Update: Read this recent article to learn more about the Africans who were brought to American and sold as slaves: https://www.splcenter.org/tt-landing-nation
The article, cited above, does not mention that the Africans who were brought to America were already slaves. This fact is not known today.
Continue reading my original article.
Note that I did not write that my neighbor was an African-American man. No, he had been brought to America straight from Africa. He had been born a slave in Africa. His skin was actually black, not brown.
He lived in a house that was next door to my house, although we each had a garden in the space between our houses.
This man’s wife was nearly white. She could have passed for white if she had used some cream rinse on her hair. When I was a child, she worked in our house as a maid. She told us about the background of her husband. One thing that she didn’t tell us is that her African husband could speak perfect English which he had learned when he was a slave.
Both of our houses were very close to the railroad tracks that ran past our property. When a freight train would go by, there would be pieces of coal that fell off the train. I would run outside with a bucket and pick up the pieces of coal. My black nieghbor also ran out to pick up the coal, but when he saw me, he would run away.
I would take some coal from my bucket and put it on the ground near him. Then I would say “for you.” He would approach very slowly and pick up a piece of coal; then he would run away.
I would sometimes walk past his house, on my way to visit my friends. When he would see me coming, he would run inside.
I talked to his wife and asked her why he was afraid. She said that he had been treated very badly by white people when he was a slave in Africa. I told her to tell him that no one would treat him badly now — this man was 6 foot 6, and very muscular.
After that, the next time that I walked past his house, I spoke to him and said “May I join you, and sit with you on your porch?” He appeared to be shocked and scared to death, but he motioned to me to come up on the porch and sit beside him.
After that, I sat with him many times, and then one day, I asked him if he would go for a walk with me. We walked down the main street of the town where we lived. I held his hand and tried to reassure him.
We started walking together down the main street of our town, and then one day, I took him to see the town jail, which was a small brick building. I told him that this was where white people would be locked up if they hurt him. He was completely shocked. He had no idea that white people would be punished for hurting a black man.
Long story short: he eventually got to the point that he would walk through the town by himself and greet the people that he met.
One important point here is that the black people who were brought here by slave traders were already slaves in Africa. The free Africans brought the slaves down to the ships and sold them to the slave traders.
I am now 85 years old — this was way back in the dim past.