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Samuel Williams (1852 – 1946?), better known by his pen name Sam Aleckson, was an American slave and author of Before the War and After the Union: An Autobiography. Like his father, Alexander Williams, his mother, Susan Williams, and his grandfather of the same name, Samuel Williams was born into slavery in 1852 in Charleston, South Carolina. His great-grandfather, Clement Williams, was brought from Africa in the Atlantic slave trade. Samuel Williams' memoir offers a rare look into the lives of the urban enslaved in North America and the ways freedmen negotiated their ways through Reconstruction and into the 20th century. Samuel Williams had the great fortune of being taught the three "R's" by his owners. Once freed, he used his literacy to document his life and obtained publication in 1929. Williams quotes Shakespeare to readers of his autobiography by drawing from Othello: "I will a plain unvarnished tale deliver," a line often used in slave narratives but powerful here. The humbleness of this phrase belies a thoughtful, complex life story. While his memoir was actually published in 1929, Williams claims to have composed it in 1914 during a time when he feared he might go blind and wanted to document his life before that occurred. However, he did not go blind, and lived on for at least another two or three decades.
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Samuel Williams 1852 Charleston, South Carolina, USA
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| Died |
1946 (aged 93) Massachusetts, USA
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