Ohio Slave Narratives

by Work Projects Administration (Compiler)

The view that slavery could best be described by those who had themselves experienced it personally has found expression in several thousand commentaries, autobiographies, narratives, and interviews with those who "endured." Although most of these accounts appeared before the Civil War, more than one-third are the result of the ambitious efforts of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to interview surviving ex-slaves during the 1930s. The result of these efforts was the Slave Narrative Collection, a group of autobiographical accounts of former slaves that today stands as one of the most enduring and noteworthy achievements of the WPA. Compiled in seventeen states during the years 1936-38, the collection consists of more than two thousand interviews with former slaves, most of them first-person accounts of slave life and the respondents' own reactions to bondage. The interviews afforded aged ex-slaves an unparalleled opportunity to give their personal accounts of life under the "peculiar institution," to describe in their own words what it felt like to be a slave in the United States. -Norman R. Yetman, American Memory, Library of Congress This paperback edition of all of the Ohio narratives is reprinted in facsimile from the typewritten pages of the interviewers, just as they were originally typed.

Genres: History

128 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2006

Reviews

[gerald a card · Rating 5 out of 5]

very good readin

very good reading
was impressed with all interviews recommend this to all of my reading friends have a good read

[Don Lash · Rating 5 out of 5]

Slavery

Very revealing about life during slavery. Should be read by those trying to romanticize life during the shameful days of slavery.

[lawless imagination · Rating 5 out of 5]

The entire time I was reading I kept wondering about what they weren’t saying, as the 30s weren’t exactly safe times for black ppl to express their actually…anything. It was interesting

[James Crawford · Rating 5 out of 5]

3 interviews with former slaves who settled in Ohio. A few statistics; of those who actually mentioned how their masters treated them, 15 said they were treated well, and 5 said they were mistreated. Of those who talked about being beaten, said said they were beaten and five said they weren't. Eleven of them had relatives who were resold by their master. Several complained about "how young people acted these days."

Several were not told they were free after the war ended. One worked on a plantation that was a location for the Battle of Bull Run. One specially said she disapproved of inter-racial marriage. One actually talked to Abraham Lincoln, and fifteen talked about Lincoln being a great man. About a fourth to a third of them talked about the KKK where they had lived as a slave.

[Susan Molloy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is part of a series of interviews the United States government (under the WPA) conducted with former slaves in Ohio during The Great Depression. It’s interesting to read the former slaves’ recollections and events they experienced or overhead during the slave years, and their general thoughts on the current world and society. Many, but not all, of the interviews were transcribed in dialect, so reading them is all the more special. The contemporary black and white photographs add greatly to this work of valuable history and research.

📙Published in 1941.

🟢The e-book version can be found at Project Gutenberg.
🟣 Kindle.
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