Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XI, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2
1936
Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XI, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2
United States. Work Projects Administration
1936
In the late 1930s, as the last generation of formerly enslaved people grew elderly, the U.S. government sent writers across the South to preserve memories that had survived decades of silence and trauma. This volume gathers firsthand testimonies from North Carolina, letting real people speak in their own words about plantation life, the chaos of the Civil War, and freedom's complicated arrival. Uncle Jackson reminisces about relatives and skilled artisans he knew as a child. Uncle Ben recalls the moment slave traders separated him from his brother - a wound that never healed. Isaac describes the intricate machinery of the plantation system while also revealing the humanity that persisted within it. These aren't polished histories but living voices, sometimes fragmented, sometimes startlingly vivid. They capture the texture of everyday existence under slavery: the work, the food, the worship, the resistance, the small joys and vast cruelties. They also show how freedom came not as resolution but as a new, bewildering challenge. This is irreplaceable - a primary source that preserves voices America tried to silence, offering raw, personal access to one of the nation's most devastating chapters.
