Tacoma Community College Library: African American History: Narratives &amp; Oral Histories of Enslaved Peoples

Narratives & Oral Histories of Enslaved Peoples

“I was growed up when the war come. And I was a mother before it closed. Babies were snatched from their mothers’ breasts and sold to speculators. Children was separated from sisters and brothers and never saw each other again. Course they cry; you think they not cry when they was sold like cattle? I could tell you about it all day, but even then you couldn’t guess the awfulness of it.”

- Delia Garlic, From Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives From the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–1938

(Part of the The Historic New Orleans Collection, cited below)

Slave Narratives
Podcasts

Featured Websites & Collections of Slave Narratives and Oral Histories

Linked below are websites, online exhibits, and other digital collections with resources on topics related to African American history in the US

African American Perspectives: Materials Selected from the Rare Book Collection
From the Library of Congress, this digital collection of resources features many first-hand accounts of slavery in the American history.
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The 800 + titles in the collection include sermons on racial pride and political activism; annual reports of charitable, educational, and political organizations; and college catalogs and graduation orations from the Hampton Institute, Morgan College, and Wilberforce University. Also included are biographies, slave narratives, speeches by members of Congress, legal documents, poetry, playbills, dramas, and librettos. Other materials focus on segregation, voting rights, violence against African Americans, the colonization of Africa by freed slaves, anti-slavery organizations and investigative reports. Several of the items are illustrated with portraits of the authors.
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938
"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. "
Documenting the American South
Digital copies of slave narratives from the Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Early Caribbean Slave Narratives
From the Early Caribbean Digital Archive, search through a collection of early slave narratives
Freedom Narratives
"Freedom Narratives focuses on the enforced migration of "Atlantic Africans," that is enslaved Africans in the Atlantic world during the era of the slave trade, through an examination of biographical accounts of individuals born in West Africa who were enslaved from the 16th to the 19th century."
Inheritance: A Project About American History, Black Life, and the Resilience of Memory
From The Atlantic, this online collection features topical videos, articles, and more - with links to other online resources, all relating to the importance of Black life in American history.
Lesser Known Stories - NMAAHC
A collection of biographies of lesser African Americans of note in history - includes images, ephemera, and more - from the National Museum of African American History and Culture
Library of Congress: American Memory - Slave Narratives
Library of Congress: American Memory - Slave Narratives
These narratives were gathered in the 1930s from thousands of former slaves in the U.S. and have been organized by the US Library of Congress as part of the American Memory project.
North American Slave Narratives - Documenting the American South
This collection includes all the existing autobiographical narratives of self-emancipated and formerly enslaved people published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English up to 1920. Also included are many of the biographies of self-emancipated and formerly enslaved people and some significant fictionalized first-person accounts of enslavement published in English before 1920.
Oral Histories of the American South
From "Documenting the American South" website - search through oral histories by topic.
Recovered Histories - Slave narratives
"The collection of pamphlets and supplementary texts ...covers a century of campaigning in Europe and America, capturing the voices of the enslaved, enslavers, slave ship surgeons, abolitionists, parliamentarians, the clergy, planters and rebels. "
Slave Memoirs & Oral Histories - Monticello
Search through a number or articles and slave accounts of those who were enslaved at Jefferson's home of Monticello - now a preserved site and museum
Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States
A collection of digitized books - accessed with Project Gutenberg - with accounts of slave narratives from many southern, midwest, and northern east coast states
Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories
"The recordings of former slaves in Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine states. Twenty-three interviewees discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion of slaves, their families, and freedom. Several individuals sing songs, many of which were learned during the time of their enslavement."
Purchased Lives: New Orleans and the Domestic Slave Trade
From the The Historic New Orleans Collection, this is a "collection of "interview transcripts and more than five hundred black-and-white photographs of interviewees compose the largest collection of primary source materials from individuals who lived and toiled under the system of American slavery. "

Featured Podcasts & Online Audio

Linked here are full podcasts or podcast episodes, as well as short audio recordings from news programs such as National Public Radio (NPR) and the like.

Aunt Jemima: American Racism on Your Grocery Shelf [Podcast]
An episode of Dig: A History Podcast
15 Minute History: The Senses of Slavery [Podcast]
Episode 42 from the University of Texas podcast, 15 Minute History
Found Voices - Slave Narratives
A 2015 video of a featured episode of Nightline, originally aired in 1999, featuring oral histories from enslaved people. - Streaming on YouTube
Voices from the Days of Slavery [Podcast]
Oral histories and interviews with African Americans who endured the hardships of slavery. These recordings document the first-person accounts of several individuals whose life experiences spanned the period during and after slavery. The podcasts are drawn from several collections in the American Folklife Center Archives, one of the preeminent audio-visual repositories of national and international folklife, history and cultural expressions.
The 1619 Project
"1619 is a New York Times audio series, hosted by Nikole Hannah-Jones, that examines the long shadow of American slavery. "
Unchained Memories - Readings from the Slave Narratives Video Source
"Unchained Memories is a 2003 documentary film about the stories of former slaves interviewed during the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project and preserved in the WPA Slave Narrative Collection. This HBO film interpretation directed by Ed Bell and Thomas Lennon is a compilation of slave narratives, narrated by actors, emulating the original conversation with the interviewer. " Streaming on YouTube
Enslavement to Emancipation Video Source
A 2012 video of OCTDC '"Enslavement to Emancipation" is an informative and compelling television documentary chronicling the history of the Compensated Emancipation Act of April 16, 1862, freeing the enslaved people of Washington, DC. "

Sources used on this page:

The Historic New Orleans Collection (Ed.). (n.d.). To Be Sold. The Historic New Orleans Collection. Retrieved January 25, 2023, from https://www.hnoc.org/virtual/ purchased-lives-new-orleans-and-domestic-slave-trade/be-sold

(1936) Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 2, Arkansas, Part 1, Abbott-Byrd. November-December. [Manuscript/Mixed Material] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/mesn021/.