The autobiographies of former slaves contributed powerfully to the abolitionist movement in the United States, fanning national--even international--indignation against the evils of slavery. The four texts gathered here are all from North Carolina slaves and are among the most memorable and influential slave narratives published in the nineteenth century. The writings of Moses Roper (1838), Lunsford Lane (1842), Moses Grandy (1843), and the Reverend Thomas H. Jones (1854) provide a moving testament to the struggles of enslaved people to affirm their human dignity and ultimately seize their liberty. Introductions to each narrative provide biographical and historical information as well as explanatory notes. Andrews's general introduction to the collection reveals that these narratives not only helped energize the abolitionist movement but also laid the groundwork for an African American literary tradition that inspired such novelists as Toni Morrison and Charles Johnson.

Autobiographical accounts of former slaves compiled in the 1930s by the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration.

Volume 2 of Interviews with former North Carolina Slaves

After the Revolutionary War, millions of African descendent men and women remained slaves despite being freed by the English. Nearly 100 years later they were freed, but remained living in fear for their lives in the Southern States. This book details first hand accounts of what it was like to live under the hand of oppression and slavery. The language is harsh and direct, but shows what life truly was like by the stories and pictures of individuals who lived during this era. This book is for any history major or any individual who wants to find Americas dark past. It is filled with stories and language that may be disturbing to some, but shows the true life under slavery in America. This book has been left unedited as originally written in 1938-39.

These autobiographies of Afro-American ex-slaves comprise the largest body of literature produced by slaves in human history. The book consists of three sections: selected reviews of slave narratives, dating from 1750 to 1861; essays examining how such narratives serve as historical material; and essays exploring the narratives as literary artifacts.

Autobiographical accounts of former slaves compiled in the 1930s by the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration.

African American slave narratives of the 19th century recorded the grim realities of the antebellum South; they also provide the foundation for this compelling and revealing work on African American history and experiences. Naturally, it is not possible to really know what being a slave during the antebellum period in America was like without living the experience. But students CAN get eye-opening insight into what it was like through the gripping stories of bravery, courage, persistence, and resiliency in this collection of annotated slave narratives from the period. Each of the collected narratives includes an introduction that provides readers with key historical context on the particular life examined. Moreover, each narrative is accompanied by annotations that broaden the reader's comprehension of that primary document. The primary source documents in this volume tell enthralling stories, such as how slave woman Ellen Craft utilized her particularly pale complexion to pose as a free white man overseeing his slaves to free herself and her husband, and how Henry Brown successfully shipped himself to freedom in a box measuring scarcely 3 feet by two feet by six inches deep—despite being more than six feet tall.

Autobiographical accounts of former slaves compiled in the 1930s by the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration.

Given the rise of new interdisciplinary and methodological approaches to African American and Black Atlantic studies, The Oxford Handbook of the African American Slave Narrative will offer a fresh, wide-ranging assessment of this major American literary genre. The volume will begin with articles that consider the fundamental concerns of gender, sexuality, community, and the Christian ethos of suffering and redemption that are central to any understanding of slave narratives. The chapters that follow will interrogate the various agendas behind the production of both pre- and post-Emancipation narratives and take up the various interpretive problems they pose. Strategic omissions and veiled gestures were often necessary in these life accounts as they revealed disturbing, too-painful truths, far beyond what white audiences were prepared to hear. While touching upon the familiar canonical autobiographies of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, the Handbook will pay more attention to the under-studied narratives of Josiah Henson, Sojourner Truth, William Grimes, Henry Box Brown, and other often-overlooked accounts. In addition to the literary autobiographies of bondage, the volume will anatomize the powerful WPA recordings of interviews with former slaves during the late 1930s. With essays on the genre's imaginative afterlife, its final essays will chart the emergence and development of neoslave narratives, most notably in Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner, Toni Morrisons's Beloved and Octavia Butler's provocative science fiction novel, Kindred. In short, the Handbook will provide a long-overdue assessment of the state of the genre and the vital scholarship that continues to grow around it, work that is offering some of the most provocative analysis emerging out of the literary studies discipline as a whole.