A simple and beautiful love story from slavery times. Robert Solomon's father had been brought to the South during the illegal slave trade. Solomon spoke his father's language and since he was born in 1864 and may have lived into the 1950s this is another example of African Americans speaking an African language less than 50 years ago, just as was the case with some of the children of the Clotilda Africans.
"My father was African.... My mother was a Cherokee Indian. Her name was Alice Gamage. I was born in 1864... [M]y father stole my mother one night. He couldn't understand them and he was afraid of her people.... When I got up any size I asked my father all about him and my mother marrying. He said he knowed her 'about two years 'fore they married. They sorter courted by signs--my mother learned me her language and it was natural for me to speak my father's tongue. I talked for them. She was bout fifteen when she run away. I don't know if a preacher ever did marry em or not. My father said she was just so pretty he couldn't help lovin' her. He kept making signs and she made signs."
Robert Solomon, interviewed by the Works Progress Administration in Des Arc, Arkansas in the 1930s.
"My father was African.... My mother was a Cherokee Indian. Her name was Alice Gamage. I was born in 1864... [M]y father stole my mother one night. He couldn't understand them and he was afraid of her people.... When I got up any size I asked my father all about him and my mother marrying. He said he knowed her 'about two years 'fore they married. They sorter courted by signs--my mother learned me her language and it was natural for me to speak my father's tongue. I talked for them. She was bout fifteen when she run away. I don't know if a preacher ever did marry em or not. My father said she was just so pretty he couldn't help lovin' her. He kept making signs and she made signs."
Robert Solomon, interviewed by the Works Progress Administration in Des Arc, Arkansas in the 1930s.