Sargeant Sylvester Magee (May 29, 1841 – October 15, 1971) was purported to be the last living former American enslaved. He received much publicity and was accepted for treatment by the MS Veterans Hospital as a veteran of the American Civil War.
He was born in NC in 1841 to enslaved Ephraim and Jeanette, who were held and worked on the J.J. Shanks plantation. He was purchased at the age of 19 just before the ACW by Southern plantation owner Hugh Magee at a slave market in Enterprise, Mississippi. He ran away from the Steen plantation and enlisted in the Union Army, taking part in the assault on Vicksburg.
He was forced to serve in both the Confederate and Union armies as a servant and laborer.
On his 124th birthday, the citizens of Collins held a party at a country grocery store, complete with a five-layer cake and 124 candles. It was declared “Sylvester Magee Day”. Many national news articles reported on his life and longevity, including Time and Jet. He appeared on the Mike Douglas Show and was flown to Philadelphia for another televised appearance. He was proclaimed the oldest living US citizen by a life insurance company, received a birthday card from President Lyndon B. Johnson, and was recognized by President Richard M. Nixon.
Jet wrote that, according to historians, “it would have been impossible for a person who neither reads nor writes to have related the stories of the Civil War in such detail as he without having served in the conflict”. Jet quoted a historian who stated that he talked with “rare intelligence and seldom rambled” in telling of his participation in the Civil War.
He had four wives, three of whom he outlived. He fathered 7 children, the last at 107. His father lived to 123, his mother to 122. In a 1966 interview, he stated that he had never drunk alcohol, not uttered a swear word, although he smoked cigarettes for 108 years. He made a living selling automated needles and digging graves. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence
