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
338K words
Chapters
34

Tags

English Originals Oral HistoryDocumentary Literature Historical ReappraisalCivic AwarenessSubaltern VoicesSocial CritiqueRacial OppressionSlave NarrativesArchival RecordDocumentary NarrativeAmerican SouthAfrican American

Summary

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: Mar 1, 2004

Editor's review

This book is a compilation of slave oral histories collected under the auspices of the U.S. Work Projects Administration, a body of primary folk source material. Its value lies not in narrative craft but in letting people who were denied the chance to write leave behind the details of daily life in their own words: the division of labor, food and shelter, religious practice, family separation, and postwar circumstances. Readers will encounter dialect spellings and traces of transcription, which serve as a reminder to attend to the interviewers' questions and the limitations of the era. As historical source material, it is best read alongside histories of abolitionism, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, helping readers understand the tension between memory and the archive. For general readers, there is no need to read the whole book; selections by theme or state work well, treating it as an entry point into the everyday experience of American slavery rather than a systematic general history. When using it, note the interviewee's identity, the year of collection, and the recorder's background, and read critically.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the introduction or editor's note first to understand the collection context and transcription conventions, then move into the main text.
  2. Read by thematic groups, such as labor, religion, and family, rather than page by page to avoid fatigue.
  3. As you read each piece, note the interviewee's identity, location, and year of collection for easy comparison.
  4. Read alongside a general history of American slavery to place oral details back into a historical framework.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project 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

  1. 1
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  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
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  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
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  15. 15
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  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34

FAQ

Is this book a novel or historical source material? It is a compilation of oral histories, recording interviewees' recollections and accounts of life during slavery; it is not a work of fiction. Read it as historical source material, bearing in mind how the interviewers' questions, transcription conventions, and the era's background shaped the content.
What should I do if the English dialect spellings are hard to read? Slow down and grasp the overall meaning of each sentence rather than puzzling over every spelling. You might start with shorter, clearly narrated pieces to build a feel for the language, then gradually move to heavier dialect sections, using notes or related scholarly introductions as needed.
Do I need to read it in order from beginning to end? No. The pieces are relatively independent, so it is better to read by theme, region, or interviewee identity. Identify the issues you care about first, then select pieces accordingly to use this source material more efficiently.
What should I keep in mind when citing these oral materials? Cite the interviewee, collecting agency, date of collection, and textual source, and note that this is a transcribed text. Avoid treating a single oral account as a general conclusion; better to compare it with other sources, and be alert to possible deletions or leading by the recorder.

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About the author

United States. Work Projects Administration Author

The 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.