LibGuides: Locating Enslaved People's [ Ex-Slave] Narratives: Primary and Secondary Sources: Locating Enslaved Peoples [Ex-Slave] Narratives &amp; Related Primary Sources

Of interest...

Love in the Ex-Slave Narratives (Blog post from the Library of Congress
2/13/2017

Available at the Holland and Terrell Libraries:

Afro-American history series. Collection 2. Slave narratives. (reprint of monographs published 1838-1968) Wilmington Del., Scholarly Resources 1972 (?) E 444 .A4

On microfilm: Life and Adventure of james williams a fugitive slave with full description of the underground railroad. Western Americana, Frontier History of the Trans-Mississippi West, 1550-1900 ; 6228 Reel 604 No. 6228

Other Primary Sources: Databases

The African American Experience (WSU All)
"African American Experience is a wide ranging online collection of material on African American life, drawing on information from 300 titles covering all aspects of the African American experience." "A comprehensive database of material on African American history and culture. Includes access to full-text encyclopedias, slave narratives, speeches, interviews, photographs, court cases and monographs."
African American Song (WSU All)
"African American Song is the first online resource to document the history of African American music in an online music listening service. The collection contains a diverse range of genres such as jazz, blues, gospel, ragtime, folk songs, and narratives, among others." No slave narratives, but a powerful resource! - Part of a larger full song database now - look under Genres in the lefthand margin.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (Freely available)
"The Trans-Atlantic and Intra-American slave trade databases are the culmination of several decades of independent and collaborative research by scholars drawing upon data in libraries and archives around the Atlantic world.

Locating Slave Narratives

Born in Slavery:Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
From the Library of Congress' American Memory project. "Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves."

Slave narratives have been published since the mid-1700s in various forms (mostly books or printed pamphlets). In the United States, many slave narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writer's Project, part of the Works Project Administration (WPA), a program funded by the government to employ people during the Great Depression. You'll find narratives in print works collected in the WSU Libraries, and online.

Opinions Regarding Slavery: Slave Narratives
"The Opinions Regarding Slavery: Slave Narrative collection consists of an original manuscript collection compiled by John Brother Cade, Sr., who was the Dean of Southern University.
The slave narrative collection is arranged by series. The collection consists of 229 reports of ex-slaves from 17 states and 1 country and measures 1.29 linear feet."
Freely available via JSTOR Open Community Collections
JSTOR Daily article about the collection 1/22/2022
North American Slave Narratives [Documenting the American South]
American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology
Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences with Slavery and Emancipation
A project of the Smithsonian Museum. Includes audio files (requires Real Audio)
Aframerindian Slave Narratives
Narratives of people who were also of American Indian descent. This is NOT a good link - there is no bibliographic information. I'll see if I can find something better...I think these are also collected in the book "Black Indian Slave Narratives (Real Voices, Real History)" by Patrick Mingis - check Search It to see if its available!
I will be Heard: Abolitionism in America
Online exhibit at Cornell University Library. Includes some slave narratives in a larger discussion of the abolition movement.
Slave Narrative Collection (Southern University)
Note: 50 more will be added next spring (spring 2021)
"Next spring, the university will add 50 accounts to its collection of 228 slave narratives collected by John B. Cade and his students in the 1930s. The additional 50 were collected by the Louisiana Works Progress Administration, and will be digitized and made available online, said Angela V. Proctor, head university archivist and digital librarian at SU’s John B. Cade Library. "

Critical Perspectives

Frederick Douglass: Activist and Autobiographer | Teaching with the Library of Congress
"Last November, we published a post addressing the controversies associated with Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. A recent comment pointed out that Huck’s views on slavery are those of the dominant society of the time. Because the post featured a letter from Frederick Douglass as a supplement to the novel, the commenter wondered “why not present the experiences and views of the oppressed rather than the oppressor?” That struck me as an intriguing question, so here are a few places to start exploring those views and experiences with your students."
Hearing Harriet Smith (JSTOR Daily 9/16/2014)
This is a really important read - an interview with a former slave, and a discussion about some issues with the WPA / LoC slave narrative recording project.