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[Fwd: [BuffaloHistory] Recollections of slaves placed online by library]



HI Folks,

Looks like the Library of Congress has given us another gift. Here
are slave narratives from the WPA interview project which are now
online.

The American Memory Project can be seen at:

http://memory.loc.gov/

Read the article below from the newspaper in Buffalo.

Sharon Centanne

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [BuffaloHistory] Recollections of slaves placed online by
library
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 12:40:06 -0400
From: "ccb" <ccb@acsu.buffalo.edu>
Reply-To: BuffaloHistory@yahoogroups.com
To: <BuffaloHistory@yahoogroups.com>

Hi,

The following article was in the Buffalo Newspaper on Friday, April 20,
2001.  Thought it might be of interest to some.

Lynn


Recollections of slaves placed online by library

                  By JOEY HOLLEMAN
                  Knight Ridder Newspapers
                  4/20/01

COLUMBIA, S.C. - The Library of Congress has opened an online window to
the
disturbing, yet illuminating tales of former slaves gathered in a
federal
project in the 1930s.

Once found only in musty volumes in research facilities such as the
South
Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina, these
narratives
now can be called up with a simple click as part of the library's
American
Memory project.

The Web site, which went online March 30, can be found at
memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html.

Nearly 2,000 former slaves, including hundreds from South Carolina, were
interviewed from 1936 to 1938 in the Federal Writers Project, a
make-work
program that was part of the Works Progress Administration.

The narratives filled 33 volumes and nearly 10,000 pages. Now all of
that
work can be found online.

But be forewarned - history can be offensive. The n-word crops up in
many
places. The stories use dialect that would draw protests if used these
days.

The narrative from Charley Watson of Winnsboro, for example, explains
the
slave work day like this: "Us worked de can and de can't system. In de
mornin', when it git so you can see, you got to go to work and at night
when
it git so dark you can't see you ceasted to work."

But, as stated in the original 1941 introduction to the compilation, in
spite of the limitations, the narratives "remain the most authentic and
colorful source of our knowledge of the lives and thoughts of thousands
of
slaves."

In the online version, you can call up the volumes by state. Interviews
in
South Carolina fill four volumes and more than 1,000 pages. The names
are
listed alphabetically.

You can also search by subject. For instance, 10 of the narratives
mention
baseball. While the main focus is slavery and the period immediately
after
it, some of the conversations wandered to the more contemporary period
of
the Depression.

USC history professor Mark Smith, who has read all the volumes, said the
narratives allow readers "to get some sense of the texture of slave
life,
refracted through memory."

Smith said they are more useful as a picture of folk culture and beliefs
than of how slaves were treated.

The authors, both white and black, were instructed to reproduce in
writing
the spoken language of the people they interviewed, and the dialect
reflects
that.

One of the more interesting entries is one of three written by
African-American Augustus Ladson. He interviews Elijah Green, who was
born
Christmas Day in 1843 and had an incredible store of memory nearly 90
years
later.

A personal servant to Lt. William Jones, Green witnessed the Battle of
Richmond and explained the tactics to his interviewer. He bragged of
winning
a $1 bet with a white man years later because he knew the name of the
man
who fired the first shot on Fort Sumter.

Green said he helped dig John C. Calhoun's grave with a certain joy in
his
heart.  "I never did like Calhoun cause he hated the Negro," Green said.
Green talked of a slave owner named Mr. Ryan who had a private jail on
Queen
Street in Charleston. "He was very cruel; he'd lick his slaves to death.
Very seldom one of
his slaves survive a whippin.' "


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