Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XIII, Oklahoma Narratives
Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XIII, Oklahoma Narratives
United States. Work Projects Administration
In the depths of the Great Depression, a government work project did something extraordinary: it gave voice to Americans whose stories had been systematically silenced for generations. This volume gathers oral histories from formerly enslaved people in Oklahoma, recorded in their own words during the late 1930s. These are not historians' accounts or politicians' speeches. They are the memories of men and women who actually lived through slavery, recalling childhoods on plantations, the terror of auction blocks, the long nightmare of bondage, and the fragile promise of freedom. Some speak with hard-won detachment. Others break mid-sentence, seventy years of grief spilling into a single pause. Names of owners, songs sung in the cotton fields, the taste of starvation, the moment of emancipation , all preserved here in the raw, unfiltered language of survivors. This is not easy reading. It is necessary reading. These voices are irreplaceable; most of the speakers here have since died, and with them goes the last living memory of American slavery. What remains is this: their testimony, unvarnished and unforgettable.
