omes and visits me and we talk and walk over there where we uster and
set on the porch. She low she gwine steal ole Acie some of dese days in
the near future, and I'll be mighty glad to go ever yonder where all I
got is at."

REFERENCE

1. Personal interview with Acie Thomas, Moncrief Road Jacksonville,
Florida

FEDERAL WRITERS' PROJECT
American Guide, (Negro Writers' Unit)

Martin Richardson, Field Worker
South Jacksonville, Florida
December 8, 1936

SHACK THOMAS, Centenarian

Beady-eyed, grey-whiskered, black little Shack Thomas sits in the sun in
front of his hut on the Old Saint Augustine Road about three miles south
of Jacksonville, 102 years old and full of humorous reminiscences about
most of those years. To his frequent visitors he relates tales of his
past, disjointedly sometimes but with a remarkable clearness and
conviction.

The old ex-slave does not remember the exact time of his birth, except
that it was in the year 1834, "the day after the end of the Indian War."
He does not recall which of the Indian wars, but says that it was while
there were still many Indians in West Florida who were very hard for him
to understand when he got big enough to talk, to them.

He was born, he says on "a great big place that b'longed to Mister Jim
Campbell; I don't know just exactly how big, but there was a lot of us
working on it when I was a little fellow." The place was evidently one
of the plantations near Tallahassee; Thomas remembers that as soon as he
was large enough he helped his parents and others raise "corn, peanuts,
a little bit of cotton and potatoes. Squash just grew wild in the
woods; we used to eat them when we couldn't get anything else much."

The centennarian remembers his parents clearly; his mother was one Nancy
and his father's name was Adam. His father, he says, used to spend hours
after the candles were out telling him and his brothers about his
capture and subsequent slavery.

Adam was a native of the West Coast of Africa, and when quite a young
man was attracted one day to a large ship that had just come near his
home. With many others he was attracted aboard by bright red
handkerchiefs, shawls and other articles in the hands of the seamen.
Shortly afterwards he was securely bound in the hold of the ship, to be
later sold somewhere in America. Thomas does not know exactly where Adam
landed, but knows that his father had been in Florida many years before
his birth. "I gues