Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 7
Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 7
United States. Work Projects Administration
In the late 1930s, a dying generation of elderly Black Americans sat down with government interviewers to recount what they remembered of slavery. Most had been children or young adults when the Civil War ended; by the time the Federal Writers' Project came calling, they were among the last living people who could speak from personal experience about America's greatest moral failure and its aftermath. This volume gathers their voices in raw, unpolished testimony: stories of childhood in the quarters, family separations, hard labor, and the bewildering first years of freedom. Some narrators speak of plantation violence with startling calm; others recount moments of quiet resistance, community solidarity, or religious faith that sustained them. The interviews are not polished memoirs but something more valuable - imperfect memories, contradictions, and all, preserved in the language of people who lived through it. These are the voices history almost silenced. This book is for anyone who understands that understanding American slavery requires listening to those who were there, in their own words, before the last witnesses fall silent.
