Before Freedom, When I Just Can Remember: Twenty-Seven Oral Histories of Former South Carolina Slaves [Paperback]

Belinda Hurmence (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1989

During the 1930s, the Federal Writers’ Project undertook the task of locating former slaves and recording their oral histories. The more than ten thousand pages of interviews with over two thousand former slaves were filed in the Library of Congress, where they were known to scholars and historians but few others.

From this storehouse of information, Belinda Hurmence has chosen twenty-seven narratives from the twelve hundred typewritten pages of interviews with 284 former South Carolina slaves. The result is a moving, eloquent, and often surprising firsthand account of the last years of slavery and first years of freedom. The former slaves describe the clothes they wore, the food they ate, the houses they lived in, the work they did, and the treatment they received. They give their impressions of Yankee soldiers, the Klan, their masters, and their newfound freedom.

In Before Freedom, When I Just Can Remember, Hurmence makes accessible to the casual reader what many scholars and historians have long known to be a great source of our nation’s history.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

YA-- From 284 Federal Writers' Project interviews gathered during the 1930s, Hurmence has edited 27 pieces in which ex-slaves from South Carolina discuss their homes, chores, masters, families, and celebrations during slave times. As she notes in her introduction, the former slaves' seeming nostalgia for old times may have resulted from their ages (all were over 80 at the time of the interviews) and Depression-linked poverty, the reality that freedom often meant sharecropping and violence from the KKK, and the fact that their interviewers were white. Nonetheless, the collection offers students a chance to use readable primary sources to research details of the everyday lives of Southern slaves.

Alice Conlon, University of Houston

Copyright 1989 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Selected from the Federal Writers' Pro ject slave narratives, this first-hand ac count of slavery features interviews with 27 former South Carolina slaves who were at least ten years old when they were freed. It is a successor to Hurmence's My Folks Don't Want Me To Talk about Slav ery (1984).--MR
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 135 pages
• Publisher: John F. Blair Publisher (April 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 089587069X
• ISBN-13: 978-0895870698
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 4.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #740,636 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #53 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National > African-American & Black

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Want to know what slavery was like? Ask a former slave., October 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Before Freedom, When I Just Can Remember: Twenty-Seven Oral Histories of Former South Carolina Slaves (Paperback)

A fantastic book that reveals the details of slave life through personal interviews of former slaves. Throw away the history books, forget what you learned in social studies, this is real. The book is printed using the dialects of the interviewees, so you almost feel as if you can hear the person speaking. A great read. Difficult to put it down once you pick it up.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good representation of what slaves thought, April 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Before Freedom, When I Just Can Remember: Twenty-Seven Oral Histories of Former South Carolina Slaves (Paperback)

This book was a very realistic view into the lives of slaves. I have gotten a better feel for the lives slaves through this book more than any other. It is well put together.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Could have been better, July 4, 2003

By 

Andre M. "brnn64" (Mt. Pleasant, SC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Before Freedom, When I Just Can Remember: Twenty-Seven Oral Histories of Former South Carolina Slaves (Paperback)

I've read the original South Carolina Volumes of the WPA Slave Narratives that this book was edited from. This book could have been a whole lot better. While the current editor did a good job of making the SC African-American dialect more accessible to lay readers (even she admits to having trouble with printed versions of this dialect), many of the better stories were either highly edited or left out, such as Elijah Green's Reconstruction Narrative that was heavily edited and Isreal Nesbitt's recollections of the Vesey Rebellion, which aren't included.

However, to the layman and non-historian, this is a good start in understanding slavery from the sources. Some interesting stories do remain, such as the Union County narrative about the Ku Klux Klan. So it's good for starters. The Tennessee and Georgia anthologies in this series are better, though.