Are the WPA Slave Narratives biased?

Drew

Major
Joined
Oct 22, 2012
Yes I can show you many more, and I can also show you many ex-slaves who were beaten, and abused............So no I am not attempting to paint slavery as good.............Just showing that........The "Ah, yes, the "but my ancestors were good slave owners, they treated the slaves just like family"..................In some cases was not far off, outside of slavery itself being evil..........And yes some of those who said good things also had some bad times................

William, I agree with what you are presenting here. However, I'm suspicious of the Works Progress Administration's so-called Slave Narratives. These were recorded in the 1930s when black people were living under Jim Crow law, under enormous pressure not to speak ill of whites.

Alan Lomax, who supervised the whole thing, was a white Southerner and had to have known as much. The Slave Narratives are very valuable in some ways, but really not in terms of what a good deal the situation was, IMO.

I don't have the energy to do it tonight, but a thread based upon the experiences and actions of blacks living in the South during and immediately after the War Between the States is probably a better way to address this issue.

There are contemporary accounts of people participating in fooling the Yankee invaders, even sticking around to look after property when the whites were driven out by the Union Army. This really calls into question the notion that everyone was being hung upside down by his toes and beaten, twice daily.

You are right, it wasn't a good deal, but maybe we can find a way to address it in a meaningful way.
 
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