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978-0-89587-256-2
0-89587-256-0
$9.95 paperback
5" x 7 1/2"
196 pages
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"My pa, he was
sold and traded in Alabama and was brung here in Mississippi and sold
with a bunch of other slaves," said Lucy Donald. "I don’t
know nothing ’bout my folks way back, for they was sold here and
yonder and switched ’bout till I just knows I’s got a pa and ma and
that’s ’bout all."
"There was a
white man from Indiana . . . boarding with my mother and teaching the
Negroes," recalled George Washington Miller of Clay County,
Mississippi." There was a notice put on my mother’s gate. On the
notice was a red heart with a sword through it, showing that he must
quit teaching or his life was in danger. He left and went back to
Indiana."
In his introduction
to Prayin’ to Be Set Free, Andrew Waters likens these personal
accounts of former Mississippi slaves to the music of that state’s
legendary blues artists. The pain, the modest eloquence, and even the
underlying vitality are much the same.
What is now
Mississippi wasn’t acquired by the United States until 1798, at which
time it had fewer than 10,000 inhabitants, excluding Native Americans.
By the Civil War, it had over 430,000 slaves and 350,000 whites. More
than half the whites were members of slave-owning families. The majority
of slaves worked in the cotton fields. Mississippi was known as a
slave-buying frontier state, in contrast to the eastern states, which
sold slaves westward. Indeed, many of the former slaves in this book
speak of coming to Mississippi as children.
At the height of the
Depression, the out-of-work wordsmiths who comprised the Federal Writers’
Project began interviewing elderly African-Americans about their
experiences under slavery. The former slaves were more than 70 years
removed from bondage, but the memories of many of them were strikingly
clear. The accounts from former Mississippi slaves are considered among
the strongest in the entire collection. The 28 narratives presented here
are the best of those.
about the
author
Andrew Waters has worked as an editor for HarperCollins; John F. Blair,
Publisher; and Pet Publishing Magazines. He lives in Winston-Salem,
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
On Jordan's Stormy Banks
Mighty Rough Times, I Tell You
Before
Freedom, When I Just Can Remember
I
Was Born in Slavery
Weren't
No Good Times |
