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The Institution
"I think slavery was wrong because birds 'an things are free 'an man ought to have the same privilege."
Sarah Debro, enslaved in North Carolina
I think slavery was a good thing. I never suffered for nothin'.
Perry Sheppard, enslaved in Missouri
I is thankful that ain't none of my children born slaves and have to remember all them terrible days when we was ruled by the whip—like I remember it, just like it was yesterday.
Daniel William Lucas, enslaved in Mississippi
Toward the end of their interviews in the 1930s, many former slaves were asked by members of the Federal Writers' Project their opinions of Abraham Lincoln, Booker T. Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, "young people today," and finally, slavery. Often their responses to the last question began "You ask, what do I think of slavery? Let me tell you." Their judgments span from "it was hell" to "those were good days," depending on their enslavement experiences, the level of candor they permitted themselves, and their economic and physical condition during the Great Depression. (Some interviewers commented in their reports on the impoverished state of the former slaves.) Also, one can assume that the former slaves were influenced by their proximity to former masters and their descendents. Many in the southeast still lived a few miles from where they had been enslaved, while others lived hundreds of miles west and, perhaps, felt freer to speak.
While all the antebellum narratives of former slaves condemned slavery and urged its abolition, of course, the postbellum narratives offer a different perspective on the "peculiar institution." [Andrews quotation here] Here we read a selection of former slaves' statements on enslavement and the lives they created as free people. "Now they gradually threw off the mask," remembers Booker T. Washington of his fellow slaves when emancipated, "and were not afraid to let it be known that the 'freedom' in their songs meant freedom of the body in this world." (xx pages).
Discussion questions
- Describe the range of opinions about slavery expressed by the former slaves interviewed in the 1930s. What factors account for their differing evaluations of "slavery times?"
- Compare the nineteenth- and twentieth-century postbellum statements of former slaves. What factors account for the differences?
- What patterns do you find in all the statements of former slaves?
- Imagine a discussion between Booker T. Washington and Perry Sheppard, or
Williams Wells Brown and Margrett Nillin. How would they agree and differ on their perceptions of enslavement and freedom? on the importance of memory in creating their identity?
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Framing Questions
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How did enslaved African Americans construct communities over time? What were their principal characteristics? |
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What obstacles did slaves confront in constructing communities? |
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How did white Americans respond to the collective behavior of African Americans? |
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How was autonomy exercised through community by antebellum African Americans? |
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Printing
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Supplemental Sites
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Images courtesy of the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, WPA Slave Narratives.
- "we shore cussed ole marster out": Charlie Crump, enslaved in North Carolina, photographed at his home near Cary, North Carolina, between 1936 and 1938.
- "I don't want no more slavery . . . 'cause hit was terrible": Sara Colquitt, enslaved in Virginia and Alabama, photographed at her home in Opelika, Alabama, September 1937.
- 'twarn't so hard as now": James Boyd, enslaved in Indian Territory [Oklahoma] and Texas , photographed at his home near Waco, Texas, September 1937.
- "in slavery I has no worryment, but I takes de freedom": Margrett Nillin, enslaved in Texas, photographed at her home in Fort Worth, Texas, between 1936 and 1938.
Images reproduced by permission of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Library, in online collection Documenting the American South.
- "now they gradually threw off the mask": Booker T. Washington, photograph in Washington, Up from Slavery: An Autobiography, 1901.
- "it was, indeed, a low kind of happiness": William Wells Brown, frontispiece engraving in Brown, My Southern Home: The South and Its People, 1880.
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