Mandatory Supplementary Audio (M3-B):

This week you do not have a film to watch, but very powerful audio recordings held by the Library of Congress.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the New Deal Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA).

At the conclusion of the Slave Narrative project, a set of edited transcripts was assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. In 2000-2001, with major support from the Citigroup Foundation, the Library digitized the narratives from the microfilm edition and scanned from the originals 500 photographs, including more than 200 that had never been microfilmed or made publicly available. This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs divisions of the Library of Congress.

Some of the original recordings of these interviews are still preserved and what follows is my favorite one of about seventy the Library of Congress has produced. The quality is not the best given the age of the interviewees, the locations of the interviews (often at their homes), and the medium used to record (a phonographic record). Still, they give us the ability to sit by our elders' knee and listen to them tell what slavery was actually like. Our modern minds have a difficult time wrapping ourselves around the demeaning reality of being property, not a human being. This is why I assign this to you: so that you might listen and learn how rending the legacy of slavery is in our nation's history and how it has fractured concepts of crime, law, and justice to this day.

Specifically, I want you to do two things:

First, listen to this interview with 101-year-old Fountain Hughes that was recorded in 1949 by the Worker's Progress Administration. Mr. Hughes was a former slave in Charlottesville, Virginia and he discusses what his life was like as property and what that means for all aspects of his life ("You are nothing but a dog.") Start at 6:00 minutes (unless you want to hear some great advice about thriftiness and not getting into debt) and end at 20:05 (unless you want to hear about his life as a free man in Baltimore and his favorite hymns). Make sure to download the .PDF version of the interview transcript to read while you listen so that you can you understand the portions where his voice isn't clear.

Second, pick a random volume of the transcribed slave narratives and read at least one other former slave interview. Note each volume corresponds to specific states with the interviewees listed in alphabetical order.

This work is the foundation for your Supplementary Material Assignment option for M3-B.

Audio and transcripts available. Please contact the instructor at the beginning of the semester if you still need a more accessible version.