America's Last Living Emancipated Slave, Civil War Veteran and Oldest Man: The Remarkable Story of 130 Year Old Sylvester Magee
“A.P. Andrews of the Civil War Roundtable of Jackson, Mississippi and Dr. Laurin C. Post of San Diego State College, and other historians, say they have confirmed that Sylvester Magee was born in Carpet, N.C in 1841, that later he became a slave to Hugh Magee of the Dry Creek area of Covington County, Mississippi and that he fought in the Civil War for the Northern Army.” ftrom the Monday May 2, 1966 edition of The Hattiesburg American . In 1966, on his supposed 125th birthday, Governor Paul B. Johnson, Mississippi’s first Governor who wasn’t a staunch segregationist or overt racist, declared May 29, 1966 to be Sylvester Magee day in honor of the Hattiesburg man who claimed to be America’s last living enslaved person, last surviving Civil War Veteran and the oldest living person in the history of the United States. Lyndon B. Johnson the then President of the United States, a man known as a Civil Rights reformer in the 1960’s, personally wrote Mr. Magee a note of congratulations ...