January 07, 2005

Memories of slavery. "Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves."

Many of the narratives are now available over at Project Gutenberg, though you have to search for them; "slave narratives" in the advanced search works. It's pretty easy to find "young people today" comments like this

Times is so changed and the young folks different. They won't work only nough to get by and they want you to give em all you got. They take it if they can. Nobody got time to work. I think times is worse than they ever been, cause folks hate to work so bad. I'm talking bout hard work, field work. Jobs young folks want is scarce; jobs they could get they don't want. They want to run about and fool around an get by.
Present times—Not as much union 'mongst young black and white as the old black and white. They growing apart. Nobody got nothin' to give. No work. I used to could buy second-handed clothes to do my little children a year for a little or nothin'. Won't sell 'em now nor give 'em 'way neither. They don't work hard as they used to. They say they don't git nothin' outen it. They don't want to work. Times harder in winter 'cause it cold and things to eat killed out. I cans meat. We dry beef. In town this Nickellodian playing wild wid young colored folks—these Sea Bird music boxes. They play all kind things. Folks used to stay home Saturday nights. Too much running 'round, excitement, wickedness in the world now. This generation is worst one. They trying to cut the Big Apple dance when we old folks used to be down singing and praying, 'Cause dis is a wicked age times is bad and hard.
from Arkansas Narratives, Part 1
posted by polychrome 19 years ago
  • Oh, man, do I have a lot of reading to do. I started out with the Oklahoma stories since I lived in Tulsa for a few years and thought there wouldn't be that many stories, but I didn't make it all the way. Interesting how certain themes repeated - Lincoln and Booker T. Washington were good, but nobody knew much about Jefferson Davis. The Klan was scary. The Amerindinans seemed to generally be relatively kind masters. Most blacks became Baptists, whether before or after freedom. All that may seem obvious, but I'm still a bit surprised. Anyway - great post. Thank the powers that be for American Memories and Project Gutenberg.
  • There is a lot to view here, both the photos and the naratives. Thanks for the link polychrome. It's odd that this was posted at about the same time as the Ashlee Simpson post below and this it took me this long to look at, much less respond to it. Guess that is just the way we humans are made.
  • Fantastic link, poly. It brough back some memories of my college days: I took a class called "Civil Rights in Literature" in which we transcribed 3-hour audio interviews with civil rights activists in the DC area. At the time, I thought it was a crap assignment, but looking back I think it really had a profound impact on my interest in the civil rights movement. Wish I could remember that professor's name. I believe he was doing it for the PBS series "Eyes on the Prize." Meaningless Sidenote: In that class, I sat next to Herman Moore (now an ex-Detroit Lions player). He told me to nudge him if he fell asleep 'cause he had to pass that class in order to continue playing football at UVA. And yes, I nudged him often.
  • Great link! I took a class on oral histories in college. We got into a pretty heated debate about these narratives and whether the narratives downplayed the horrors of slavery in that class. Some argued that because the interviewers were overwhelmingly white the former slaves just told the interviewers what they believed they wanted to hear. Others argued that the former slaves wanted their stories heard properly, regardless of who told them. In the end, the class came to the conclusion that, if handled carefully, the narratives were still wonderful resources.
  • meredithea - I'm curious, did the question of the passage of time come up? These narratives were obtained many decades after slavery was ended, and one of the questions on my mind when reading through these is how the narratives might read if they were obtained, say, after an interval of only 5 or 10 years, with the inclusion of recollections from people who had lived a much longer portion of their lives as slaves. squidranch- I know what you mean. It took a long time to put this post together just because I kept trying to add some words of my own, and then deleting them, then trying again. Just couldn't do it though; decided it was best to stay out of the way as much as possible.
  • polychrome - The question of the amount of time that had passed did come up. The narratives were recorded some 50 years after slavery (give or take a little bit), which means that most of the people interviewed were either a) very, very old or b) had been children during slavery, and may not have directly experienced slavery in the same way as adults. Of course, these types of questions come up any time you interview people, I guess. We're pretty subjective creatures :)