Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938

Memoir Book Review, by Joel Gould

At what moment in a child’s life should they wrap their minds around the history of institutionalized slavery in the United States? When do we start to wink through tales of fairies collecting teeth and let them in on the big secret of the adult world: the past, the present, and the future share unimaginable horrors, but that even in the bleakest moments, the human spirit, life, and love will still sprout through the cracks in the rubble? I would argue that if the young people in your charge are ready to listen to the 2016 presidential debates, they deserve extraordinary, unflinching background information.

Out of a “free books” box on third floor of Stevenson Hall, I plucked a thin volume with a sepia-toned image of an elderly woman, wearing a ruffled maid’s hat, a long flowered dress, and boots.  She looked slightly startled, as if she had been interrupted mid-thought by the click of a camera. Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938; Oklahoma, published by Applewood Books in coordination with The Library of Congress, delivers the original, marked-up, typewritten manuscripts from the Depression era W.P.A. (Works Progress Administration) project that documented the fading oral history of people who had grown up as slaves. Sometimes, you find the book you need after a focused search, this one, however, found me.

This collection is well proportioned, clear, and a welcome option for traditional bibliophiles. Alternately, copies of the originals, in PDF form, are available for download from the Library of Congress (with 590 related artifacts). https://www.loc.gov/item/mesn130/, The voices of the survivors resonate undiminished through the past seventy nine years, regardless of format.

At the time of the recordings, the oldest participant was 105 years old, and thus had been 33, at the end of the American Civil War.  All of the storytellers in this collection spent their early childhoods as slaves, mostly in Oklahoma, Alabama, and Texas, and were still young at the beginning of the war. The well-worn wisdom of elders frames luminous memories of distant youth.  They describe in tender detail the preparation of favorite foods, games of marbles, spiritual awakenings and even often their genuine fondness for the families of their former masters. This placid foreground, however, is often punctuated by equally vivid descriptions of the cat o’ nine tails, naked families on auction blocks, and the betrayal of trusted people, unleashing torrents of violence.

I believe students will be drawn to the authenticity of the speakers’ voices: in a modern world, where most words we read are crafted by professionals to sell something (if only a book or an idea), how replenishing it is to drink in the diverse, unique, and uncalculated language of real people telling their own stories. These voices are the creation of time, place, and human context, not the whims of an author, even one as masterful as Mark Twain.

There were a few surprises that I was not prepared for:

• Many of these septuagenarian, octogenarian, and centenarian survivors grew up (perhaps not coincidentally) in or near “the big house” and had difficult lives after the war. Most felt unprepared for freedom. A few pined for “the good old times”. Students may take these accounts at face value, which would honor the intention of the authors. Additionally, however, they may benefit from an introduction to the idea that captives empathize with their captors in order to survive.
• Quite a few of the former slaves in Oklahoma had owners from the Creek (Muscogee) Nation, also a culture in crisis. Nellie Johnson describes how her owner treated her family as if they were tenant farmers and gave them plots of land to cultivate and a share in the profits. She notes that she didn’t understand that she and her family were owned until the middle of the Civil War. 
• I had never considered how varied the practice of slavery might have been from plantation to plantation, from family to family. The former slaves, for obvious reasons, placed value on how benevolently, humanely, and generously different Masters and Overseers treated their slaves.  Were they well fed? How arbitrary and viscous was punishment? Did they make efforts to keep the slave family together? What was the quality of their clothes? Were they given time-off to celebrate Saturday night, holidays, weddings, or funerals? Were they permitted to read? Were they provided with church services? Did the obligation of the Master to provide a living extend past the boundaries of the Civil War? I had never considered the mindset of the “good” slave owner. 

Finally, here are a few words from Anthony Dawson, aged 105, from August 16th, 1937:
“... But now and then, they was a devil on earth, walking in the sight of God and spreading iniquity before him. He was de low-down Sesesh dat would take what a poor runaway nigger had to give for his chance to git away, and den give him ‘structions dat would lead him right into de hands of de patrollers and get him caught or shot. Yes, dat’s de way it was. Devils and good people walking in de road at de same time, and nobody could tell one from t’other.”

(1936) Anthony Dawson, Age 105. Between 1936 and 1938. [Image] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/mesnp130065/.