Isaam Morgan was interviewed from his home in Mobile, Alabama about his experiences of being enslaved while Tony Morgan's recollections came from a written archive of a slave to another slave. The Blackman Who Reads Aloud continues his personal journey through the Alabama Slave Narratives, Federal Writer's Project. We must uplift our history to ensure we are redeemed for the struggles of our ancestors.

So you're about 9-years-old and called to the Big House on the Master's plantation and asked to pick the person who will be your lifelong master/oppressor. The choices are the sons of the owner of the plantation. That's what this journey is about reading the recollections of Uncle Mose of having to make that choice. The Blackman Who Reads-Aloud continues his personal journey reading the recollections of our black ancestors who were held in bondage and oppression.

Today's read-aloud journey is interesting because it comes in the form of a three-chapter book written by Rev. Wilson E. Northcross, born into slavery in 1840. My reading takes the journey from 1840-1897 from slavery to becoming a prominent pastor in Northern Alabama whose primary church is still flourishing in 2021.

"I heered Abraham Lincoln speak once at Chicaumaugee Mountain an' he said 'For people, by people, and through people.' I always 'membered dat. That's what Wade Owens remembered and yet at the time he said this our black ancestors were in the midst of Jim Crow America and the government wasn't the friend of Black America. It was the enemy that governed with an iron leash of injustice. Today, I journey through the recollections of Wade Owens and Simon Phillips.

Maugan Shepherd and Allen Sims are the recollections The Blackman Who Reads Aloud journeys to today. Maugan Shepherd, whose first words to his interviewer in Alabama in the late 1930's was that he heard that slavery was coming back. Allen Sims who wanted to return to slavery because being freed offered his life no enjoyment, only the bitter fruits of poverty. This is why this nation can no longer ignore the pleas for black reparations. Because, our ancestors and many of the descendants of those enslaved by slavery and Jim Crow still suffer from the adverse effects of those institutions today.