Slave narrative

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See also Captivity narrative

The slave narrative is a literary form which grew out of the written accounts of enslaved Africans in Britain and its colonies, including the later United States, Canada and Caribbean nations. Some six thousand former slaves from North America and the Caribbean gave accounts of their lives during the 18th and 19th centuries, with about 150 narratives published as separate books or pamphlets. In the 1930s in the United States, during the Great Depression, additional oral narratives on life during slavery were collected by writers sponsored and published by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) of the President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration.

Some of the earliest memoirs of captivity known in England and the British Isles were written by white Europeans and later Americans captured and sometimes enslaved in North Africa, usually by Barbary pirates. These were part of a broad category of "captivity narratives" by English-speaking Europeans which, beginning in the eighteenth century, included accounts by colonists and American settlers in North America and the United States who were captured and held by Native Americans. Several well-known captivity narratives were published before the American Revolution and they often followed forms established with the narratives of captivity in North Africa. Later North American accounts were by Americans captured by western tribes during 19th-century migrations.

For the Europeans and Americans, the division between captivity as slaves and as prisoners of war was not always clear. A broader name for the genre is "captivity literature". Given the problem of international contemporary slavery in the 20th and 21st centuries, additional slave narratives are being written and published.

North American slave narratives

Slave narratives by African slaves from North America were first published in England in the 18th century. They soon became the main form of African-American literature in the 19th century. Slave narratives were publicized by abolitionists, who sometimes participated as editors, or writers if slaves were not literate. During the first half of the 19th century, the controversy over slavery in the United States led to impassioned literature on both sides of the issue.

To present the reality of slavery, a number of former slaves, such as Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass, published accounts of their enslavement and their escapes to freedom. Lucy Delaney wrote an account that included the freedom suit waged by her mother in Missouri for their freedom. Eventually some 6,000 former slaves from North America and the Caribbean wrote accounts of their lives, with about 150 of these published as separate books or pamphlets. Because of the participation of abolitionist editors, influential historians, such as Ulrich B. Phillips in 1929, suggested that, as a class, "their authenticity was doubtful." With increased emphasis on using the slaves' own accounts and the research of broader classes of information, since the late twentieth century historians have more often validated the accounts of slaves about their own experiences.

The slave narratives can be broadly categorized into three distinct forms: tales of religious redemption, tales to inspire the abolitionist struggle, and tales of progress. The tales written to inspire the abolitionist struggle are the most famous because they tend to have a strong autobiographical motif, such as in Frederick Douglass's autobiographies and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs (1861).

Prior to the American Civil War, some authors wrote fictional accounts of slavery to create support for abolitionism. The prime example is Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The success of her novel and the social tensions of the time brought a response by white southern writers, auch as William Gilmore Simms and Mary Eastman, who published what were called anti-Tom novels. Both kinds of novels were bestsellers in the 1850s.

Tales of religious redemption

From the 1770s to the 1820s, the slave narratives generally gave an account of a spiritual journey leading to Christian redemption. The authors usually characterized themselves as Africans rather than slaves, as most were born in Africa.

Examples include:

• A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert 'Ukawsaw Gronniosaw', an African Prince, by Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, Bath, England: 1772
• The Interesting Narrative and the life of 'Olaudah Equiano' or Gustavus Vassa, the African, by Olaudah Equiano, London: 1789
• A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa: But Resident Above Sixty Years in the United State of America, by Venture Smith, New London: 1798
• The Blind African Slave, Or Memoirs of Boyrereau Brinch, Nicknamed Jeffrey Brace, by Jeffrey Brace as told to Benjamin F. Prentiss, Esq., St. Albans, Vermont: 1810; edited and with an introduction by Kari J. Winter, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004, ISBN 0-299-20140-6)

Tales to inspire the abolitionist struggle

From the mid-1820s, writers consciously chose the autobiographical form to generate enthusiasms for the abolitionist struggle. Some writers adopted literary techniques, including the use of fictionalized dialogue. Between 1835 and 1865 more than 80 such narratives were published. Recurrent features include: slave auctions, the break-up of families, and frequently two accounts of escapes, one of which is successful. As this was the period of the forced migration of an estimated one million slaves from the Upper South to the Deep South through the slave trade, the experiences of auctions and break-up of families were common to many.

Examples include:

• Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave, New York, 1825
• The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, London, 1831
• Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, A Black Man, Lewistown, 1836
• A Narrative of Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery, London, 1837
• A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Boston, 1845
• Narratives of the Sufferings of Lewis and Milton Clarke, Sons of a Soldier of the Revolution, during a Captivity of More than Twenty Years among the Slaveholders of Kentucky, Boston, 1846
• Narrative of William Wells Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Boston, 1847
• The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself (1849), Boston, 1849
• Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, New York, 1849
• The Fugitive Blacksmith, or Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington, London, 1849
• Twelve Years a Slave, Narrative of Solomon Northup, Auburn, and Buffalo, New York and London, 1853
• Slave Life in Georgia: A Narrative of the Life, Sufferings and Escape of John Brown, London, 1855 ISBN 0-8369-8865-5
• The Life of John Thompson, A Fugitive Slave, Worcester, Massachusetts 1855
• The Kidnapped and the Ransomed, Being the Personal Recollections of Peter Still and his Wife "Vina," after Forty Years of Slavery, by Kate E. R. Pickard, New York, 1856
• Running a thousand Miles for Freedom, or the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery, London 1860
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs, Boston 1861
• The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina by John Andrew Jackson, London, 1862
• Narrative of the Life of J. D. Green, a Runaway Slave from Kentucky, Huddersfield, 1864
• Mary Reynolds (ex-slave) Louisiana, 1827

Tales of progress

Slave narrative published in 1871

Following the defeat of the slave states of the Confederate South, the authors had less need to convey the evils of slavery. Some gave a sentimental account of plantation life and ended with the narrator adjusting to the new life of freedom. The emphasis of writers shifted conceptually toward a recounting of individual and racial progress than securing freedom.

Examples include:

• The Life of James Mars, A Slave Born and Sold in Connecticut, Hartford 1864
• From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom, by Lucy Delaney, 1892 - this is unique as the only first-person account of a successful freedom suit.
• The Freedman's Story by William Parker, published in The Atlantic Monthly, 1866
• Thirty Years a Slave: From Bondage to Freedom by Louis Hughes, Milwaukee, 1897
• Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington, Garden City, New York, 1901

WPA slave narratives

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the New Deal Works Projects Administration (WPA) employed writers and researchers from the Federal Writers' Project to interview and document the stories of African Americans who were former slaves. Most had been children when the Thirteenth Amendment was passed. Produced between 1936 and 1938, the narratives recount the experiences of more than 2,300 former slaves. Some interviews were recorded and audio recordings are held by the Library of Congress.

North African slave narratives

In comparison to North American and Caribbean slave narratives, the North African slave narratives were written by white Europeans and Americans captured and enslaved in North Africa in the 18th and early 19th centuries. They have a distinct form in that they highlight the otherness of their Islamic enslavers, whereas the African American slave narratives call their fellow Christian enslavers to account.

Examples include:

• The History of the Long Captivity and Adventures of Thomas Pellow, In South Barbary, 1740
• A Curious, Historical and Entertaining Narrative of the Captivity and almost unheard of Sufferings and Cruel treatment of Mr Robert White, 1790
• A Journal of the Captivity and Suffering of John Foss; Several Years a Prisoner in Algiers 1798
• History of the Captivity and Sufferings of Mrs Marian Martin who was six years a slave in Algiers, 1810
• History of the Captivity and Sufferings of Mrs Lucinda Martin who was six years a slave in Algiers, 1806
• The Narrative of Robert Adams, An American Sailor who was wrecked on the West Coast of Africa in the year 1810; was detained Three Years in Slavery by the Arabs of the Great Desert, 1817

Other historical slave narratives

As slavery has been practised all over the world for millennia, some narratives cover places and times other than these main two. One example is the account given by John R. Jewitt, an English armourer enslaved for years by Maquina of the Nootka people in the Pacific Northwest. The Canadian Encyclopedia calls his memoir a "classic of captivity literature" and it is a rich source of information about the indigenous people of Vancouver Island.

• Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings of John R. Jewitt, only survivor of the crew of the ship Boston, during a captivity of nearly three years among the savages of Nootka Sound: with an account of the manners, mode of living, and religious opinions of the natives. Middletown, Connecticut, printed by Loomis and Richards, 1815. Full digital text available here.

Contemporary slave narratives

A contemporary slave narrative is a memoir published now, written by a former slave, or ghost-written on their behalf.

Examples include:

• Escape from Slavery: The True Story of My Ten Years in Captivity – and My Journey to Freedom in America (2003) by Francis Bok and Edward Tivnan
• Restavec by Jean-Robert Cadet vividly recounted his life as a restavec in Haiti
• "Peter's story", by Peter Doyle, in A tribute to The Lost People of Arlington House, The National Archives, London 2004
• Slave by Mende Nazer and Damien Lewis
• "Unchained Memories" An HBO documentary with readings from slave narratives (2003)

Neo-slave narratives

A neo-slave narrative is a fictional novel set in the slavery era by contemporary authors. The authors use their imagination, and research in oral histories and existing slave narratives to create such stories. The works are classified as novels.

Examples include:

• Madison Smartt Bell, All Souls Rising (1995), first of trilogy about Haitian Revolution
• Octavia E. Butler, Kindred (1979)
• Noni Carter, Good Fortune (2010) (young adult novel)
• David Anthony Durham, Walk Through Darkness (2002)
• Marie-Elena John, Unburnable (2006)
• Edward P. Jones, The Known World (2003)
• Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)
• William Styron, Confessions of Nat Turner (1967)
• Margaret Walker, Jubilee (1966)

See also

• African American literature
• Caribbean literature
• Lucinda Davis
• Moses Roper
• William J. Anderson
• J Vance Lewis
• Jared Maurice Arter

External links

• Life of James Mars, A Slave Born and Sold in Connecticut. Written by Himself. Hartford: Case, Lockwood & Company, 1864.
• Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936–1938, American Memory, Library of Congress
• North American Slave Narratives, Beginnings to 1920, Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina
• Robert E. Lee's Slave
• Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology, WPA oral histories of former U.S. slaves collected in the 1930s, American Studies, University of Virginia
• eTexts, Oral histories of former U.S. slaves collected in the 1930s by the WPA, Project Gutenberg
• Brief Description of the American Slave Narrative, Literary Movements, Washington State University
• Audio presentation and podcast of slave narratives at Museum of the African Diaspora
• Review Essay: Francis Bok's Escape from Slavery and Contemporary Slave Narratives by Joe Lockhard, June 2004
• MacKethan, Lucinda. "Plantation Romances and Slave Narratives: Symbiotic Genres." Southern Spaces, March 4, 2004
• From Bondage to Belonging: The Worcester Slave Narratives, B. Eugene McCarthy & Thomas L. Doughton, editors [1].