ECHOES OF SLAVERY - Volume II: FORMER SLAVES SHARE PERSONAL ACCOUNTS OF LIFE IN BONDAGE

By Cotter Bass

ECHOES of SLAVERY – Volume II

 

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 Volume II - ECHOES of SLAVERY 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 ECHOES of SLAVERY - Volume II 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: Sep 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9783748757962

Book preview

TITLE PAGE

ECHOES of SLAVERY

Volume II

FORMER SLAVES SHARE PERSONAL ACCOUNTS OF LIFE IN BONDAGE

                                             Library of Congress

by Cotter Bass

Disclaimer

                                             usslave.blogspot

This publication is offered with the understanding that neither the author nor the publisher is rendering legal, medical, accounting, or any other professional counseling. The information contained herein is not intended to replace instructions by trained professionals. For advice regarding legal, medical, accounting, or other issues, readers are advised to consult an attorney, physician, accountant, or other appropriately qualified professional.

The author has exercised due diligence in determining the copyright status (if any) of the photographs presented in this book.

The author and publisher disclaim responsibility for any adverse effects that may result from the use or application of the information within this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the author and the publisher.

Copyright © 2020 by Cotter Bass

All Rights Reserved

Cover photo courtesy of southernphotography.blogspot

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

• ABOUT THE NARRATIVES

• THE LANGUAGE OF THE NARRATIVES

• LEGEND

• MARY REYNOLDS

• HENRY CHEATAM

• JENNYLIN DUNN

• ANTHONY DAWSON

• HAGAR LEWIS

• TINA JOHNSON

• WILLIE WILLIAMS

• MARTHA BRADLEY

• ESSEX HENRY

• LUCINDA DAVIS

• ABRAM SELLS

• DRUCILLA and RICHARD MARTIN

• HAP McQUEEN

• CHARITY ANDERSON

• ROSA WASHINGTON

• JAMES CAMPBELL

• ADORA RIENSHAW

ABOUT THE NARRATIVES

A CHILD BORN INTO SLAVERY WAS SIMPLY CONSIDERED AS

ANOTHER ADDITION TO THE MASTER'S WEALTH AND PROPERTY

                                             gutenberg.org

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 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.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE NARRATIVES

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

LEGEND

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

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

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

MARY REYNOLDS

MARY REYNOLDS

Age: 100+ years

Dallas, Texas

Interviewer: Sheldon F. Gauthier (assumed)

Date of Interview: September 16, 1937

                                                                Mary Reynolds                       Library of Congress

[Mary Reynolds claims to be more than one hundred years old. She was born in slavery to the Kilpatrick family in Black River, Louisiana. Mary now lives at the Dallas County Convalescent Home. She has been blind for five years and is very feeble.]

My pa's name was Tom Vaughn and he was from the north, born free man and lived and died free to the end of his days. He wasn't no educated man, but he was what he calls himself a piano man. He told me once he lived in New York and Chicago and he built the insides of pianos and knew how to make them play in tune. He said some white folks from the south told he if he'd come with them to the south he'd find a lot of work to do with pianos in them parts, and he come off with them.

He saw my ma on the Kilpatrick place and her man was dead. He told Dr. Kilpatrick, my Massa, he'd buy my ma and her three chillun with all the money he had, if he'd sell her. But Dr. Kilpatrick was never one to sell any but the old niggers who was part workin' in the fields and past their breedin' times. So my pa marries my ma and works the fields, same as any other nigger. They had six gals: Martha and Pamela and Josephine and Ellen and Katherine and me.

I was born same time as Miss Sara Kilpatrick. Dr. Kilpatrick's first wife and my ma come to their time right together. Miss Sara's ma died and they brung Miss Sara to suck with me. It's a thing we ain't never forgot. My ma's name was Sallie and Miss Sara allus looked with kindness on my ma.

We sucked till we was a fair size and played together, which wasn't no common thing. None the other li'l niggers played with the white chillun. But Miss Sara loved me so good.

I was just