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Originally published in 1881, Mr Smith created a detailed narrative of his long, eventful life, a testament to his very survival under conditions of extreme hardship. Unlike the eloquent, stirring rhetoric of Frederick Douglass, James Smith's prose is simple and plain spoken. As such his words have the unmistakable sound of authenticity and what he has to say in his unadorned fashion is all the more poignant.

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9781591022046

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James Lindsay Smith was born a slave on the plantation of Thomas Langdon, in Northern Neck, Northumberland County, Virginia. One of eleven children of Rachel and Charles Payne, he was crippled at an early age with an injury that prevented him from working in the cotton fields. A house slave, he eventually was trained as a shoemaker and often hired out. Smith's mother died after witnessing the sale of one her children. His father died shortly after. Charles Payne's deathbed wish was that his children profess religion; this influenced Smith to become a preacher. With two companions, Smith escaped in 1838, arriving first in Philadelphia, and then making his home with the family of a White pastor in Springfield, Massachusetts. Here he was employed in a shoe shop while attending school in nearby Wilbraham, Massachusetts. At this time, he was finally licensed to preach. In 1842, Smith married Emeline Minerva Platt, with whom he had four children. He and his wife settled at Norwich, Connecticut, where Smith owned his own shop and purchased a home for his family. He continued his preaching at the Black Methodist Church. Smith published his Autobiography of James L. Smith in 1881. Besides telling his life story, he also wrote about the Black regiments in the Civil War and the conditions of African Americans after the war.

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