Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume VII, Kentucky Narratives
Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume VII, Kentucky Narratives
United States. Work Projects Administration
In the late 1930s, as the last generation born into American slavery grew elderly, the Federal Writers' Project sent interviewers across the South to preserve something invaluable: the living memories of men and women who had endured bondage. This volume gathers interviews with formerly enslaved people from Kentucky, their stories recorded in their own words, unfiltered and unforgettable. Here are accounts of cabin life and field work, of family bonds severed and communities sustained, of masters kind and cruel, of resistance and accommodation. The narratives resist easy categorization. Some speakers recall moments of unexpected tenderness; others recount brutalities that clarify the horror of the system. Together, they offer something no textbook can: the texture of lived experience, the specific gravity of individual memory. These are not historical abstractions. They are people remembering what it meant to be human in a system designed to deny their humanity. This collection remains essential reading for anyone seeking to understand American history from those who lived it.
