Recently I've been roaming through Alabama Mosaic again, a place of infinite distraction, and here's the result this time.
The document below can be found here and here at the Library of Congress' digital collection, "Federal Writers Project: Slave Narratives." The Federal Writers Project was a New Deal agency, and one of its efforts during the Great Depression of the 1930s involved interviewing former slaves. The Slave Narrative Collection contains over 2000 such interviews conducted in eleven states. Gus Brown was an interview subject in May 1937.
He was interviewed in Birmingham by Alexander B. Johnson under the auspices of the Alabama Writers Project, a state component of the federal effort. The state archives has an extensive collection of this material. On the two state archives pages linked below Brown's photos, the photographer is identified as "Lollar's Birmingham, Alabama." That was presumably Frank Lollar, who opened a photography and camera shop in the city as early as 1910. The firm eventually operated at least six stores; one opened in Eastwood Mall in December 1965.
Because of his common name, I was unable to find anything on Johnson. At Ancestry.com, I did find an Alexander B. Johnson living in Birmingham who was counted in the 1920 census, age 7. He would have been 24 in 1937, so perhaps...
Like the slave narratives generally, Brown's life story is fascinating and poignant. He grew up and thus enslaved on a plantation near Richmond, Virginia. Being his master's "body servant", Brown accompanied him into battle during the Civil War and remembered seeing Stonewall Jackson. After the war, Brown remained on William Brown's plantation until his former master died. Then he began work for the Seaboard Air Line Railroad and ended up in Birmingham, where he decided to stay. Between 1900 and 1967 the Seaboard was a major railroad in the southern U.S.
I have so far been unable to trace Brown any further. Be sure to read this entire interview, and especially he finally two paragraphs.
Source: Alabama Dept of Archives & History
Gus Brown, age 90
Source: Alabama Genealogy Trails
As my son Amos pointed out, the building behind Brown in the first photograph looks like the Jefferson County Courthouse.
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