Norman-Shorter

Born a slave in a big family of mixed Carolina Normans near Pisgah in Northeast Mississippi in the year 1861, Jimmie and wife Cornelia (Shorter) settled in the nearby Kossuth community. He sought out a better-than-average sharecropping place, and raised seven girls and five boys. Included were four sets of twins. He served on the Board of Trustees of schools, and served the Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church in several roles: deacon, clerk, Superintendent of Sunday School, delegate. Two of his daughters became teachers in county schools. He died suddenly of heart attack in 1927. Dr. Walter Zuber, one of three Freedmen medical professionals to practice in Corinth, husband of Zadie Zuber, was the attending physician. The many brothers and sisters of himself and his wife, and also their own children, married into families well known in the general area between Ripley, MS and Corinth. His wife’s mother, Victoria, came from the Settle family. His sister Ludie married W.A. Paden; sister Adeline, John Asberry; sister Fannie, Louise Williams of Rienzi, Jimmie’s wife’s sister Fannie married Andrew Walker. His son Lonnie married Sylila Spence, and so on to links to Wests, Whites, Garretts, Gwyns, Hurds, Earnests, Cottons, etc. By the last decade of the proceeding century, Jimmie and Cornelia, like most Afro-Americans, could count among their families, members scattered in almost every state of the Union and all walks of life.