Selected Slave Narratives
Posted on 27/10/2007 by UserName
Narratives by former slaves are
absolutely essential reading if you truly want to understand the
region and your ancestor’s experiences. They serve as an
invaluable historical resource taken from an irrefutable first
hand perspective. The narratives record African and African American
experiences with white supremacy, segregation, Jim Crowism, and
extreme disfranchisement that many of our ancestors struggled
and triumph through. They share tales of emotional, spiritual,
physical and intellectual deprivation that none of us living today
have ever had to experience on such an obvious level. The narratives
below all share some kind of connection to Northwest Louisiana
or a surname mentioned in the project.
Source:
“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. This
online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and
Prints and Photographs Divisions of the Library of Congress and
includes more than 200 photographs from the Prints and Photographs
Division that are now made available to the public for the first
time. Born in Slavery was made possible by a major gift from
the Citigroup Foundation.”
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html
Click on a name below:
-Chris
Franklin, born 1855, in Bossier Parish.
-James Jackson, born in 1849, in Caddo Parish.
-William Walters, born in 1852, in Belaford, TN
-Henry Lewis, born in 1836, in Pine Island, LA on the Cade plantation.
-Bill McRay, born 1851, in Milas, TX, enslaved in Jasper, TX.
-C.B. McRay, born 1861, in Jasper, TX, brother of Bill McRay.
-Nelson Taylor Denson, extensive knowledge of the red river
during the Civil war.
-Elodga Bradford, born in Port Gibson, Mississippi
-Sam Bradford, born in Pontotoc, Mississippi
-Austin Bud Dixon, born in Mansfield, Louisiana
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