Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Freedom [Box set] [Hardcover]

Ira Berlin (Editor), Marc Favreau (Editor), Steven F. Miller (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1998

Millions of Americans have read works of literature, from The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass to Beloved that attempt to portray life under slavery. But only a few people alive today have heard the actual voices of men and women who experienced those dark days firsthand. Now, for the first time, historic recordings of former slaves recounting their own experiences of slavery are made available to the American public in Remembering Slavery. Early in the 1930s, interviewers from the Federal Writers' Project combed the South in search of former slaves. The interviewers spoke with hundreds of elderly people about their experiences in slavery and preserved the voices of some on primitive recording devices. The recordings were placed in the Library of Congress and have never been heard by the wider public. Now, remastered using state-of-the-art equipment, the recordings offer the only known opportunity to hear the voices of former slaves. This groundbreaking book-and-tape package of interviews and transcripts includes more than a dozen of the only known original recordings of people who actually experienced enslavement. They remember relationships between master and slave; survival techniques in the face of hardship; family life, marriage, and childhood under slavery; experiences behind Confederate and Union lines during the Civil War; and, finally, the coming of freedom. Dramatic readings by prominent African Americans of untaped interviews complement the incomparable recordings, to create a full, firsthand picture of African American life before Emancipation. The reading and the primary source recordings edited by Smithsonian Productions will be broadcast nationally on public radio in the fall of 1998.

Editorial Reviews

From 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 [blacks] 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.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Grade 7 Up?These original recordings were made by interviewers from the Federal Writers' Project in the early 1930s. They have been remastered using state-of-the-art equipment and sound remarkably clear. Published in conjunction with the book of the same title, they represent the only known original recordings of former slaves. Their anecdotes are supplemented by dramatic readings by Debbie Allen, James Earl Jones, and Louis Gossett, Jr. among others. As good as the actors are, the tapes really come alive when the former slaves are speaking. Their dignity and authenticity are most impressive as they describe family life, daily routine, and work expectations. Despite their rigors and tragedies, the dozen men and women on the selections are not bitter but instead are optimistic, open-minded, and well-adjusted. These are excellent primary historical audio sources that students and teachers will find invaluable.?Rob Tench, Newport News Public Library, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 355 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The; Har/Cas edition (October 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565844254
• ISBN-13: 978-1565844254
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 2.2 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #856,867 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellently laid out and graphically told March 7, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

There can be no more powerful telling of the history of slavery in the United States than to read it and hear it from the slaves' own mouths. Their recollections are, for the most part, graphic and chilling, but the diversity of these life experiences are also rich with good stories, too....slaves bonding together, looking out for one another and at times outwitting their masters and overseers. While the general knowledge of salvery has been known to many Americans for years, it is the actual detailed accounts of day-to-day life that make this book come alive. I hadn't known, for instance, that slaves were required to have passes in order to travel off the plantations or that Christmas and New Year's were largely times of rejoicing for both slave families and their master's families. Yet for the rest of the year the hardships and conditions that most slaves witnessed was incredible....beatings often for no reason, no shoes or lack of other clothing during the winter cold and often not nearly enough food. The clarity with which these former slaves recall their life 80 years or more before is an indication of how etched in their young minds life had been. The accompanying audio cassettes were the main reason l bought the book and they simply added a human dimension to the whole story. l had only two small disappointments with the audio segment....l would rather have had none of the actors read the transcripts...(the actual slave voices are far more powerful) and l wish that photos of the slave speakers could have been provided.... while there were many photos of the former slaves in the book they were not the photos of the slaves who made the audio tapes. In a time where revisionist history seems to be the rage it is, in a strange way, rather comforting to hear these stories told by the people who lived them. How these men and women suffered under bondage and lived for so many years afterward to finally tell about it is a tribute to their spirit and courage.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars the book and tapes are a must for all people. October 27, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

the collection puts a face and voice to slavery. it answered any questions, while creating others. informative, letting the listeners know of the pride, courage and brillance of slaves. but in knowing more, the tapes clearly reveal that the whole, real truth died with the people of that era. we will never know the complete truth about that institution. it was a brutal mistake that still haunts all of civilization. the collection is an unbelievable experience.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Every American Should Read This October 27, 1998

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

It's tough to tackle slavery and a work of such substance in a forum such as this, but here goes anyway...

Ira Berlin does a magnificent job, especially with his introduction, which sets the tone of the work and explains the various shortcomings related to the primary sources for his material.

This is not a compilation of slave narratives. This is a compilation of excerpts from interviews with elderly former slaves. It is a powerful look into the institution of slavery; while hardly exhaustive. it provides an excellent snapshot of slavery by the people who lived through and, indeed, suffered under it. You read about slaves: how they were born; where they lived; their relationship with the land, their masters, their drivers, and their fellow slaves; their religious expression; and several other aspects of their lives.

I found that this work helped puncture the mythology of slavery on both sides -- the mythology of the apologists as well as the liberals.

For me, ultimately, it reinforced a belief that I have developed a long time ago. There were "degrees" of slavery in practice across the US; there were good owners and bad ones; but one thing is for sure, all slave owners at some level knew of the humanity of their slaves. While for some this lead to leniency, for others this lead to denial-inspired harshness with their slaves. Either way, slave owners, whether "benevolent" or vicious, in the mere act of slaveowning performed a crime against humanity because they simply knew better...