Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XIV, South Carolina Narratives, Part 2
Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XIV, South Carolina Narratives, Part 2
United States. Work Projects Administration
Between 1936 and 1938, the Works Progress Administration sent interviewers across the American South to capture something vanishing forever: the firsthand memories of men and women who had been enslaved. This volume gathers testimonies from formerly enslaved people in South Carolina, recorded at a moment when they were among the last living witnesses to American slavery. These are not polished memoirs but raw oral histories, transcribed as they spoke, complete with dialect, hesitation, and the raw weight of recollection. Some narrators describe backbreaking labor and brutal punishment; others remember moments of community, resistance, and small acts of survival. Many speak of the war's aftermath, of freedom's complicated arrival, of lives rebuilt in a world still shaped by the color line. What emerges is not a single story but a chorus of individual voices, each bearing witness to an institution that defined a nation. This is primary source history at its most human: imperfect, specific, and irreplaceable. For anyone seeking to understand America's original sin not through textbooks but through the words of those who lived it, these pages offer an unparalleled portal.
