Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States
United States. Work Projects AdministrationProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019
Rating 4.5- Word count
- 483K words
- Chapters
- 49
Tags
English Originals Oral HistoryWorld History Historical ReappraisalSuffering and ResistanceDignity of LifeSocial CritiqueSlave NarrativeDocumentary NarrativeOral TraditionFolk CustomsRacial MemoryAmerican SouthSummary
Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United StatesAuthor: United States. Work Projects Administration,Language: English, Class: E300: History: America: Revolution to the Civil War (1783-1861), Release Date: Jul 28, 2007Editor's review
This book is a compilation of oral histories of African Americans who experienced slavery, collected in the 1930s under the United States Works Progress Administration, and is a primary source of folk historical material. Its value lies not in literary polish but in letting those who lived it describe enslavement in their own words: work, family, religion, escape, and life after emancipation. The interviews were recorded by various interviewers, and both the transcription of accents and the wording of questions remain in the text, so readers can directly sense the traces of the collection process and should also recognize the era's limitations and the distortions of transmission. As historical material, it is best read alongside general histories of American slavery, using concrete lived experience to correct grand narratives. This is a public-domain English ebook; readers are advised to bring a critical awareness of primary sources, attending to how interviewers' questions shaped answers and to the complexity of interviewees' memory and narrative strategies, rather than treating the text as an unmediated "authentic voice."Who it's for
A good fit for
- Students and researchers who need primary oral-history sources for studying American history and African American history
- General history readers interested in the individual experiences of those who lived through slavery and wishing to go beyond grand narratives
- Practitioners in oral history and folk-memory collection who want to understand the forms of early interview texts
- Advanced readers interested in American social and labor history who have English reading ability
Not a good fit for
- Readers seeking systematic general histories or conclusive overviews and unwilling to engage with scattered interview material
- Readers unaccustomed to transcribed English speech who need a fluent translation
- Readers with limited emotional tolerance who are sensitive to detailed accounts of violence and suffering
- Young readers; the text contains traumatic content about slavery and lacks annotation or guidance
Reading tips
- First read relevant chapters of a general history of American slavery to establish a framework, then move into specific interviews to avoid fragmented understanding.
- After every few pieces, summarize themes interviewees repeatedly mention, such as family separation, religion, and work, and take thematic notes.
- Pay attention to how interviewers framed questions and how transcribed accents were handled, treating the text as mediated historical material rather than a transparent record.
- Read alongside other types of slavery sources and compare differences in detail and standpoint across sources.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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FAQ
Are these narratives the interviewees' exact words?
The text comes from interviewers' records and transcriptions; accents and grammar were to some extent processed, and interviewers' questions are also retained in the text. It therefore contains both the voices of those who lived it and the mediation of the recorders. It should be read as oral history bearing traces of the collection process, not as a verbatim, error-free transcript.What historical background is needed for reading?
It is advisable first to understand the basic outlines of American slavery, including the Southern plantation economy, the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, and Reconstruction. With this framework, references in the interviews to work arrangements, family circumstances, and life after emancipation are easier to place accurately, and individual accounts are less likely to be mistaken for universal conditions.Is this book suitable as classroom teaching material?
It is suitable for history or humanities courses at the upper high school level and above, but teachers need to provide background explanation and guidance in source criticism, explaining the limitations of the collection era and interview methods. It is not suitable for direct use with young students: the text contains traumatic content about slavery, and the transcribed English speech poses some difficulty for non-native readers.This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.
About the author
United States. Work Projects Administration AuthorThe United States Work Projects Administration was a federal public works agency established in the United States in the 1930s, and its Federal Writers' Project organized the collection, compilation, and publication of a large body of oral history materials. The library holds 34 of its works, most of them centered on African American slave narratives; the representative Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States series was assembled from interviews with formerly enslaved people and their descendants. These texts preserve, in the interviewees' own voices, details of life under slavery, folk songs, and dialect expressions, making them both valuable historical sources and works of plain folk literature. As public information about the agency is limited, this note introduces only its editorial direction and the subject matter of its works.