| My Folks Don't Want Me to Talk about Slavery: Personal Accounts of Slavery in North Carolina Contributor(s): Hurmence, Belinda (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0895870398 ISBN-13: 9780895870391 Publisher: Blair OUR PRICE: $13.46 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: January 1984 Annotation: The idea of interviewing slaves about their experiences dates to the 1760s, when abolitionists first began to publish slave narratives as a way to educate the public to the horrors of slavery. From 1929 to 1932, the social sciences department at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, sponsored a project to gather more interviews. In 1934, one of the Fisk project workers suggested the federal government hire unemployed white-collar blacks to undertake similar projects in Indiana and Kentucky. Two years later, the Works Progress Administration directed the Federal Writers' Project teams in four more states to begin interviewing former slaves living in their states. The project soon expanded to cover fourteen states. By the time the WPA project ended in 1938, some 2,000 interviews, representing about two percent of the ex-slave population in the United States at the time had been completed and transcribed. The editors of the volumes listed on this page combed through the transcriptions to find the most interesting of the narratives from each particular state. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Ethnic Studies - African American Studies - Biography & Autobiography | Cultural, Ethnic & Regional - African American & Black |
| Dewey: B |
| LCCN: 84016891 |
| Physical Information: 0.4" H x 5.3" W x 8" (0.35 lbs) 103 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Southeast U.S. - Ethnic Orientation - African American - Geographic Orientation - North Carolina - Cultural Region - South Atlantic |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Former slaves themselves--an important but long-neglected source of information about the institution of slavery in the United States. Who could better describe what slavery was like than the people who experienced it? And describe it they did, in thousands of remarkable interviews sponsored by the Federal Writers' Project during the 1930s. More than 170 interviews were conducted in North Carolina. Belinda Hurmence pored over each of the North Carolina narratives, compiling and editing 21 of the first-person accounts for this collection. Belinda Hurmence was born in Oklahoma, raised in Texas, and educated at the University of Texas and Columbia University. She has written several novels for young people, including Tough Tiffany (an ALA Notable Book), A Girl Called Boy (winner of the Parents' Choice Award), Tancy (winner of a Golden Kite Award), and The Nightwalker. She has also edited We Lived in a Little Cabin in the Yard and Before Freedom, When I Just Can Remember, companion volumes to this book. She now lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. |
Contributor Bio(s): Hurmence, Belinda: - Belinda Hurmence was born in Oklahoma, raised in Texas, and educated at the University of Texas and Columbia University. She is the author of award-winning books for young people. |