SLAVE DAYS

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 October 1929, Page 12

SLAVE DAYS

DEATH OF AGED NEGRO. The War Department lifted the ban against civilian burials in Arlington cemetery long enough one day recently to permit Uncle Jim Parks to begin his long sleep in that reservation, where he spent his life as a negro slave boy, a freed slave, an aging worker, and a guide, says the New York “Times.” A slave of George Washington Parke Custis, the adopted son of George Washington and father-in-law of Robert E. Lee, he saw the battletides of the Civil War roll, over the wooded hillsides and fields where he played as a boy, saw the coffins “stacked like cordwood” after Manassas. Then, puzzled and aging, his sad old eyes watched the ever-increasing wave /of white headstones roll further and further through the lanes and glades of Arlington “Estate” as the nation buried its heroes of that and later wars. For almost 90 years the place was home to him. He was born there, played and toiled and was married there in the crinoline days of his halfforgotten past. He was “fussed at” by Major Custis, ran errands for “Miss Mary,” and bowed low to the stately figure of hex* husband, General Lee. The guns of war spoke soctn after he and 500 other slaves had been freed by their master. Blue-clad soldiers came to the plantation .ajjd. the spur-„ red boots' of Their officers - vang dis-pordr-ttirotiglr the-quj_ek.lw.use.. that had./ ifedSfi Lee*s "Koine. ‘ - ---, — The blue soldiers marched south, and soon the bewildered Parks was aiding in the first military burials at

Arlington. He helped build Fort Whipple, the Civil War fortification where Fort Myer now is. Time quieted the cannons and peace returned to the old plantation, but never again the old order. Time brought progress and more (wars and more changes. But Uncle Jim stayed on. Lately physical incapacity had kept him from the places jie loved best, but he has dreamed more poignantly than ever of the proud days of lace and lavender, forgetting, perhaps, at times the changes personified in the children of his children, five of whom served with the American forces during the World War. He never wanted to leave his “home.” And by the War Department’s ruling he never will, his grave being sealed and hallowed with a salute of soldiers’ guns. WHIII■IIIi I» Bin MMBWQ—B——B—B