The Welsh and American Slavery

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Slaves

More about the Slave Narratives

This is not some Uncle Tom's Cabin. It is fairer to describe it as the Afro-American's Book of Exodus

1930s - interviewing the former slaves

As part of wider efforts to create work in the United States during the 30s, the Federal Writers Project (FWP) was established. One of the tasks given to the unemployed writers was to send them out to collect evidence from the last generation of black people who had lived as slaves. Of the 4 million who were freed back in 1865, it was estimated that approximately a hundred thousand were still alive at that time, and 2300 of them were interviewed.

The method of interviewing

When using these interviews as historical sources, a few things must be borne in mind;

• White people were usually used to interview the slaves, so it is possible that they were not always as open as they could have been, in case they offended those interviewing them.
• Most of the slaves were in their eighties, and as they had already lived longer than was common for former slaves, they may have been treated better that most.
• They did not use recording equipment, so it is not possible to know how accurately the words of the former slaves were transcribed.

Despite the imperfect methods of collecting their evidence, this was a very important project, mainly perhaps because so many were interviewed.

Earlier slave narratives

Of course this was not the first time for the story of slaves or former slaves to be published. One of the first, and possibly the most famous is the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano (1789).

Such biographies were an important tool in the propaganda campaign against slavery, and one or two were translated into Welsh

The importance of the 1930s interviews

Only about a hundred of these autobiographies were published before 1865, and very few afterwards. Although they are longer, they are of a more literary nature.

The oral interviews of the 1930s on the other hand are more direct; and in the opinion of many, they are more powerful. They also represent a much wider cross-section of experience under the slave regime. By means of these amazing interviews, we hear the tortured history of the slave in his own words - or something quite similar to it.