Remembering Slavery
African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
"A Best Book of the Year" —Library Journal and Booklist
Using excerpts from the thousands of interviews conducted with ex-slaves in the 1930s by researchers working with the Federal Writer's Project, this astonishing collection makes available in print the only known recordings of people who actually experienced slavery--recordings that had gathered dust in the Library of Congress until they were rendered audible for the first time specifically for this collection.
Heralded as "a minor miracle" (Ted Koppel, Nightline), "powerful and intense" (Atlanta Journal Constitution), and "invaluable" (Chicago Tribune), Remembering Slavery is sure to enrich readers for years to come.
"Gripping and poignant... Moving recollections fill a void in the slavery literature." —The Washington Post Book World
"Chilling [and] riveting... This project will enrich every American home and classroom." —Publisher's Weekly
"Quite literally, history comes alive in this unparalleled work." —Library Journal
"Ira Berlin's fifty-page introduction is as good a synthesis of current scholarship as one will find, filled with fresh insights for any reader." —The San Diego Union Tribune
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Two projects begun independently and presented together here provide chilling witness to slavery's persistent legacies. Transcripts of 124 former slaves interviewed in the 1920s and 1930s are accompanied by recently restored recorded interviews that have languished in the Library of Congress since 1941. Historian Berlin, founding director of the Freedmen and Southern Society Project at the University of Maryland, is a master of allowing the natural drama of history to unfold. The tapes particularly are riveting--perhaps especially for those seeking their roots in Southern slavery. Until the modern civil rights movement, Berlin notes, historians' "struggle over slavery" was considered "too important to be left to the who experienced it," but their experience has increasingly been coming to light as more archival material is unearthed and made available. Still, some seams are apparent. The original transcribers of the print interviews (nine appear both in print and on cassette) made numerous and idiosyncratic editorial interventions that at times can read, as Berlin notes, like "minstrel-speak." Actor James Earl Jones and dancer Debbie Allen reading selections from the interviews on portions of the tape are not nearly as credible or moving as the voices of former slaves. Those wonderfully present voices describe family life, work ethic and recreational patterns, religious ethos and resistance in answer to questions posed in often unmistakably condescending terms by white interviewers. This project will enrich every American home and classroom. 40 b&w photos not seen by PW.
