Preely Coleman, born into slavery, told his life story at age 85 in Tyler, 1935.

Preely was born in 1852 in New Berry, South Carolina, but he and his mother were sold and taken to Texas when he was only a month old…

They settled near Alto, where Preely lived most of his life. Here are his words, preserved thanks to the WPA project:
“I’m Preely Coleman and I never get tired of talking. Yes, ma’am, it’s Juneteenth, but I’m at home because I’m too old to go to the celebrations. Where was I born? I know exactly, because my mother told me a thousand times times I was born down on the old Souba plantation, in South Carolina, about ten miles from New Berry.

My mother belonged to the Souba family, but actually one of the Souba boys was my father, so the Soubas sold my mother to Bob and. Dan Lewis, and they took us to Texas along with a large group of other slaves. My mother told me it took a whole month to get to Alto, their new home.
“When I was a child, I had quite a good time, because there were a lot of children on the plantation.

We used to have big races. During the war, the soldiers would stop on their way to Mansfield, Louisiana, to eat something and spend the night, and there we would do the There was a mulberry tree we ran to, and we lined up while the soldiers said, ‘Now the first one to touch the tree gets a quarter,’ and I almost always got there first. I got a lot of quarters by touching that old mulberry tree !
“So the kids decided to get me in trouble, because I was winning all the quarters. They threw a rope around my neck and started dragging me down the street, and down the hill, and I almost suffocated. My only friend was Billy, and he fought to try to free me. They were about to throw me into the great spring at the bottom of the hill, but we met Captain Berryman, a white man, who took his knife and cut the rope from my neck and took me by the heels, diving me up. and down into the spring until I came to. They never tried to kill me again.
“My mot