Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This book was given to me by my social studies teacher as an extra credit reading assignment, so I read it just for the credit thinking that I would hate it. Little did I know how many metaphors and parallels to my life I would find. When I finished the book, I could not believe what some slaves had gone through. There were many theories that came out of this book, including that for many slaves, freedom was a two-edged sword. Yet to figure out what I mean by that, you will have to read the book yourself! I would strongly recommend this book to any 8th grade social studies teachers teaching the Civil War who want to make an impact on their students and wake them up to realize that history repeats itself and that the "killing of an old person is like the burning of a book in a library" - Mrs. Mahoney (my awesome 8th grade social studies teacher)!

Despite the colossally poor methodology involved here, where the very nature of the interviewers and the questions posed fatally compromise the integrity of the interviews (the Heisenburg Effect with a Vengeance), there is still much that is valuable to retain from these oral testimonies.

In particular, the unbiased reflections about the Civil War by the interviewees: From every angle, the war was an unmitigated disaster for the South, wreaking havoc on their lives and more importantly on their bankrupt way of life and its racist social order. Also, the general nature of the day-to-day interactions between slave and master was easily discernable; as well as the utter degrading nature of the slave quarters, and the physical as well as the structural brutality built into the institution of slavery itself. Moreover, despite an attempt by the criminally biased nature of the methodology of the interviews, the slaves came off being infinitely more human than even the best of their slave owners. One wonders how much more valuable these testimonials would have been had they been conducted with a protocol of even a minimal semblance of methodological integrity and rigor?

What one can infer from the content of the interviews (which should not be the case in an analysis with any integrity at all) is that the subjects were intimidated into admitting that "slavery was not so bad." It is clear from this content that young white women from the same area as the interviewees conducted the interviews. This fact alone introduced a fatal bias. But more importantly, even though the list of questions asked the subjects were not given so that the reader could examine them, the reader can nevertheless quickly infer that the last one in the list was always whether or not the ex-slave believed that slavery was better or worse than freedom?

Now, quite simply, how much more "loaded" can an interview be? Almost without exception, the reader can literally feel the subjects "choking" and "hedging" on this final question. To have a white woman from the same area as that of the ex-slave, pose such a question is a criminal violation of minimal academic research ethics.

Despite this, at least one interviewee did not succumb to the hidden pressure. The answer we got to this question from Pasty Mitchner (pages 64-69) was priceless: "Slavery was a bad thing, and freedom of the kind we got, with nothing to live on, was bad (too). Two snakes full of poison, one lying with his head pointing north, the other with his head pointing south. Their names were slavery and freedom. The snake called slavery lay with his head pointing south, and the snake called freedom lay with his head pointing north. Both bit the nig-er and they both was bad." Two Stars

These collections of actual interviews with former Plantation Slaves are an invaluable insight into American History. Too many times, we are caught up in the "dramatization" of history that is provided in film and literature. Here are the actual words of those who lived through the Civil War as slaves, and how they actually felt. I recommend them highly to any and all middle and high school history teachers to have for their students.

Belinda Hurmence is a excilent editor. It was a great idea to have this book published. It describes a lot of interesting situations. If you like books on slavery buy this one You will learn alot on the subject.