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| Millie Markham |
illion slaves. What makes the WPA narratives so rich is that they capture the very voices of American slavery, revealing the texture of life as it was experienced and remembered. Each narrative taken alone offers a fragmentary, microcosmic representation of slave life. Read together, they offer a sweeping composite view of slavery in North America, allowing us to explore some of the most compelling themes of nineteenth-century slavery, including labor, resistance and flight, family life, relations with masters, and religious belief."1
One of the people interviewed was Millie (Molly)
Markham, my Great-Great Grandmother’s sister.
"Molly Walden Markham, as an elderly
woman, told a tale to the WPA Writer's Project how her mother Tempy was a white
woman and her father Squire Walden was a slave on her grandfather's plantation.
Tempy fell in love with Squire, her father found out about it, and sold Squire
to another slave owner in another state. Tempy bought Squire's freedom and then
drank the blood from a cut in his finger so she could honestly tell the Justice
of the Peace that she had Negro blood in her [WPA Project vol. XI, part 2,
106-8]. Tempy was actually the daughter of Benjamin James, a light-skinned
free African American who lived in Halifax County, North Carolina."2
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| Click Here for the full Transcript |
Understanding the context of the narratives.
Bruce Fort wrote a good piece about reading the
narratives that helps set the context interpreting them.
"The narratives ... are transcribed verbatim from the interview transcripts collected by writers of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the late 1930s. The narratives can be quite challenging to read. The dialect can be difficult to understand; the interviewers usually made an effort to transcribe what they heard the narrators saying, but there is little consistency from interview to interview. One solution is to try to imagine what the language might have sounded like, perhaps by reading the narratives out loud.It is worthwhile to read the narratives closely, watching and listening for unexpected details, unspoken feelings, and hidden meanings. Often the full meanings of the narratives will remain unclear, but the ambiguities themselves bear careful consideration. When Emma Crockett spoke about whippings, she said that "All I knowed, 'twas bad times and folks got whupped, but I kain't say who was to blame; some was good and some was bad." We might discern a number of reasons for her inability or unwillingness to name names, to be more specific about brutalities suffered under slavery. She admitted that her memory was failing her, not unreasonable for an eighty-year-old. She also told her interviewer that under slavery she lived on the "plantation right over yander,"and it is likely that the children or grandchildren of her former masters, or her former overseers, still lived nearby; the threat of retribution could have made her hold her tongue. Or, perhaps in her old age she had come to view her life as a slave with equanimity and forgiveness. It is impossible to know why she reserved judgment, but it is worth considering the possibilities.
Readers will notice lapses, inconsistencies, and repetitions in these narratives. The interviewers were assigned to ask a series of questions about labor, diet, marriage, punishment, and relations with masters. Some interviewers followed this list of questions more faithfully than others. Most of those interviewed were in their eighties and nineties; their recollection of childhood is often remarkably detailed, but readers will detect the difficulty of remembering exact chronologies over a period of seventy or eighty years.
Modern readers will also note in some narratives the patronizing tone of the interviewers and the seeming deference of the subjects. While the racial language can be offensive to modern readers, it is important to remember that these narratives were conducted sixty years ago in the Jim Crow South; just as these former slaves had survived into the twentieth century, so had the ideology of white supremacy that underpinned the slave society of the American South.”3
We are all equal but not the same.
Being enslaved is almost inconceivable to anyone living today, 150 years after the end of slavery, The reality of one person owning another, the unfettered ability to inflict punishment on another human being, and forcing people to live on barely subsistence level food, clothing and shelter, is something this country has tried to distance itself from for a long time. As one reads these first hand accounts of life during and after slavery, it may come as a surprise that not all of the recollections are of the horrors of slave life. African Americans have always had more than one perspective no different than seen between Malcolm and Martin, or WEB Dubois and Booker T. Washington.
Carry Me Back to Ol' Virginny
The lyrics to this popular folk song written by James A. Bland, an African American, in 1878. This was a time after the end of reconstruction when many former slaves were finding it difficult to survive. The lyrics, controversial now, expressed a nostalgic view of life as a slave...
There's where I labored so hard for old Massa,Day after day in the field of yellow corn;No place on earth do I love more sincerelyThan old Virginny, the state where I was born.
Massa and missis have long gone before me,Soon we will meet on that bright and golden shore,There we'll be happy and free from all sorrow,There's where we'll meet and we'll never part no more.
Sixty years later there were former slaves who echoed the sentiments of the song in their recollections of slavery and their experiences in the years after. William Sykes, a former slave in North Carolina compared his generation to the current generation of blacks.
William Sykes “Dar’s one thing, we ole niggers wus raised right an’de young niggers ain’t. Iffen I had my say-so dey’d burndown de nigger school, give dem pickanninies a good span-kin’ an’ put ‘em in de patch ter wuk, ain’t no nigger got no business wid no edgercation nohow.”4
“No slaves ever run away from our plantationcause marster wus good to us. I never herd of his bein’‘bout to whup any of his niggers. Mother loved her whitefolks as long as she lived an’ I loved ‘em too. No mister,we wus not mistreated.”5
“We lived in log houses. Yes, indeed, we had plenty to eat. I never suffered for sumptin’ to eat till I come to Raleigh. On de plantation we got plenty allowance. We had good clothes on de plantation. I am more naked now den I ever been before in my life.""I had de worse time of my life since de surrender."
“Slavery wus better den it is now. Shore it wus. I don’t know much ‘bout de war but my first life in Virginia was better den it is now. I never did have any mean white folks."6
Beyond the differences in the way people were treated from plantation to plantation owner to owner, one must remember that many of the people interviewed were small children when they were freed. In general children in the south did not go into the fields until they were between 8 and 12 years old, so some may not have experienced the same hardships under slavery as their older relatives did. The later reactions can also be seen in "institutionalized" ex-convicts who find it difficult to function outside of prison.
In addition, the idea of preferring life in bondage expressed by some were not much different than those expressed in the books of Exodus and Numbers by some of the newly liberated Hebrews. There were several challenges to Moses and Aaron, with complaints of being hungry and thirsty in the Wilderness vs the relative bounty they had back in Egypt. It is arguable that the challenges faced by many of the freed African American slaves was greater than those of the Hebrews for a couple of key reasons. First, there was no exodus for a good number of ex-slaves, they continued to live in relative close proximity to their old masters if not on the same plantation. Second, by the 70 year post freedom mark, the Hebrews had been in the promised land for some 30 years. No such place existed for the former slaves.
Give me liberty of give me death
On the other hand, there is Fountain Hughes, whose grandfather was owned by Thomas Jefferson. His views are far more representative of what people felt about the bondage.
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| Fountain Hughes |
If I thought, had any idea, that I’d ever be a slave again, I’d take a gun an’ jus end it all right away. Because you’re nothing but a dog. You’re not a thing but a dog.8
Slave Narratives on TV and Film
Found Voices
In addition to the written transcripts, a handful of interviews (including Fountain Hughes’) were recorded. The story of these audio recordings was captured in a segment of ABC’s Nightline called Found Voices.
Click Here to View Found Voices "This ... brings to life actual voices and memories of slaves through now digitally remastered tapes originally recorded in the 1930s and 1940s. Thousands of interviews with ex-slaves were conducted by John Henry Falke, Zora Neale Hurston, and other folklorists. Most of them were written down and published in pamphlets and some were recorded by phonographs. These tapes have been cleaned up with the newest computer technology, which results in remarkable audibility. One of the voices belongs to 101-year-old Fountain Hugh who was born in 1848 into slavery and was a grandson of a slave owned by Thomas Jefferson. Slave narratives like his describe treacherous and harsh living conditions under bondage and after emancipation. For the study of history instruction, gaining the knowledge of primary sources is valuable. Slave narratives serve as rich primary source material. This program does an excellent job of informing the viewers of the possibilities of using narrative as a primary source. However, this short program does not and cannot possibly provide sufficient accounts of slavery. Viewers will benefit from reading printed slave narratives in addition to watching this program."—Electronic Magazine of Multicultural Education9
Unchained Memories
Click the image to view the entire episode “Unchained Memories, is a riveting compilation of more than forty narratives drawn from interviews with former slaves conducted in the 1930s by the government's Works Progress Administration… From slave auctions to emancipation, the narratives trace the extraordinary experiences of lives spent in slavery.”10 In the film, actors including Angela Basset, Samuel L. Jackson, Oprah Winfrey, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee read excerpts from the slave narratives. It won the Literacy in Media Award for Outstanding Television Special/Film/Documentary.
Conclusions
As with every other aspect of the black experience in
America, the story told by these slave narratives is full of complexities and a
wide spectrum of perspectives, as numerous as there are people. The value goes beyond giving a view of what
slave live was like, it helps to set the context of how the black experience in
America evolved in the decades between the end of the civil war, and the dark days of the great depression.
Alexis Jones
Citations
1. (Fort, American Slave Narratives: An Online
Anthology, 1996)
2. (Heinegg, 2016)
3. (Fort, American Slave Narratives:
An Online Anthology, 1998)
4. (Library of Congress, pp.
https://northcarolinaslavenarratives.wordpress.com/north-carolina-slave-narratives-2/sykes-william/)
5. (Library of Congress, pp.
https://northcarolinaslavenarratives.wordpress.com/north-carolina-slave-narratives-2/lassiter-jane/)
6. (Library of
Congress, pp.
https://northcarolinaslavenarratives.wordpress.com/north-carolina-slave-narratives-2/penny-amy/)
7. (Mintz, n.d.)
8. (Fort, American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology, 1998, p.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/wpa/hughes1.html)
9. (Electronic Magazine of Multicultural Education,
n.d.)
10. (Amazon, n.d.)
Works Cited
Amazon. (n.d.). Unchained Memories: Readings from
the Slave Narratives. Retrieved Jan 7, 2017, from Amazon.com:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0821228420?_encoding=UTF8&isInIframe=0&n=283155&ref_=dp_proddesc_0&s=books&showDetailProductDesc=1#product-description_feature_div
Electronic Magazine of Multicultural Education.
(n.d.). Found Voices: The Slave Narratives. Retrieved from Films Media
Group: http://www.films.com/id/11092
Fort, B. (1996). American Slave Narratives: An
Online Anthology. Retrieved from American Studies at the university of
Virginia: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/wpa/wpahome.html
Fort, B. (1998, November 1). American Slave
Narratives: An Online Anthology. Retrieved from American Studies at the
University of Virginia: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/wpa/reading.html
Heinegg, P. (2016, September 30). Walden-Webster.
Retrieved from Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Maryland and Delaware: http://freeafricanamericans.com/Walden_Webster.htm
Library of Congress. (n.d.). William Sykes.
Retrieved from North Carolina Slave Narratives Volume XI Part II:
https://northcarolinaslavenarratives.wordpress.com/north-carolina-slave-narratives-2/sykes-william/
Mintz, S. (n.d.). Childhood and Transatlantic
Slavery. Retrieved January 11, 2017, from Children and Youth in History:
https://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/case-studies/57
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