Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Freedom

A book-and-tape set featuring the only known original recordings of interviews with former slaves, to be aired on public radio simultaneous with publication. Dramatic readings by prominent African-Americans of untaped interviews complement to incomparable recordings, to create a full, firsthand picture of African-American life before emancipation. 50 b&w photos. Additional Synopsis. The majority of the slaves interviewed for this project in Chapter 1 lived through the same: brutality; near starvation; constant beatings; worked from dawn to dust; and being sold off if they don’t behave, never sure of what they did wrong. As strange as this may sound to us, their masters were their mentors, no matter their age. Slaves learned to be “the man of the house” without a house or a wife. Written in their words, although Gragston’s were clearer with less “slavespeak.” Painful. “A successful escape could be oh so sweet. Arnold Gragston, a Kentucky slave, ferried scores of slaves across the river to freedom in Ohio before gaining his own liberty.” “Before I got it, though, I helped a lot of others get theirs. Lawd only knows how many; might have been as much as two-three hundred. It was 'way more than a hundred, I know. But that all come after I was a young man¬—“grown” enough to know a pretty girl when I saw one, and to go chasing after her, too....” “One night I had gone to another plantation, 'courtin’, and the old woman whose house I went to told me she had a real pretty girl there who wanted to go across the river and would I take her. I was scared and backed out in a hurry. But then I saw the girl, and she was such a little thing, brown-skinned and kinda rosy, and looking as scared as I was feelin’, so it wasn’t long before I was listenin’ to the old woman tell me when to take her and where to leave her on the other side. “I didn’t have nerve enough to do it that night, though, and I told them to wait for until tomorrow night. All the next day I kept seeing Mister Tabb laying a rawhide across my back, or shootin’ me, and kept seeing that scared little brown girl back at the house, lookin’ at me with her big eyes and asking me if I wouldn’t just row her across to Ripley. Me and Mr. Tabb lost, and soon as dust settled that night I was at the old lady’s house. “I don’t know how I ever rowed the boat across the river the current was strong and I was trembling. I couldn’t see a thing there in the dark, but I felt that girl’s eyes. We didn’t dare to whisper, so I couldn’t tell her how sure I was that Mr. Tabb or some of the other owners would “tear me up” when they found out what I had done. I just knew they would find out... “I didn’t stay in Ripley, though; I wasn’t taking no chances. I went to Detroit and still live there with most of 10 children and 31 grandchildren. “The bigger ones don’t care so much about hearin’ it now, but the little ones never get tired of hearin’ how their grandpa brought Emancipation to loads of slaves he could touch and feel, but never could see.” I felt the need to write Mr. Gragston’s remarks last, which ended Chapter 1, “The Faces of Power: Slaves and Owners.” (Pp. 3 – 70) Next, Chapter 11, “Work and Slave Life: From Can to Can’t” This book is not an easy read for me, but I’m hanging in. Minnie E Miller