This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is our American stories, and today we're talking to Eric Motley.

We've heard from Eric before about his life

and a place called Madison Park. Madison Park was the first plantation to be bought by former

slaves and Eric told us that they came together and formed a community, a community that would

eventually raise Eric.

Eric, in your book you write, quote,

I have often wondered if it's somehow in African Americans' bloodlines to be good storytellers and good talkers,

because by law slaves weren't allowed to learn to read.

I marvel all these years later how so many of the elderly people of Madison Park with no

formal education used pitch, volume, pause, pace, crescendo, even a whisper to make a joke

or tell a story such as they did in Little Joe's backyard.

Eric, who's Little Joe?

Little Joe was the son of Big Joe.

And Big Joe was really the first barber I ever knew.

And we would go to Big Joe.

His name was Joseph Simon, the senior.

We would go to his house.

Granddaddy would take me,

and we would sit in his little crib, and I would have my haircut. And of course, he ended up dying,

and little Joe ended up buying the house of Mrs. Cheney Jackson that was several doors down from us.

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