I am his firstborn son
My father who was born to Andrew Mays freed man and Adie Polk (of the Mississippi Choctaw nation). His upbringing was harsh and he would eventually escape his Sharecropping life (chattel slavery) in the harshly racist Mississippi Delta and would eventually meet and marry my mother Ora B. Hicks-Mays and they would eventually move to Topeka, Kansas while she was pregnant with me. Many of his other extended families also made that harsh journey to settle in Mudtown, Topeka. I would be given the slave name Ernest Levell Mays Jr after him. He was not an educated man but I always had the utmost respect and honor for him as my father. He always put his children first. I love you father even though over time and historical events caused us to not see eye to eye on many issues.
