Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XI, North Carolina Narratives, Part 1
Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XI, North Carolina Narratives, Part 1
United States. Work Projects Administration
In the late 1930s, as the last generation of Americans who had experienced slavery still lived, the Federal Writers' Project sent interviewers to capture their stories before they were lost forever. What emerged is an unparalleled historical document: first-person testimonies from men and women who had lived through American enslavement, telling their own stories in their own words. This volume gathers oral histories from North Carolina, where former enslaved people recount memories of plantation life, family separation, the chaos of the Civil War, and the uncertain promise of freedom. These are not polished memoirs but raw, unfiltered remembrances: the food they were denied, the punishment they witnessed, the songs they sang in the fields, the loved ones who were sold away. Some speak with anger; others with hard-won calm; many with a complexity that defies simple narrative. What makes this collection essential is its humanity. These are the actual voices of people who lived through an atrocity, preserving details no historian could invent. It is history from below, unflinching and invaluable.
