He was deemed unfit for procreation—his father gave him to the strongest enslaved woman in 1859. They labeled him defective during his youth, and at 19, after three doctors had examined his frail body and reached identical conclusions,

The Callahan plantation sat on the high bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River, 15 miles south of Náchez in what was considered the richest soil in the South. The main house was a Greek Revival mansion my father had built in 1835. Two stories of white-painted brick with massive Doric columns, wide galleries on both levels, and tall windows that caught the river breeze.

Inside, crystal chandeliers hung from 15-foot ceilings, imported furniture filled rooms large enough to host balls for 100 guests, and Persian rugs covered polished heartwood pine floors. Behind the main house lay the working plantation: the cotton gin, the blacksmith shop, the carpentry shop, the smokehouse, the laundry, the kitchen, the overseer’s house, and beyond it all, the quarters.

Rows of small huts where 300 enslaved people lived in conditions that contrasted sharply with the luxury of the manor. I grew up in a world of extreme wealth built on extreme brutality, even though, as a child, I didn’t fully grasp all the implications.

I was tutored at home by a succession of teachers my father hired. I was too frail for the tumult of school, too sickly to stay in Themies where the other planters’ sons went. Instead, I learned Greek and Latin, mathematics and literature, history and philosophy in the quiet of my father’s library.