He was sold at one month old.

Other children tried to drown him for being fast.

At 85, he made sure we would never forget.

In 1935, inside a small home in Tyler, Texas, an 85-year-oldBlack man sat down and began to speak. He knew time was running out — not justfor him, but for every survivor like him.

His name was Preely Coleman, born into slavery in 1852 —thirteen years before freedom, thirteen years before the world would legallyrecognize him as human.

He was one of thousands interviewed by the Works ProgressAdministration, desperate to record the memories of formerly enslaved peoplebefore those memories vanished forever. It was Juneteenth — the holiday thatonce brought freedom to Texas — but Preely didn’t go out to celebrate.

He had something more important to give.

“I’m Preely Coleman, and I never gits tired of talking.”

His story came out in pieces — trauma softened only by ageand the passing of decades.

Sold Before He Could Even Stand

Preely was born near Newberry, South Carolina. His motherwas enslaved. His father? A Souba family son — a white man who raped her, as somany enslavers did.

When Preely was one month old, the Souba family decided hismother was too much trouble. So they sold her.

“They pays $1,500 for my mammy…

And I was throwed in.”

Thrown in. Like a bonus.

A one-month-old baby sold as an accessory.

His mother carried him the whole way from South Carolina toTexas — over a thousand miles on foot. A journey of exhaustion and agony for awoman who had given birth four weeks earlier.

But she did not put him down.

The Cost of Being Fast

On the plantation in Texas, Confederate soldiers would passby on their way to war. They’d gather the enslaved children for entertainment —racing them to the mulberry tree.

There was a reward: a quarter.

Preely was fast — always fast.

“I nearly allus gits there first.”

But success breeds resentment — especially when enslavedchildren learned early that survival was competition.

One day, the children decided to stop him from winning.

They threw a rope around his neck and dragged him downhill —toward deep water.

He was seven or eight years old.

“I was nigh ’bout choked to death.”

Only one boy — Billy — tried to help him. The rest keptdragging.

They were going to drown him over a coin.

A white man, Captain Berryman, happened to ride past. Heslashed the rope, pulled Preely’s limp body from the water, and dunked himrepeatedly until he breathed again.

“They never tries to kill me any more.”

Said as if it were normal.

Because under slavery — it was.

A Boy Worked Like a Man

He grew up on the Selman plantation after being sold yetagain. Days began at first light, ended in darkness.

“From can see to can’t see.”

They ate bread in pot liquor. Milk on rare days. Honey onlysometimes.

He remembers the shoes — oh, the shoes.

Stiff red leather that tore skin until blood soaked in.

“I’ll never forgit ’em.”

Memories lodged where bone meets soul.

Freedom — Five Words in a Field

He was thirteen when his enslaver came into the field andsaid:

“You all is free as I is.”

No ceremony.

No apology.

Just five words.

“There was shoutin’ and singin’.

’Fore night us was all ’way to freedom.”

Freedom meant hunger, uncertainty, danger — but it meantlife.

It meant future.

It meant he would never be bought again.

A Memory That Refused to Die

Preely lived seventy more years as a free man.

He survived Reconstruction.

He endured Jim Crow.

He watched America pretend it had already overcome its sins.

But in 1935, on a Juneteenth afternoon, he left us histestimony — raw, honest, unfiltered — so we could not pretend.

“I never gits tired of talking.”

He knew one truth:

If the people who lived through slavery did not speak,slavery would be rewritten by those who caused it.

And so he told us:

about the rope that nearly ended his childhood

about his mother walking a thousand miles with him in herarms

about being sold like a spare part

about a freedom that arrived too late for so many

We Remember Because He Spoke

Preely Coleman is gone.

But his voice remains.

A single voice among millions —

reminding us that slavery was not numbers in a textbook,

but babies sold,

children drowning,

families ripped apart,

survival earned breath by breath.

His memories pierce the silence of history and refuse tosoften its edges.

We honor him by listening.

We honor him by remembering.

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