Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume X, Missouri Narratives
1936
Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume X, Missouri Narratives
United States. Work Projects Administration
1936
These are the voices of people who were there. Collected in the late 1930s by Federal Writers' Project interviewers reaching into the final living memories of American slavery, these narratives carry the weight of lived experience in ways no history book can replicate. This volume gathers testimonies from men and women who spent their childhoods and young adulthoods in bondage across Missouri - people like James Monroe Abbot, Betty Abernathy, and Aunt Hannah Allen, whose words open this collection. What emerges is not a single story but a chorus: accounts of backbreaking labor and cruel masters, of families torn apart by sale, of daring escapes and quiet acts of resistance. Yet the narratives hold more than suffering. They preserve the texture of everyday life under bondage - the songs, the folk remedies, the relationships, the humor that persisted even in darkness. These are memories told to young white interviewers decades after emancipation, sometimes halting, sometimes fierce, sometimes tender. They are a people speaking directly across time, insisting on being heard. For anyone seeking to understand America's original sin not through legislation but through the human beings who endured it, these pages are irreplaceable.
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“Dis gen'ration too dig'fied to have de old-time 'ligion.””
— United States. Work Projects Administration
“and she whipped my little sister what was only nine months old and jes' a baby to death. She come and took the diaper offen my little sister and whipped till the blood jes' ran”
— United States. Work Projects Administration
“Fore dat, a survey done been made and dey found de raft am a hundred and twenty-eight miles long. When we was on dat raft it am like a big swamp, with trees and thick brush and de driftwood and logs all wedge up tight 'tween everything.””
— United States. Work Projects Administration
“I want to tell how we crosses the Red River on de Red River Raft. Back in them days the Red River was near closed up by dis timber raft and de big boats couldn't git up de river at all. We gits a li'l boat, and a Caddo Indian to guide us. Dis Red River raft dey say was centuries old. De driftwood floatin' down de river stops in de still waters and makes a bunch of trees and de dirt 'cumulates, and broomstraws and willows and brush grows out dis rich dirt what cover de driftwood. Dis raft growed 'bout a mile a year and de oldes' timber rots and breaks away, but dis not fast[Pg 306] 'nough to keep de river clear. We found bee trees on de raft and had honey.””
— United States. Work Projects Administration
“It was long time after us come to Texas when de gov'ment opens up de channel. Dat am in 1873.””
— United States. Work Projects Administration
“Pappy was a Indian. I knows dat. He came from Congo, over in Africa, and I heared him say a big storm druv de ship somewhere on de Ca'lina coast. I 'member he mighty 'spectful to Massa and Missy, but he proud, too, and walk straighter'n anybody I ever seen. He had scars on de right side he head and cheek what he say am tribe marks, but what dey means I don't know.””
— United States. Work Projects Administration
“I never knowed of 'em puttin' bells on the slaves on our place, but over next to us they did. They had a piece what go round they shoulders and round they necks with pieces up over they heads and hung up the bell on the piece over they head.””
— United States. Work Projects Administration
“Papa Day's place. "I 'member one year us don't make no crop hardly and daddy say he gwine git out 'fore us starves to death, and he””
— United States. Work Projects Administration
“Four is here in Austin and two in California and one in Ohio. "I gits a li'l pension, $9.00 de month, and my gal, Susie,””
— United States. Work Projects Administration
