Sylvester Magee

Sylvester Magee (allegedly born May 29, 1841 – died October 15, 1971) was an American man who received much publicity as the last living former American slave. He was accepted for treatment by the Mississippi Veterans Hospital as a veteran of the American Civil War.

Life According to Magee, he was born in North Carolina in 1841 to two enslaved people named Ephraim and Jeanette, who were held and worked on the J.J. Shanks plantation. He said that at the age of 19, just before the American Civil War, he was purchased at a slave market in Enterprise, Mississippi by Hugh Magee, the owner of a plantation in Covington County, Mississippi. Sylvester reportedly adopted the Magee surname, a common practice among enslaved people at the time. Shortly afterwards, as recounted by Magee, he was sold again to Victor Steen of Rankin County, Mississippi, but ultimately ran away in 1863 and was enlisted in the Union Army, taking part in the assault on Vicksburg, Mississippi. Magee later stated that he had been forced to serve in both the Confederate and Union armies as a servant and laborer, though no documentary evidence for this has been found.

After interviewing him in 1964, Alfred P. Andrews, an amateur historian and founder of the Jackson Mississippi Civil War Round Table, helped draw public attention to Magee's story, having become convinced of its veracity. He stated that Magee talked with "rare intelligence and seldom rambled" in recounting his participation in the Civil War.

On Magee's purported 124th birthday, the citizens of Collins, Mississippi held a party at a country grocery store, complete with a five-layer cake and 124 candles. Governor Paul B. Johnson, Jr. declared it "Sylvester Magee Day". Many national news articles reported on Magee's life and longevity, including the magazines Time and Jet. He appeared on the Mike Douglas Show and was flown to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for another televised appearance. He was proclaimed as the oldest living United States citizen by a life insurance company and received a birthday card from President Lyndon B. Johnson, and was also recognized by President Richard M. Nixon. However, in a later interview he stated that he had only ever had one wife, with whom he had 14 children and that his father had died at 108.

In a 1966 interview, he stated that he had never drunk alcohol, nor uttered a swear word, although he smoked cigarettes for 108 years. In his later years, he made a living selling automated needle threaders and digging graves. In 1966, he divorced his wife Marie.

Death and age On October 15, 1971, Sylvester Magee died in Columbia, Mississippi. His funeral was held at John the Baptist Missionary Church on October 19, 1971. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the Pleasant Valley Church Cemetery in nearby Foxworth, Mississippi. In 2011, the Marion County Historical Society provided a marker.

Magee's purported age of 130 has never been verified, as persons born into slavery typically lacked birth certificates. History professor Max Grivno, who has studied Magee's life, characterized the claimed age as "possible ... but extremely unlikely", noting that there was "only one documented case of a person living into their 120s."