Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves Texas Narratives, Part 1

During the Great Depression, a federal relief program sent interviewers across the American South to record the memories of people who had once been enslaved. This volume, the Texas material in its first part, presents those testimonies largely in the speakers' own words, keeping their dialect and the rhythms of their speech. The accounts range from measured storytelling to blunt recollections of daily labour, separation, punishment and the years after emancipation. Taken together they show both the cruelty of the institution and the resilience of those who survived it. Because the voices come directly from people who lived through slavery, the collection offers a close view of how they understood their own lives and of the lasting effects of slavery on American society. Readers interested in African American history will find it a powerful and unsettling record.