During the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt commissioned writers and folklorists, the most notable being the esteemed writer Zora Neale Hurston, to travel throughout the South and capture the voices of the last living victims of American chattel slavery. What grew out of this research was volumes and volumes of interviews from the last living enslaved Africans. Their accounts are in a word, riveting.
Your task is to view the theatrical portrayals of these irreplaceable stories and chose at least one to highlight as your favorite and please explain why it stands out to you.
Click on the video to view U.S. History. I am sure that you will recognize many of the actors participating in this brilliant project.
The story that stood out to me the most was William Colbert telling the story of his brother January getting whipped by their master and he never cried, screamed, or made a sound. And he described how the master noticed he wasn’t screaming and it made him more upset he whipped him more. The story really stood out to me because January died from the beating and I was really intrigued by the fact that he never gave the master the satisfaction of hearing him scream.
I find it very interesting that some of the narratives were the actual slaves in the congress of library. But my favorite topic was “Anti-Slavery Publication” because it talks about the whites whipping the slaves until one slave named January never spoke while getting hit and it shows how brave he was at the time.
I believe slave narratives are a vital source of information that we should all know. I have always tried to trace my history but always hit a wall around 1880, so to be able to hear other people’s narratives is amazing. I would rather read or hear several narratives from the source than to watch Hollywood produce their own slave narrative for 2 hours straight. It clouds how people perceive slavery, thus creating false narratives for our ancestors.
In my personal opinion, I believe these slave narratives to be a beneficial part of history. The fact that the accounts told within the story came from actual slaves themselves is probably my favorite part. Things tend to left out or simplified when told from another point of view, such as the whites. In order to best tell a story, the information must come from those that experienced it not inflicted it. Growing up, I never saw videos like this played in the classroom, I am glad to see change as time progresses.
I am grateful that the United States had the foresight to do this project, so that no one should be able to change the narrative and lie about what happened. I feel as though narratives like this among other things should be taught in schools so that people are given a better understanding of our history in this country. Carter G. Woodson had the best handle as to why are history is not taught in schools and that also needs to be exposed. However, I am grateful that history has been recorded so that we are able to research in classes such as this and in our own time.
I find it cool that we have slave narratives. I like how they got people to get into character and narrate these slaves stories. It makes me feel like they are sitting in front of me telling me their life story.
It’s interesting that there are actual slave narratives in the library of congress. White journalist interviewed blacks that survived slavery. Most of them lived in the deep south and were still fearful of whites. The older ex slaves were more willing to be interviewed. The common message in the interview was being worked so hard that their bodies hurt. Blacks built the United States while working on plantations.