Silvia King
Reagan, Falls County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born in Morocco, Silvia King (also written as Sylvia King) was well into adulthood and married with three children when she was kidnapped and brought to Bordeaux, France by slave traders. King recalled receiving drugged coffee before she was forced into the bottom of a ship with other enslaved Africans for the Middle Passage to New Orleans. King was purchased on the auction block in New Orleans by Master Jones, planter and owner of a large cotton plantation. She was then chained to the other purchased slaves and forced to march more than 450 miles by an overseer to La Grange, Texas. Jones placed King in a marriage with another slave, referred to as Bob, against her will. An exceptional cook, she prepared Master Jones' meals full time and completed other domestic tasks such as weaving cotton cloth for use on the plantation. The federally sponsored Works Progress Administration's Federal Writers' Project documented King's extensive oral history in Marlin, Texas in 1937. From her narrative, one can gather a clear glimpse of the hardships that slaves endured and acts of resistance such as the ring shout, an emotionally charged, symbolic dance where slaves came together to gain cultural and spiritual sustenance from one another. After King gained her freedom, she went on to marry twice more and serve as a member of the Galilee Colored Baptist Church in Rosebud. Following King's statement that she was born in 1803, her death certificate state that she passed away on Nov. 10, 1937, at the age of 133, making her age a point of debate and legend. (2012)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Silvia King was already a married mother in Morocco when slave traders kidnapped her, carried her to France, and forced her through the Middle Passage to New Orleans. Sold at auction and marched hundreds of miles to a Texas cotton plantation near La Grange, she was placed in a forced marriage and made to cook and weave for her enslaver. In 1937 the WPA's Federal Writers' Project recorded her extensive oral history in Marlin, capturing rare firsthand testimony of slavery and acts of resistance such as the ring shout—she died that same year, reportedly at the astonishing age of 133.
Why it matters
King's narrative is a rare enslaved person's own account of the Atlantic slave trade and plantation life, and it survives because the New Deal's Federal Writers' Project raced to record such voices before they were gone.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Silvia King's story spans the whole brutal geography of the Atlantic slave trade and comes to rest in the cotton country of central Texas. She was born, by her own account, in Morocco in North Africa, and was already a grown woman — married, a mother of three — when her life was violently seized and remade. That places her among the countless people whose enslavement began not in the American South but across an ocean, in the last decades of a trade that had already devastated millions of lives.
By the time she reached Texas, she entered a plantation economy built on cotton and enslaved labor. Before the Civil War, the fertile river valleys of the region were being cleared and planted by people held in bondage, their work the engine of enormous wealth for others. King became one of them.
Her testimony reaches us from a very different moment: the 1930s, deep in the Great Depression, when a New Deal program set out to record the recollections of the last living people who had been born or held in slavery. The distance between those two eras — the auction block and the interview — is the space her narrative bridges.
People & events
By her account, King was kidnapped and taken to Bordeaux, France, then given drugged coffee and forced into the hold of a ship for the Middle Passage to New Orleans — the same terrifying crossing endured by millions before her. Sold on the New Orleans auction block to a planter called Master Jones, she was chained to other purchased people and marched more than 450 miles overland to La Grange, Texas.
On the plantation, Jones forced her into a marriage against her will, to an enslaved man remembered as Bob. She was an exceptional cook, made to prepare her enslaver's meals full-time and to weave cotton cloth for use on the place — skilled, relentless labor extracted without pay or consent.
In 1937, workers from the federally sponsored Works Progress Administration's Federal Writers' Project recorded her extensive oral history in Marlin, Texas. From what she told them we get an unusually vivid glimpse of both the cruelty of bondage and the ways enslaved people resisted and sustained themselves — including the ring shout, a charged, circling ritual dance through which they drew spiritual and cultural strength from one another. After freedom, King married twice more and became a member of the Galilee Colored Baptist Church in Rosebud. Her death certificate records that she died on November 10, 1937; based on her statement that she was born in 1803, it lists her age as 133 — a figure that has been debated ever since.
Its place in the American story
Firsthand accounts of the Atlantic slave trade from the enslaved themselves are exceedingly rare, and that is what makes King's narrative so valuable. Most of what history knows about the Middle Passage comes from ledgers, ship logs, and the words of traders — the people doing the buying and selling. King's account speaks from inside the hold, and from the auction block, in the voice of the person being sold.
Her testimony survives because of a specific and deliberate national effort. In the 1930s the Federal Writers' Project sent interviewers across the South to capture the memories of formerly enslaved people while they were still alive — a race against time that produced thousands of narratives now central to how Americans understand slavery. King is one of those irreplaceable voices.
Her story also complicates any tidy version of the American slave experience. Born an ocean away, carried through Europe and across the Atlantic, marched hundreds of miles inland, she embodies the sheer global reach of the trade. Details like the ring shout, meanwhile, preserve the cultural and spiritual life that enslaved people built and guarded even under bondage — evidence that they were never merely victims but bearers of a living heritage.
If you visit
This is a memorial marker, so what you come to encounter is a life and a voice rather than a building. Reading it where it stands, in the quiet farming country near Reagan, is its own kind of experience: the ordinary landscape around you is precisely the sort of place where testimony like hers was gathered in the 1930s, from people living out their last years far from where their lives began.
Give her age its due as you read — the marker itself is candid that "133" is a point of debate and legend, and that honesty is part of the story. Whether or not the number is exact, it signals a life of extraordinary length and endurance, and a memory that reached back across an almost unimaginable span of history.
If you're planning a route through this part of central Texas, King's marker fits naturally with other sites of African American history and memory in the area, where church, school, and cemetery grounds tell the longer story of the community she joined after freedom. Approach it as a place to stop and listen. The whole point of the Federal Writers' Project was that voices like hers not be lost; standing here and reading slowly is a small way of honoring that.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Silvia King
Related events
- · Federal Writers' Project
Themes & tags
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