The Historiographic Significance of the Slave Narratives Collection

“[…] I’ve always thought that this kind of unhealed wound in America that we have trouble talking about what really happened during slavery. We have trouble talking about the scars of that. That’s the unspoken and the unfinished business of race in America” states Condolezza Rice, the first Afro-American foreign minister (2005–2009) in the United States, in the PBS-TV Series “Finding your Roots” in 2012. Henry Louis Gates Jr. leads his audience through the familiar past of popular Americans with Afro-American and Anglo-American backgrounds “[to] get into the DNA of American culture” (Gates). The series is a current example for the fact that a family’s history, her origins and roots are decisive for a person’s identity; “I’m stunned, its says 51% African, 40% European, and 9% Asian!” (Rice). Furthermore, for example Condoleezza Rice, Samual L. Jackson, Ruth Simmons and many more, grew up during Jim Crow — a direct heritage of racism from the times of slavery. The questions about the reasons and significance of slavery, not only concern family members of the person affected, but are in fact decisive questions on society itself, in the past and present. The examination of the transatlantic slave trade is and stays a fundamental subject for everyone, regardless of his or her cultural and social background, “because the disastrous consequence of this outrage […] and the social and cultural interactions that it generated continue to shape the world of today” (Iye 103).

The Slave Narrative Collection

To find out about the ancestors and their lives of his guests Gates, in cooperation with genealogists, scientists, and geneticists, makes use of various archives, document collections, and libraries. One collection of many, but unique in its form, is the one to be found in the Library of Congress: the Slave Narratives Collections, which came into being during the Great Depression during the 1930s. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) sent within the context of the Federal Writers’ Project (WPA) during the time span from 1936 to 1938 unemployed “white-collar workers” (Yetman 3) in 17 different states, in order to interview former slaves. The Slave Narratives Collection, which can be found in great parts in digital form on the web page of the Library of Congress, contains more than 2300 printed narratives on more than 9500 pages, with 500 photographies of former slaves. Besides, there is a further collection called “American Folklife Center’s Archive of Folk Culture” containing 23 sound recordings and their transcriptions, which were taken between 1932 and 1975 in different projects.

The Slave Narratives Collection isn’t an undisputed source: although it gives “a rare glimpse into how black Americans who experienced slavery narrated their memories”, the narratives still raise many questions about their background and realization, for example their length and changes that were made in terms of content and formality, because of summarizing them: “Each narrative is a written report of an interview, or several interviews, with a former slave, recorded […]. These reports vary considerably in length and in quality. Some are barely a page, whereas others run to several pages or more; the 'typical' narrative might be between two and four pages in length. Likewise some of these reports treat very important topics in great detail, whereas others are mainly fluff or evasion. Most offer to the careful reader a fair amount of material both on the ex-slave and on his interviewer” (Escott 41).

The Significance of the Slave Narrative Collection in the Past

Because both the public and historians have been very skeptical and critical about the interviewers’ subjective interpretation and distortion of the ex-slaves’ testimonies, the Slave Narratives Collection has been increasingly neglected in the scientific discourse. Gregory D. Smith discusses this case in his work from 2012 and explains that “the context in which the narratives were collected has also led scholars to question the ‘biases’ and the historical ‘truth’ contained within them”. Smithers describes two types of dealings with the slave narratives: “First, historians extract quotations from the testimonies of former slaves to make a larger point about antebellum slavery. Used in this way, the WPA narratives play a supporting role to the written records bequeathed to posterity by white plantation owners, government officials, and Euro-American and Euro- pean travelers to the South. A second cohort of historians, beginning in the 1970s, have drawn on the WPA narratives to emphasize the agency of the enslaved in narrating their own social and cultural life. These historians […] have produced valuable histories of slave culture that reveal the polyvalent forms of slave resistance and emphasize how the enslaved strove to cultivate romantic relationships and forge families in the slave South” (102).

Which information does the Slave Narrative Collection provide both about the interviewer, and the interviewee?

If we would follow up the time span Smithers offers, from 1945 to 1970 and to the end of the 1990s, soon the question emerges how we should, must and can deal with the Slave Narrative Collection in the 21st century? Which information does the Slave Narrative Collection provide both about the interviewer, and the interviewee, as well as about the society of the 1930s? Who were the interviewer and those questioned? Why did the interest about former slaves come up during the 1930s and in what way can memories from people older than the age of 80 (cf. Yetman 2) give evidence about the institution of slavery? Are the narratives ego-documents who provide historiographic facts or are they rather sources, which intentionally give selective and subjective information of the author or editor? To find out the answers, the following examination of a transcription of a sound recording from the “American Folklife Center’s Archive of Folk Culture” and a written summary from the Slave Narratives Collection will offer evidence about the differences and similarities of the interviews.

A “white” view on “black” History

The society of the United States in the beginning of the 20th century was marked of institutional racism, but yet an Afro-American interest for the own history emerged as well as an Anglo-American conscience about the own critical past. Nevertheless, although an interest evolved, it stayed a “white” view on “black” history — for a profound and drastic debate with their own history, not only former slaves should have been interviewed, but also former slave holders. James Baldwin criticizes this behavior in his essay “The White Man’s Guilt”, whenever he discusses the relationship between Afro-Americans and Anglo-Americans in the USA: “But, on the same day, in another gathering, and in the most private chamber of his heart, always, the white American remains proud of that history for which he does not wish to pay, and from which, materially, he has profited so much“ (724).

Fountain Hughes

The Slave Narratives Collection is the largest collection of first person narratives and Afro-American history and folkore. Furthermore, “the WPA narratives […] an illuminating source of data about antebellum Southern life, the institution of slavery, and, most important, the reactions and perspectives of those who had been enslaved” (Davis xi). Having this in mind, the transcription of the interview with Fountain Hughes in Maryland from 1949 of the “American Folklife Center’s Archive of Folk Culture” and the written summary of the interview with Jenny Procter from Alabama from the Slave Narratives Collection taken between 1936 and 1938, will show two examples of how former slaves remembered slavery.

This is the voice record of Fountain Hughes’ interview: http://memory.loc.gov/service/afc/afc9999001/9990a.mp3

Analysis of Fountain Hughes’ Interview

Already after the first reading of the transcription of Fountain Hughes’ interview and the summary of Jenny Proctor’s interview there can be examined a clear difference in the structure of content. Proctor’s narrative is obviously structured after themes (family, living conditions, work, punishment, food, money, marriage, etc.), whereas despite Hermond Norwood’s questions Hughes’ answers are by no means ordered thematically. Sometimes Norwood even asks Hughes to freely tell his thoughts: “You just go ahead and talk away there. You don’t mind, do you, Uncle Fountain?”, sometimes he asks specific questions: “Were you ever sold from one person to another?”. Whenever Norwood asks Hughes for whom he was working, “Yeah, when you were a slave. Who did you work for?”, Hughes answers to whom he belonged: “Well, I belonged to uh, B., when I was a slave. My mother belong to B. But my, uh, but, uh, we, uh, was all slave children”, and comments right after about the liberation of the slaves: “And after, soon after when we found out that we was free, why then we was, uh, bound out to different people. [names of people] and all such people as that. And we would run away, and wouldn’t stay with them. […] We had no home, you know. […] Well after freedom, you know, colored people didn’t have nothing”. After this, in his narrative Hughes jumps back to the living conditions during slavery: “Colored people didn’t have no beds when they was slaves. We always slept on the floor, pallet here, and a pallet there”. The connection of the living conditions as a slave and as a free man is drawn by Fountain Hughes various times throughout the interview, without Norwood’s asking: “Now, uh, after we got freed and they turned us out like cattle, we could, we didn't have nowhere to go. And we didn't have nobody to boss us, and, uh, we didn't know nothing6. […] We didn't have no property. We didn't have no home. We had nowhere or nothing. We didn't have nothing only just, uh, like your cattle, we were just turned out”.

“If I thought, had any idea, that I’d ever be a slave again, I’d take a gun an just end it all right away”

Norwood asks Hughes about the Civil War, however, Hughes doesn’t remember and instead talks about the Yankees. Then, Norwood asks Hughes if he’d rather be free or enslaved: “Which had you rather be Uncle Fountain?”. This question rises an extremely critical light on the interviewer. After everything that Fountain Hughes had already told him, his behavior shows his arrogance concerning the interviewee, a former slave, because “we all know, no matter what we say, no matter how we may justify it or hide from this fact, every human being knows, something in him knows, and this is what Christ was talking about; no one wants to be a slave” (Baldwin 751). With regard to Norwood’s question Hughes emphasizes that he would rather take his life than become a slave ever again: “If I thought, had any idea, that I’d ever be a slave again, I’d take a gun an just end it all right away”. Furthermore, it is conspicuous that Norwood doesn’t elaborate on Hughes’ comments about discrimination and bad living conditions after slavery. Instead, he asks him when Hughes came to Baltimore and for whom he worked.

Jenny Proctor

At first, Jenny Proctor’s narrative deals with the already mentioned themes, for example the report about the circumstances when becoming sick: “We didn' have much lookin' after when we git sick. We had to take de worst stuff in de world fer medicine, jes' so it was cheap. Dat ole blue mass and bitte apple would keep us out all night. Sometimes he have de doctor when he thinks we goin' to die, 'cause he say he aint got any one to lose, den dat calo- mel what dat doctor would give us would purty nigh kill us. Den dey keeps all kinds of lead bullets and asafoetida balls 'round our necks and some carried a rabbit foot wid dem all de time to keep off evil of any kind”. Only in the very end, Proctor talks about the abolition. The reader gets the impression that the narrative is “decorated” with a happy end: “Lawd, Lawd, honey! It seems impossible dat any of us ev'r lived to see dat day of freedom, but thank God we did. When ole marster domes down in de cotton patch to tells us 'bout bein' free […] we didn' hardly know what he means. We jes' sort of huddle 'round together like scared rabbits, but after we knowed what he mean, didn' many of us go, 'cause we didn' know where to of went. Ole marster he say he give us de woods land and half of what we make on it, and we could clear it and work it or starvs. […], and when we plants de co'n and de cotton we jes' plant all de fence corners full too, and I never seen so much stuff grow in all my born days, several ears of co'n to de stalk and dem big cotton stalks was a layin' over on de ground. Some of de ole slaves dey say dey believe de Lawd knew sumpin' 'bout niggers after all. […] we was gittin' goin' now and 'fore long we was a buildin' better houses and feelin' kind of happy like”.

What do the Different Narratives Tell us?

Whether and how Jenny Proctor indeed told her memories the way they were written down and accessible to us today, we will never find out. However, through the comparison between the transcription of Fountain Hughes’ voice recording and the written summary of Proctor’s narrative, we can deduce that the level of interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee, for example ignoring or evading certain questions, as well as the formulation of a question, gets totally lost in Jenny Proctor’s interview from the Slave Narratives Collection. Proctor’s narrative gives the reader a different impression about the memories of life during slavery of a former enslaved person. In contrast to the interview with Fountain Hughes, where his voice and his tone can be understood. Hughes is a self-confident and independent person, who can decide which questions he wants to answer and how — he leaves the role of the victim.

“The historian must start with the fact that these reports are not a direct presentation of the slave’s views”

“The historian must start with the fact that these reports are not a direct presentation of the slave’s views. They are not even a direct transcription of the interview itself. Although a few interview sessions were captured on an early version of the tape recorder, the vast majority of interviews probably involved no- more than the former slave and his questioner, who took some notes. The report written from these notes might not present the former slave’s statements in their original order or with full accuracy. […] Thus the WPA narratives are one or more stages removed from the original interview” (Escott 41).

Afro-American and Anglo-American Memory

Considering the process of formation of the narratives, there is no doubt about the historiographic, social, political, and historical significance of the Slave Narrative Collection. However, the question about the collection is rather pointed at the African-American and Anglo-American memory culture of slavery in the society of the 1930s, than a testimony based on facts about the “peculiar institution”. The comparison of Jenny Proctor’s narrative and the transcription of the interview with Fountain Hughes shows the different depictions of Afro-American and Anglo-American memory. The latter rather represents the Afro-American memory, because the record reveals Hughes’ actions and reactions, whereas the summary of Proctor’s narrative can be interpreted as the Anglo-American memory of slavery, because Proctor’s actions and reactions are formulated in hindsight through a white point of view. Because of that, Jenny Proctor’s voice cannot be distinguished from the voice of the interviewer, or even disappears completely.

“The WPA narratives provide a rare glimpse into how Americans who experienced slavery narrated their memories or, equally powerful, wanted to forget slave life”

Furthermore, the thematic structure and the consciously or unconsciously formulated “happy end” in Jenny Proctor’s narrative shows how the living conditions of African-Americans after the abolition were seen by Anglo-Americans. Their view stands in a great contrast to the descriptions of Fountain Hughes, who almost doesn’t draw a line between the living conditions during and after slavery. Interviews with former slaves do not only show how the people affected remember their lives, but also how they wanted to forget: “the WPA naratives provide a rare glimpse into how Americans who experienced slavery narrated their memories or, equally powerful, wanted to forget slave life” (Smithers 101). Here too, Fountain Hughes answers cast light on his handling with the different subjects. In Procter’s report we can only imagine which information she shared and which she kept to herself.

“The Art and Science of Reading WPA Slave Narratives”

One example for the gained insight from the Slave Narratives Collection until now is given by Paul D. Escott in his essay “The Art and Science of Reading WPA Slave Narratives”: “Scholars have speculated a great deal on the difference in slave life on large plantations as compared to small plantations. Small slaveholders, they have argued, had a markedly different atmosphere. The master and slave shared a close and more personal relationship and may at times have worked side-by-side in the fields. As a result, according to this interpretation, slavey on small farms was far milder and less harsh. The WPA narratives both confirm this from the white perspective and refute it from the black view point. There were differences, as described, in the two environments. Quantitative analysis reveals that only in small slaveholdings did any sizeable proportion of the slaves eat the same food as the master. Similarly, only on smaller units did a noticeable fraction of owners eschew whipping althogether. These are signs that there was an objective difference between large and small plantation environments. But such a difference does not ensure that slaves perceived their bondage in substantially different fashion on small farms” (45).

Reality vs. Memory

Escott’s example clarifies that the facts spoken by a subject about his or her reality cannot be confused with reality itself. Important factors considering the examination of the slave narratives are their history of origins, the epoch they were produced, in order to find out valuable information about this kind of source and to embed them in the context of the 21st century. The current occurrences in Ferguson as well as the European Elections are two of many examples of the problematic nature of white historiography, white interpretation of reality, institutional racism and its consequences.

“One has only to ask oneself who established this distance [between White America and Black America], who is this distance designed to protect, and from what is this distance designed to offer protection?”

To come to an end, I would like to follow up James Baldwin on his thoughts about race: “The American curtain is color. Color. White men have used this word, this concept, to justify unspeakable crimes, not only in the past, but in the present. […] One has only to ask oneself who established this distance [between White America and Black America], who is this distance designed to protect, and from what is this distance designed to offer protection?” (725). The Anglo-American dealing with the heritage of slavery in the Slave Narratives Collection with former enslaved can offer an opportunity for self-examination and self-reflection concerning racism in the society of the 21st century.