PATRON + Cudjoe Lewis was a member of the Tarkars Tribe . . .

Here’s a bit of history for you for free.
I am 73 & grew up in Anniston, AL. Saw a lot of good times and turbulent times. This is a story told to me by a slave in the early ’50’s and I don’t think it should be lost when I die.

As children, there was a old man we loved and he would tell us children Brere Rabbit & Anansi stories. Pap was his name and he lived in a cottage that John B. Legarde gave him. Legarde owned a large apt. building. We took care of our old people, no matter what colour in those days. Pap said he didn’t know his exact age, but knew he was in his 90’s. Pap was black, as you probably assumed.

One day after the rest of the kids left, I asked Pap if he remembered the Civil War. He told me that he was just a little kid who helped around the “big house” where his mother and father worked when the Yankee cavalry rode into the yard . His older sister took him under the house and hid. The man of the house was off fighting.

Pap said the Yankees set fire to the house and took the woman of the house along with his mother and father, into the yard and shot them all. He told me that his older sister put her hand over his mouth to keep him from screaming because she was sure they would have been shot too. I’ll never for get the tears in Pap’s eyes.

I tried to share this with an audio history site, but they told me that it wasn’t the history they wanted to record and pass on. We live in an age of revisionist history and truth is not recorded unless it is politically correct, I guess.

Winners of wars write the history books.