ECHOES of SLAVERY - Volume I: FORMER SLAVES SHARE THEIR FIRST-PERSON ACCOUNTS OF LIFE IN BONDAGE.

By Cotter Bass

During the Depression years between 1936 and 1938, the WPA Federal Writers' Project (FWP) sent out-of-work writers in seventeen states to interview ordinary people in order to document their life stories. Initially, only four states involved in the project (Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia) focused on collecting the stories of people who had once been held in slavery. In 1937 the WPA directed the remaining states involved in the project to conduct interviews with former slaves as well. Federal field workers were given instructions regarding the kinds of questions to ask their informants and how to capture their dialects, the result of which may occasionally be offensive to contemporary readers. The field workers often visited the people they interviewed twice in order to gather as many recollections as possible. Sometimes they took photographs of the informants and their dwellings. The completed narratives were then turned over to their state's FWP director for editing and eventual transfer to Washington, D.C.

 

The former slave narratives presented in ECHOES of SLAVERY - Volume I represent a small segment of more than two thousand first-person accounts of actual slave experiences, transcribed in their own words by the FWP and recorded for posterity. These first-person testimonials open a window into the past, enabling contemporary readers a rare opportunity to share the trials, fears, frustrations, hopes, and visions of those individuals caught up in the maelstrom that was 1800’s America.

 

Walk alongside these resolute men and women in Volume I of ECHOES of SLAVERY as they portray the real world in which they struggled and endured. Experience the harsh and often brutal reality of slavery as it really was!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookRix
• Release date: Jun 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9783743852273

Book preview

Introduction

ECHOES of SLAVERY - Volume I

IN THEIR OWN WORDS, FORMER SLAVES REVEAL

THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT SLAVERY!

Harriet Tubman with rescued slaves (The New York Times, 1885)

A CHILD BORN INTO SLAVERY WAS SIMPLY CONSIDERED AS ANOTHER ADDITION TO THE MASTER'S

WEALTH AND PROPERTY.

ABOUT THE NARRATIVES . . . . . .

During the Depression years between 1936 and 1938, the WPA Federal Writers' Project (FWP) sent out-of-work writers in seventeen states to interview ordinary people in order to document their life stories. Initially, only four states involved in the project (Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia) focused on collecting the stories of people who had once been held in slavery. In 1937 the WPA directed the remaining states involved in the project to conduct interviews with former slaves as well. Federal field workers were given instructions regarding the kinds of questions to ask their informants and how to capture their dialects, the result of which may occasionally be offensive to contemporary readers (see A NOTE ON THE LANGUAGE OF THE NARRATIVES, below). The field workers often visited the people they interviewed twice in order to gather as many recollections as possible. Sometimes they took photographs of the informants and their dwellings. The completed narratives were then turned over to their state's FWP director for editing and eventual transfer to Washington, D.C.

The former slave narratives contained herein represent a small segment of more than two thousand first-person accounts of actual slave experiences, transcribed in their own words by the FWP and recorded for posterity.

A NOTE ON THE LANGUAGE OF THE NARRATIVES

The WPA former slave narratives usually involve some attempt by the interviewers to reproduce in writing the spoken language of the people they interviewed. The interviewers were writers, not professionals trained in the phonetic transcription of speech. And the instructions they received were not altogether clear. I recommend that truth to idiom be paramount, and exact truth to pronunciation secondary, wrote the project's editor. Yet he also urged that words that definitely have a notably different pronunciation from the usual should be recorded as heard, evidently assuming that the usual was self-evident. In fact, the situation was far more problematic than the project leaders recognized. All the informants were of course black, most interviewers were white, and by the 1930s, when the interviews took place, white representations of black speech had already acquired had an ugly history of entrenched stereotype dating back at least to the early nineteenth century. What most interviewers assumed to be the usual" patterns of their informants' speech was unavoidably influenced by preconceptions and stereotypes. The result is a mélange of accuracy and fantasy, of sensitivity and stereotype, of empathy and racism that may sometimes be offensive to today's readers.

In order to render these narratives less stereotypical and potentially offensive, while at the same time enhancing the flow and rhythm of the reading experience, the author has taken the liberty of modifying certain words as originally transcribed by the interviewer. For example, the word gwine [going] may appear as goin’, remembah may appear as remember, or fahm may appear as farm. The vast majority of verbiage, however, remains exactly as transcribed and faithful to the character and intent of the original narratives.

LEGEND

Paragraphs, sentences, and singular words or phrases displayed in bracketed italics, [Stoneman's Calvary in 1865] or [ends of thread left on the loom], for example, represent actual transcribed commentary by the interviewer.

Paragraphs, sentences, and other non-italicized verbiage appearing solely within each narrative represent actual transcribed commentary of the subject being interviewed.

Singular words or phrases displayed in brackets, [sic] or [secessionists], for example, represent clarifications or observations by the author.

ANDY J. ANDERSON

Age: 94 years

Fort Worth, Texas

Interviewer: Sheldon F. Cauthier

Date of Interview: September 16, 1937

[Andy J. Anderson, 94, was born a slave to Mr. Jack Haley, who also owned Andy's parents with 12 other families and a plantation located in Williamson County, Texas. In view of the fact that all slaves used the name of their owner, Andy was known as Andy Haley but after his freedom, he changed his name to Anderson, the name his father used because he was owned by a Mr. Anderson before his sale to Mr. Haley. Shortly after the Civil War began, Andy was sold to Mr. W. T. House, of Blanco County, Texas, who sold him again in less than a year to his brother, Mr. John House. After the Emancipation Act became effective, Andy was hired by a Mr. Whisterman. His first wages were his clothes, room and board with $2.00 per month. He farmed all of his life and has been married three times, now living with his third wife and eight of his children in Fort Worth, Texas.]

My name is Andy J. Anderson and I was born on Marster Jack Haley's plantation in Williamson County, Texas. Marster Haley owned my folks and 'bout twelve