations of their enslavers, the sermons in the quarters, the passing rumors of a "man named Lincoln." For James, still a boy, the Civil War may have felt like thunder in the distance—terrifying, but impossible to understand.

Yet for his mother Catherine, for Gib, and for countless others, hope was kindled. Whispers of possible freedom passed through the quarters like wind through trees. No one knew when or how it would come, but the hope itself was an act of defiance. In secret prayer meetings and nighttime vigils, enslaved people dared to dream of liberation.

And when the time came, James would be eighteen.

Chapter 2: A War and a New World – Emancipation and Reconstruction

When war erupted in 1861, James Samuel King was only ten years old. Still considered a boy by law and labor, he was just old enough to fetch water, tend livestock, or carry messages for the overseer. But even children felt the tremors of war. Life on the Mims plantation in Marshall County, Mississippi began to shift as white men—overseers, plantation sons, field bosses—vanished to join the Confederate cause. In their absence, the power dynamics on plantations began to teeter. Enslaved people whispered about the war's progress and speculated about the President up North—Lincoln, they said, was a man who spoke of freedom.

For young James, the war years meant uncertainty layered on top of hardship. He would have seen anxiety flash across the faces of enslavers when Union troops advanced nearby. He would have felt the shift when rations were reduced or when rumors swept through the fields that freedom was near. In cabins lit by oil lamps and guarded whispers, men and women prayed aloud for deliverance, even as they lowered their voices for fear of retribution.

Then, on January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation—a decree that declared enslaved people in Confederate states to be free. But for James and his family in Mississippi, this news changed nothing right away. The Confederate government refused to recognize the proclamation, and slavery continued on Southern plantations until Union soldiers enforced the order. For nearly two more years, James remained in bondage, laboring under the shadow of a freedom he had not yet tasted.

Sometime in 1865, that changed.

Union troops finally reached Marshall County. When they did, they came not only with weapons, but with papers, declarations, and the weight of law. Whether it was in a field gathering, a churchyard, or a courthouse yard, someone—perhaps a young Black soldier in blue—stood before the people and read aloud that they were free. James was eighteen years old.

We cannot know how that moment unfolded for him, but we can imagine it. Catherine King may have stood beside her son, gripping his arm. Gib Mims, her husband, might have removed his hat and closed his eyes in silent prayer. The crowd could have erupted in tears, in singing, in disbelief. The plantation no longer owned them. The land was still owned by white hands, but their bodies were not.

With freedom came a flood of decisions—where to go, how to survive, and how to begin again when nothing had ever belonged to you. Like many newly freed families, the Kings did not stray far at first. They settled in Wall Hill Village, a small but growing community in Marshall County. There, in the years after the war, African American families carved out spaces for themselves—buying land, building homes, creating churches and schools. Reconstruction offered a window, however narrow, for people like James to reimagine what life could be.

Wall Hill was no bustling city, but it pulsed with the spirit of newly liberated people. Families gathered to build brush arbors for worship, to petition the Freedmen’s Bureau for contracts or rations, and to organize schools in log cabins. Men who had never voted before now cast ballots. Women who had seen their children sold away now held them close in freedom.

James, still in the first blush of manhood, was part of this movement. The skills he had honed in the fields—planting, plowing, mending fences, handling livestock—were suddenly tools he could use for himself and his future family. His strength, which once served another man’s wealth, now served his own.

In these years, he likely worked as a day laborer or tenant farmer, perhaps alongside his stepfather Gib. Land ownership was still rare for Black families in the 1860s, but farming as a free man—even under sharecropping or renting—was a profound shift. For the first time, James could negotiate wages, choose where to live, and build toward something that resembled independence.

Churches played a central role in that rebirth. The small Baptist and Methodist congregations in and around Wall Hill were more than places of worship—they were centers of political organizing, education, and community protection. James likely became a member of one such congregation, shaped by its sermons and its call to rebuild the world from the ashes of bondage. It was in these churches that he would eventually meet the woman who would become his wife: Caroline Payne.

But before that moment came, James spent the late 1860s learning how to survive as a free man in a hostile land. The South did not welcome emancipation; violence was common, and many white landowners attempted to reassert control through labor contracts, Black Codes, and intimidation. James’ mother, Catherine, had endured the theft of her husband and the chains of slavery; now she braved a new world where freedom came without protection. Yet she endured. So did James.

By the early 1870s, Wall Hill was home. It wasn’t easy. Poverty was widespread. The promises of Reconstruction were already beginning to fray. But for the first time in his life, James could choose who to love, where to live, and how to work. And in 1874, he made a vow that would define the next chapter of his life: he married Caroline Payne.

Chapter 3: Faith, Land, and Legacy – The Making of a Patriarch

On a January morning in 1874, James Samuel King, age twenty-three, stood beside Caroline Payne, and they became husband and wife. In the eyes of the law, this was their first official bond—but in the eyes of their families, of God, and of the Wall Hill community, their union carried deeper meaning. For two people born in chains, the right to marry freely, legally, and permanently was not taken for granted. This was more than love; it was a claim to dignity, to stability, to permanence in a world that had once denied them all three.

Their wedding likely took place at a local church or home, perhaps under the branches of a broad oak or before a small altar lined with candles. James may have worn his cleanest shirt and trousers, and Caroline, radiant, could have donned a handmade dress of white or blue, hemmed by family or neighbors. There may have been no rings, but there were vows. There was food, likely brought potluck-style by neighbors: cornbread, fried chicken, molasses cake. There was music—maybe a fiddler or the simple harmonies of hymns sung with full hearts. And there was prayer. Always prayer.

Together, James and Caroline built a family that would stretch far beyond their own generation. Over the next two decades, they welcomed eleven children into the world—Ida, Jewel, Emeline, Carrie, Simon, Oscar, Isaiah, Alcuen, Calvin, James Northern, and Lewis. Each child was born on Mississippi soil, into a household steeped in faith, discipline, and the steady rhythm of rural life.

James was not a wealthy man, but he was a provider. A farmer by trade and necessity, he plowed, planted, harvested, and bartered. Life in rural Mississippi was unforgiving. Cotton was king, but it could also be a curse—subject to pests, weather, and volatile markets. Still, James did not just work the land. He claimed it.

In 1881, just seven years after his marriage, James purchased property from his stepfather, Gib Mims. That act alone was revolutionary. The land he bought had once belonged to the Mims plantation—the very place where James had labored as a child, a teenager, an enslaved boy. Now, it was his.

Ownership of land was a triumph. For a formerly enslaved Black man in Mississippi, where laws and customs conspired to keep African Americans in economic dependency, buying land was an act of defiance and self-determination. It gave James the ability to plant for his own family, not another man’s wealth. It gave his children a home rooted not just in soil, but in sacrifice and survival.

His land was not vast, but it was sacred. The house he and Caroline kept would have been modest—perhaps a wooden frame with a tin roof, maybe a brick chimney, and wide front steps where children sat in the evening light. Inside, floors may have been swept dirt or worn plank. Quilts handmade by Caroline and her daughters would have covered beds stuffed with straw or cotton batting. A woodstove stood at the center, casting heat in the winter and warmth year-round from whatever was cooking: beans, sweet potatoes, biscuits, collards.

They lived with purpose and pride.

The King household was a hive of activity. Children helped with chores from the time they could walk. Sons were taught to plant rows straight and haul water from the well. Daughters learned to churn butter, patch clothes, and tend the fire. Caroline, by all accounts, was the steady center—faithful, nurturing, and firm. James, though quiet, carried a presence: stern but fair, with a voice that could command or comfort depending on the moment. His children would one day describe him not just as a father, but as a teacher and protector.

Church was the heartbeat of their week. On Sundays, the King family dressed in their best and traveled to a local Black congregation, likely one affiliated with the Baptist or AME tradition. The church was more than a place to worship—it was a pillar of community strength. It provided literacy classes, mutual aid, and social fellowship. James may have sat on the deacons' bench or participated in men's Bible study. Caroline sang in the women’s choir. Their children were baptized in a nearby creek, shouted down the pews during revivals, and recited scripture from memory at Easter programs.

As the 1880s gave way to the 1890s, the promises of Reconstruction faded. Mississippi adopted a new state constitution in 1890, one that used poll taxes, literacy tests, and “understanding clauses” to disenfranchise most Black voters. Lynchings increased. White supremacy became codified into law. But inside their home, James and Caroline guarded what could not be stolen: their faith, their children, and their land.

Their farm became a sanctuary, not just for survival, but for values. James taught his sons the importance of honest labor, and he modeled dignity in every furrow plowed. Caroline raised her daughters to be graceful under pressure, to endure with compassion and backbone. The children absorbed these lessons deeply. As adults, they would carry them into their own homes, churches, and communities.

James and Caroline King built more than a household. They built a lineage.

Chapter 4: Building a Life Under Jim Crow

By the turn of the 20th century, James Samuel King had lived through the fall of slavery, the hopes of Reconstruction, and now, the full grip of Jim Crow. The Mississippi he knew in the 1900s bore little resemblance to the one he had entered as a boy in bondage. Now a man in his fifties, James lived in a world tightly wrapped in laws designed to deny him equality, dignity, and voice. But within his home and on his land, James kept something that white supremacy could not extinguish: control over his own life.

He still farmed the land he had bought from his stepfather, Gib Mims, back in 1881—a plot that held the weight of history. Every crop James planted on that soil was a quiet act of resistance, a reminder that the land had once seen him shackled and now saw him free. He had married, built a family, and carved a living from the very earth that once enslaved him.

By 1900, the King household was full. According to census records, James and his wife Caroline were raising their eleven children on their own farmland in District 68, Beat 4, Marshall County. Their children ranged in age and shared in the labor—eight of them listed as farm laborers. The family’s days began before sunrise. The boys hoed rows, watered livestock, and tended the fields. The girls worked both inside and out—cooking, hauling water, weeding gardens, and caring for younger siblings. Meals were humble but sustaining: cornbread and beans, sweet potatoes from the garden, milk when the cow was generous.

Every Sunday, the family would wash up, put on pressed clothes, and make their way to church. Worship was the week’s heartbeat—sometimes held in a wooden chapel, sometimes beneath the shade of trees. Church offered more than scripture. It offered safety, structure, and affirmation. It was in church that the Kings could speak freely, sing loudly, and belong without condition.

But the world outside their fields and pews grew colder.

The Mississippi Constitution of 1890 had already stripped most Black men of their right to vote. Laws segregated schools, trains, stores, and water fountains. Newspapers buzzed with the coded language of racial superiority. Courthouses were no longer places where Black citizens found justice. And throughout the 1890s and early 1900s, lynching became a terrifying reality.

James likely knew of these dangers intimately. Marshall County itself, while not the site of some of the state’s most notorious lynchings, existed within that same climate of terror. Black men were advised to keep their heads down, not challenge a white man, and never speak too boldly. But at home, in private, James taught his children a different lesson: walk in truth, trust in God, and protect one another.

Then, in 1903, James faced a sorrow greater than any law or crop failure. Caroline, his wife of nearly thirty years, died.

She was his partner in everything—parenthood, prayer, and survival. Her death left a silence in the house that no hymn could fill. She was likely buried on or near the family’s land, as was customary in rural Mississippi Black communities. Her funeral would have drawn neighbors, church members, and relatives. Women wept softly into aprons, men removed their hats and bowed their heads. A preacher spoke of her faith and her labor, her devotion as a wife and mother. And her children—now young men and women—stood tall beside their grieving father.

James continued on, because he had no choice. His household still pulsed with life. There were children still growing, fields still demanding care, and a community that needed his strength. A few years later, he remarried. His new wife, Adeline Moore, joined the King family as a steadying presence. Together, they managed a household that now included adult children, grandchildren, and a hired woman named Nancy Nunally, listed in the 1910 Census. The household was still rooted in the same place—Beat 4 of Marshall County—and James, now nearing sixty, still farmed his land.

His sons—men now—helped till the soil. His daughters may have started families of their own, some staying nearby, some moving farther afield. But the King name became a fixture in Wall Hill. People knew James not as a former slave, but as a patriarch—a man who had earned respect, not by wealth or politics, but by the way he carried his burdens and raised his family.

Even as economic hardship intensified—due to falling cotton prices, racial discrimination in lending, and the devastation of the boll weevil—James remained rooted. He could have left, as others were beginning to do, joining the Great Migration north. But James chose to stay. His legacy was not in movement but in endurance.

There is no record that James ever learned to read or write, but he was a man of wisdom. His name, etched in land deeds and census pages, lives on not through books but through the lives of his children. They learned how to survive Jim Crow from his example—not through fear, but through faith, family, and the quiet defiance of planting again each spring.

Chapter 5: The Final Years – Death, Legacy, and Cultural Memory

By 1920, James Samuel King was seventy-nine years old. The world had changed dramatically since the day he was born into slavery. He had lived to see four different American presidencies, the Civil War, Emancipation, the rise of Jim Crow, and the first glimmers of Black migration north. But James remained in Wall Hill, Mississippi, rooted to the land he had once worked as a child in bondage—and later farmed as a free man.

The 1920 U.S. Census finds James still listed as a farmer, living with his wife Adeline in Beat 4, District 50. Though older now, likely weathered in body, James remained tethered to his fields. Farming was not just his trade—it was the way he affirmed his survival, every season of planting and harvest another act of persistence. He had outlived Caroline, raised his children, buried kin, endured decades of racial injustice, and yet still rose each day to work the land.

By then, many of James’s children had started their own families. Some stayed in Marshall County. Others may have moved farther, seeking factory jobs in Memphis or Chicago, pulled by the momentum of the Great Migration. But wherever they went, they carried pieces of James with them—his stories, his discipline, his quiet faith.

And then, on April 6, 1920, just weeks after that final census was recorded, James Samuel King passed away. No official death certificate has surfaced, but family records and cemetery inscriptions confirm his death and burial in the Brooks Family Cemetery, nestled just off Highway 309 South, in the Chulahoma area of Holly Springs.

There, among the trees and under Mississippi’s ever-watching sky, James was laid to rest.

His grave marker is modest but powerful. Etched in stone are the words “J.S. King,” the Masonic square and compass, and the inscription: “Live Work.”

The Masonic symbol speaks volumes. Black Freemasonry had long served as a refuge for Black men seeking brotherhood, purpose, and moral discipline in a hostile world. To be a Mason was to be part of a sacred order, to commit oneself to service, justice, and integrity. It meant James had not only earned the respect of his family but also of his peers and community.

And those words—“Live Work”—read like a final testimony. They are not decorative. They are a creed.

James lived through enslavement.
He lived through separation from his father and the trauma of family loss.
He lived through the war, through Reconstruction, through the cruel resurgence of white supremacy.
And still—he worked.
He worked for freedom, even when freedom was tenuous.
He worked for his children’s future, planting seeds he would not live to harvest.
He worked to build a home from the ruins of slavery and a legacy from the soil of oppression.

He died a free man. A landowner. A patriarch. A man of principle. His story was not written in newspapers or history books, but in the way his sons held a plow, in the hymns his daughters sang, and in the way generations of his descendants learned to stand tall, speak softly, and serve with pride.

His children would go on to raise families of their own. Some stayed in Mississippi, continuing the tradition of farming and faith. Others, perhaps, moved northward, seeking new beginnings in cities like St. Louis, Chicago, or Detroit. But wherever they went, James followed—in spirit, in memory, and in name.

Even now, more than a century after his passing, his legacy echoes. You can hear it in the stories passed from grandmother to grandchild, in the quiet reverence with which his name is spoken, and in the footsteps of those who trace their lineage to a man born enslaved, who rose, against every odds, to build a life worthy of remembrance.

James Samuel King’s life is not just history—it is testament. To the will to survive. To the strength of family. And to the belief that even in a broken world, one can live with dignity and work with purpose.