EARLY CHILDHOOD.
The first seven years of young Walker’s life were spent under the hard
tuition of slavery, though, of course, he cannot have any very vivid
recollections of the hardships of those days. It is fair, nevertheless
to assume that his lot was not different from that of thousands and
thousands of other black children in different parts Of the South.
Richmond County, one of the large “Black Belt” counties of Georgia,
which had then, and which has to this day, a larger black than white
population, was in no respect different in its slave customs and
regulations from other slave communities, excepting possibly the
religious privileges enjoyed by the slaves. They had their own churches
and enjoyed for the most part the ministrations of colored preachers,
such as they were. They had their own houses of worship, their own
church officials, and held regular and stated religious meetings.
This was true in only a very limited number of places in the South
during the slave period. In this respect, Richmond County was somewhat
in advance of other localities. But only in this respect. In other
matters, it was the same in Richmond County as elsewhere. The slaves
received regular rations or allowances. The monthly ration consisted
of eight pounds of pickled pork or its equivalent in fish. The pork
was often tainted and the fish of the poorest quality. With this,
they had one bushel of unbolted Indian meal, of which quite fifteen
per cent. was fit only for pigs, and one pint of salt. This was the
entire monthly allowance for a full grown slave. The children had no
regular allowance, and often were compelled to dispute with dogs and
cats and pigs over the scraps thrown into the yard or into the swill
tub. Children not large enough to work in the field had neither shoes,
stockings, jackets nor trousers given them. Their clothing consisted
of two coarse tow linen shirts per year, and when these were worn out,
they were literally naked until the next allowance day. Flocks of
children from five to ten years old might be seen on the plantations as
destitute of clothing as any little heathen in Africa, and this even
in the cold and dreary months of winter. These children had no school
advantages--certainly not. It was made a misdemeanor by law to teach
a colored person to read or write. These children had no home life.
The night for the slave--male and female--was shortened at both ends.
The slaves worked as long as they could see, and were usually up late
cooking and mending for the coming day, and at the first gray streak
of the morning were summoned to the fields by the driver’s horn. Young
mothers working in the field were allowed to go home about ten o’clock
in the morning to nurse their children. Sometimes they were compelled
to take their children with them and leave them in the corners of the
fences in order to prevent loss of time. John Wesley, the founder of
Methodism, who got his knowledge of slavery while sojourning in the
colony of Georgia, did not err when he denounced slavery as “the sum of
all villainies.”
In such a school as this, Charles Thomas Walker received his early
training. How different from the early training of such men as Henry
Wilson, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, James A. Garfield, Daniel
Webster, Henry Clay, and other white men who were born to poverty.
Though these men were born in humble circumstances, yet they were
born to freedom. Charles Thomas Walker was born poor, and--what was
worse--he was born a slave. These men owned at least themselves;
they were free to go wherever they desired or to pursue any course of
study or line of work that they wished. Charles Thomas Walker owned
nothing--not even himself--and was compelled to go wherever his
master ordered and do whatever his master commanded.
As to this slave system, the ancient question might well be asked, “Can
any good thing come out of Nazareth?” And the reply is,
“Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”
And how we thank God that we can write of this dreadful system of
iniquity in the past tense. It did crush and cower so much of genius
and intellectual strength and moral grandeur, and did send to their
graves without opportunity and without chance thousands and thousands
who, under any just and equitable scheme of civilization, might have
proved God’s noblest friends and humanity’s strongest helpers!
By the exigency of war and the interposition of Jehovah, slavery in
America was brought to an end in 1865. One year later young Walker’s
mother died. From this time on young Charles was left to his own
resources. Moving about as best he could from one relative to another,
finally, in 1873, he went to work as a farm hand for his uncle, the
Rev. Nathan Walker. This uncle had by this time come to be a large
planter in his own right, and was renting hundreds of acres of land
from his former masters.
Wednesday before the first Sunday in June, 1873, while young Walker
was hoeing cotton, he decided to seek the Lord. When he reached the
end of the row, without saying a word to anybody, he jumped over the
fence and went into the woods. Without eating or drinking, and without
seeing any one, he remained in the woods until the following Saturday
afternoon, when he was happily converted. He had remained in the woods
three days and three nights. How like the blessed Christ, who laid in
the grave three days and three nights and then rose triumphant over
death, hell and the grave! This strange way of seeking the Lord, this
strange conversion, as it might be called, was all the more remarkable
when it is understood that there was no great wave of religious revival
sweeping over Richmond County. A short time before this there had been
special prayer services in which there had been numbers of conversions;
but young Walker’s conversion was the result of quiet and serious
meditation on his own part and an earnest desire to be a meek and lowly
follower of the Lamb.
Young Walker joined the Franklin Covenant Baptist Church, near
Hephzibah, and was baptized into the fellowship of that church the
first Sunday in July, 1873. The ceremony was performed by his uncle,
the Rev. Nathan Walker, the pastor of the church and the man by whom he
was at that time employed. This was the same church of which another
uncle, the Rev. Joseph T. Walker, had been pastor during the days of
slavery, and of which young Walker’s father was once a deacon. At the
time of his baptism, young Walker was fifteen years old.
[Illustration: HOME OF PETER WALKER, NEAR HEPHZIBAH, GA., WHERE
CHARLES T. WALKER LIVED DURING THE FIRST EIGHT YEARS OF HIS LIFE.]