Scott Johnson Talks About Slavery

Scott Johnson was born in 1894 in the Randall’s Quarters, a community just west of Huntsville.  His mother was born into slavery on a plantation there.

“My great grandfather came straight from Sierra Leone, West Africa and landed in Galveston…  He was sold to a man out here in Galilee, Dudley Randall, a slave owner.  And that’s where all my people were born, and raised, and died.

 My mother was born there.  My mother’s mother was sold, with my mother in her arms, to a slave owner in Birmingham, Alabama and they stayed up there in Birmingham, Alabama until the slaves were freed down here in Texas… [My grandfather] hitchhiked from Texas to Alabama to pick them up.  He spent the money he had on a coach ride, and then he would find him a job and work to get him a little money, catch a coach again—until he got into Birmingham, Alabama.

The slave owner there was very kind. He paid all there way back to Texas on a stagecoach and that’s who they got back [to Randall’s Quarters.]