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"Marster done
all the whippin' on our plantation hisself. He never did make no big
bruises, and he never drawed no blood, but he sho' could burn 'em up
with that lash." --James Bolton
"I didn't know
'bout surrender and that I was free 'til after Miss Hannah died and I
got out on my own. Lots of the owners didn't tell their slaves they was
freed, and so we went right on workin' like we had been befo'
surrender." --Sally Brown
During the Great Depression,
the Federal Writers' Project engaged jobless writers and researchers to
interview former slaves about their experiences in bondage. Most of the
interviewees were by then in their eighties and nineties, and their
memories were soon to be lost to history. The effort was a huge success,
eventually encompassing more than two thousand interviews and ten
thousand pages of material across seventeen states.
This collection presents the
personal narratives of twenty-eight former Georgia slaves. As editor
Andrew Waters notes, the "two ends of the human perspective--terror
and joy" are often evident within the same interviews, as the
ex-slaves tell of the abuses they endured while they simultaneously
yearn for younger, simpler days. The result is a complex mix of emotion
spoken out of a dark past that must not be forgotten.
about the author
Andrew Waters has worked as an editor for HarperCollins and John F.
Blair, Publisher. He lives in North Carolina.
Other slave narrative
titles in Blair's Real Voices, Real History™ series:
My
Folks Don't Want Me To Talk About Slavery
We Lived in a Little Cabin in the
Yard
Before
Freedom, When I Just Can Remember
Mighty Rough Times, I Tell You
Prayin'
to Be Set Free
I
Was Born in Slavery
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