Slave Narratives and the Dispelling of Myth

As time passes, those who can connect us to moments in the history of a fledgling America pass with it. A failure to record their experiences in some capacity is tantamount to a closing window on a bygone chapter. If we fail, for example, to record and consider the narrative history of American slavery, we are doomed to mischaracterize, misrepresent and ultimately minimize the realities of this time. This is why such anthologies as that compiled and maintained by Bruce Fort are so necessary and valuable a way to understand the era of slavery and the period that would follow.

The slave narratives provided here are firsthand accounts provided by those now long passed which serve as the best way to accurately describe the experience. In doing so, such narratives as that provided by Joseph Holmes reveal the complexity of granting freedom to those who had never known it. So commends Holmes himself when he remarks that "Miss tole us wuz free but hit wuz ten or twelve years atter de Surrender befo' I railly knowed whut she meant. I wuz a big boy goin' tuh school afore I had any understandin' as tuh whut she meant." (Fort, 1)

To an extent, freedom could not be experienced until it was understood. And yet, the utopian multiracialism that we might like to attribute to the post Civil War era would hardly be accurate. Instead, the period of Reconstruction bred hardship for the nation, for the South and especially for freed slaves. As Fountain Hughes tells in his narrative, "we had no home, you know. We was jus' turned out like a lot of cattle. You know how they turn cattle out in a pasture? Well after freedom, you know, colored people didn' have nothing." (Fort, 1) This is a compelling point to close on as it dispels the myth that slaves were immediately granted opportunities comporting to those of their white counterparts. The end of the Civil War would be the beginning of a new struggle for identity and a foothold in the context of freedom. The 'slave narratives' document this experience in a manner which helps to dispel said myth.

Works Cited:

Fort, Bruce. (1998). Index of Narratives. American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology. Online at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/wpa/wpahome.html