Joseph Leonidas
From:
Tennessee
Ex-Slave Stories
Subject: Joseph Leonidas Star,
# 133 Quebec Place,
Knoxville, Tennessee
If the poetic strain in the Dunbar Negroes of the south is an
inheritance and not "just a gift from On High," Knoxville, Tennessee's
aged Negro Poet,--born Joseph Leonidas Star,--but prominently known in
the community as "Lee" Star, Poet, Politician and Lodge Man,--thinks
that Georgia's poetic genius Paul Lawrence Dunbar, "maybe took his
writin' spells" from him.
"My grandfather and Paul Lawrence Dunbar's grandfather was cousins. He
were a much younger man than I am, for I was eighty-one years old the
twenty-sixth of December, 1937. So I reckon I give it down to my
kin-man. But it seem to me, that Poets is just born thataway. Po'try
is nothin' but Truth anyway, and it's Truth was sets us free. And that
makes me a free-born citizen bothways and every ways. I were born
free. I were always happy-natured and I expect to die thataway. One of
my poems is named, 'Be Satisfied!' and I say in it that if a man's got
somethin' to eat, and teeth to bite, he should be satisfied. You cant
take your goods with you. Old man Rockefeller, when he died here
awhile back, went away from here 'thout his hat and shoes. That's the
way its goin' to be with all us, no matter what our color is."
"The people 'round here calls me "Lee" Star, and I want to tell you,
Lee Star is a free-born man. But of course, things bein' as they were,
both my mother and father were slaves. That is for a few years. They
lived in Greenville, Tennessee. My mother, Maria Guess, was free'd
before the emancipation, by the good words of her young white
mistress, who told 'me [TR: 'em] all when she was about to die, she
wanted 'em to set Maria free, 'cause she didn't want her little
playmate to be nobodys else's slave. They was playmates you see. My
mother was eleven years old when she was freed."
"When she was about fourteen and my father Henry Dunbar wanted to
marry he had to first buy his freedom. In them times a slave couldn't
marry a free'd person. So he bought his freedom from his Marster Lloyd
Bullen, and a good friend of Andrew Johnson, the presi-dent. My father
an' him was friends too. So he bought his freedom, for just a little
of somethin' I disremember what, 'cause they didn't aim to make him
buy his freedom high. He made good money though. He was a carpenter,
blacksmith, shoe maker and knowed a lot more trades. His Master was
broadhearted, and good to his slaves, and he let 'em work at anything
they want to, when they was done their part of white folks
chore-work."
"Both my father and mother was learned in the shoe makin' trade. When
they come to Knoxville to live, and where I was born, they had a great
big shoe shop out there close to where Governor Brownlow lived.
Knoxville just had three streets, two runnin' east and west and one
run north and south. I well remember when General Burnside come to
Knoxville. That was endurin' the siege of Knoxville. Before he marched
his men out to the Battle of Fort Saunders, he stopped his solider
[TR: soldier] band in front of our shoe shop and serenaded my mother
and father. I was a little boy and I climed up on the porch bannisters
and sat there and lissen' to that music."
"I remember another big man come here once when I was a boy and I
served the transient trade at a little eatin' place right where the
Atkin Ho-tel is now. Jeff Davis come there to eat, when he stopped
over between trains. That was in 1869. No, I disremember what he eat
or how he behave. He didnt seem no different from any other man. He
was nince lookin' wore a long tail coat and his boots was plenty
blacked. He favored pictures of Abraham Lincoln. Was about
middle-height and had short, dark chin-whiskers. I were very busy at
the time, an' if they was any excitement I didnt know it."
"Yes, I've seen many a slave in my day. One of my boy playmates was a
slave child. His name is Sam Rogan and he lives now at the County Poor
Farm. I make it a point not to dwell too much on slave times. I was
learned different. I've had considerable schoolin', went to my first
school in the old First Presbyterian church. My teachers was white
folks from the North. They give us our education and give us clothes
and things sent down here from the North. That was just after the
surrender. I did see a terrible sight once. A slave with chains on him
as long as from here to the street. He was in an ole' buggy, settin'
between two white men and they was passin' througn Knoxville. My
mother and father wouldnt lissen' to me tell 'em about it when I got
home. And I hope I forget everything I ever knowed or heard about
salves [TR: slaves], and slave times."
Joseph Leonidas Star, no longer works at the shoemakers trade. He
writes poetry and lives leisurely in a three room frame shanty, in a
row of shabbier ones that face each other disconsolately on a typical
Negro alleyway, that has no shade trees and no paving. "Lee's" house
is the only one that does not wabble uneasily, flush with the muddy
alley. His stands on a small brick foundation, a few feet behind a
privet hedge in front, with a brick wall along the side in which he
has cemented a few huge conch shells.
After fifty-four years residence here, a political boss in his ward,
and the only Negro member of the Young White Men's Republican League,
Star's influence in his community is attested by the fact that when he
"destructed", the Knoxville City Council to "please do somethin' about
it, Knoxville being too big a city to keep callin' street's alleys,"
the City Council promptly and unanimously voted to change the name of
King's Alley to Quebec Place.
When the interviewer called, Star's door was padlocked. But he
appeared soon, having received word by the grape-vine system that some
one "was to see him",--"They told me it was the Sherriff" he laughed.
He came down the long muddy alley at a lively clip. He claimes he is
able to walk about 20 miles each day, just to keep in condition. He
wore a broad-brimmed black "derby-hat", a neatly pressed serge suit in
two tones, a soiled white pleated shirt and a frazzled-edged black bow
tie. His coat lapels and vest-front were adorned with badges and
emblems, including his Masonic pins, a Friendship Medal, his
Republican button and a silver crucifix. The Catholic church,
according to Lee, is the only one in Knoxville which permits the black
man to worship under the same roof with his white brothers.
Many of Star's poems have been published in the local and state
papers. He keeps a record of deaths of all citizens, and has done so
for sixty years. He calls the one, which records murders and hanging,
his "Doomsday Book", and "encoached" in it he claims is an accurate
date record of all such events of importance in his lifetime. His
records are neatly inscribed in a printing form and very legible. His
conversation is marked by grammatical incongruities, but he does not
speak the Negro dialect.
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