Slave Voices

The voices of slaves, through memoirs and oral histories, can only begin to tell us what it was like to be uprooted from one's own world and forced to serve the needs of others. Stories of people, pulled from families and sold like chattel, defy anyone's comprehension.

Not all scholars, however, think that the Library of Congress' oral history narratives are reliable. Believing that former slaves had faded memories or applied personal interpretations to their lives (when they were interviewed decades after emancipation), such writers think there may be better ways to understand a slave's life. As a result, they largely ignore the wealth of oral history narratives held by the national archives.

Others disagree. Who better to tell us what life was like than the people who lived it - even if their stories were recorded years "after freedom"? Everyone's experiences are subject to faded memories and personal interpretation.

But as we try to merely glimpse what everyday life was like for African-American slaves, who better to ask than the people themselves? Who better to explain what it must have been to have one's childhood stolen and to live one's life surrounded by scenes of subjection?