Slave narrative facts for kids

The slave narrative is a special kind of literary genre. It includes true stories written by Africans who were enslaved, especially in the Americas. People think there are over 6,000 such stories. About 150 of them were published as books or pamphlets.

During the Great Depression in the 1930s, more than 2,300 more oral histories (spoken stories) about life during slavery were collected. These were gathered by writers working for the Works Progress Administration, a government program. Most of the 26 audio-recorded interviews are kept at the Library of Congress.

Some of the earliest stories about being captured were written by white Europeans and later Americans. They were captured and sometimes enslaved in North Africa by local Muslims, often Barbary pirates. These were part of a larger group called "captivity narratives." Starting in the 1600s, these also included stories from colonists and later American settlers. They were captured by Native Americans. Many well-known captivity stories were published before the American Revolution. They often followed the same style as the North African stories.

Even today, in the 20th and 21st centuries, new slave narratives are being written and published because slavery still exists in some parts of the world.

What Are Slave Narratives?

Slave narratives grew from personal stories into a recognized type of literature. This group of "captivity literature" includes "any story about the life, or a big part of the life, of a fugitive (someone who escaped) or former slave." These stories were either written or told by the enslaved person themselves.

The first narratives told the stories of people who had escaped or were freed during a time of unfair treatment based on race. Later, they became fictional novels and still influence stories today. Slave narratives did more than just keep memories alive and share historical truth. In the 1800s, they were a way for escaped or former slaves to declare their freedom. They also shared real historical facts from a person's own experience. These stories are more than just autobiographies; they help us understand history. The freed slaves who wrote them are seen as historians because their memories and history come together. These accounts connect a slave's personal life with big historical events, like the American Civil War and the Underground Railroad.

Why Were Slave Narratives Written?

Slave narratives often follow a similar pattern. They usually start with the slave's life in their master's home. Then, the main character escapes into the wilderness. The story describes their struggle to survive and be recognized as a person during their difficult journey to freedom. These stories were written later by freed slaves or by people who wanted to end slavery (abolitionists). So, they often focused on how a person changed from being a dehumanized slave to a free person. Learning to read and write often helped them gain freedom, as seen in the story of Frederick Douglass.

The narratives often describe difficult experiences in detail. They also often criticized slave owners, pointing out their cruelty and hypocrisy. Sometimes, they even used humor to show how unfair things were. For example, in Douglass's story, his slave owner Hopkins was very religious but also very brutal.

According to James Olney, a typical slave narrative often included:

• A picture of the narrator.
• A title page saying "Written by Himself" or something similar.
• Letters or introductions from white abolitionists (people against slavery). These often said the story was a "plain, unvarnished tale" and that nothing was made up.
• A poem at the beginning, often by William Cowper.
• The actual story, which usually started with "I was born..." but without a birth date.
• A brief mention of parents, often including a white father.
• Descriptions of cruel masters or overseers and many whippings.
• A story about a very strong slave who refused to be whipped.
• Details about how hard it was for slaves to learn to read and write.
• Descriptions of "Christian" slaveholders, often saying they were worse than others.
• Information about the food, clothing, and work given to slaves.
• Accounts of slave auctions, where families were torn apart.
• Descriptions of patrols, failed escapes, and being chased by men and dogs.
• Stories of successful escapes, traveling at night guided by the North Star.
• Being welcomed in a free state by Quakers (a religious group).
• Taking a new last name to show their new identity as a free person.
• Thoughts and feelings about slavery.
• An appendix with documents like bills of sale or newspaper articles.

People still debate exactly what kind of literature slave narratives are. Some see them as a specific genre, while others call them autobiographies, memoirs, or novels. But they are very important for remembering slavery and talking about a topic that was once avoided. Some historians in the early 1900s doubted if these stories were real. However, later research in the late 1900s has shown that the slaves' accounts of their experiences were often true.

Early North American Slave Stories

Slave narratives by African slaves from North America were first published in England in the 1700s. They quickly became the main type of African-American literature in the 1800s. Abolitionists (people who wanted to end slavery) helped publish these stories. Sometimes, they even helped write or edit them if the slaves could not read or write. In the first half of the 1800s, the debate over slavery in the United States led to strong writings from both sides.

To show the truth of slavery, many former slaves like Harriet Tubman, Harriet Jacobs, and Frederick Douglass published their stories. They wrote about being enslaved and how they escaped to freedom. Lucy Delaney wrote a story that included her mother's freedom suit in Missouri to gain their freedom. Eventually, about 6,000 former slaves from North America and the Caribbean wrote about their lives. Over 100 book-length stories were published by formerly enslaved people worldwide.

Before the American Civil War, some authors wrote fictional stories about slavery to gain support for ending it. A famous example is Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe. This novel was very successful and caused a strong reaction from white Southern writers. They published "anti-Tom novels," like those by William Gilmore Simms and Mary Henderson Eastman. Both types of novels were bestsellers in the 1850s.

Stories of Faith and Freedom

From the 1770s to the 1820s, slave narratives often told about a spiritual journey that led to becoming a Christian. The authors usually described themselves as Africans rather than slaves, as most were born in Africa.

Some examples include:

• Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert "Ukawsaw Gronniosaw", an African Prince, Bath, England, 1772
• Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, London, 1789
• Venture Smith, A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa: But Resident Above Sixty Years in the United States of America, New London, 1798
• Jeffrey Brace, The Blind African Slave, Or Memoirs of Boyrereau Brinch, Nicknamed Jeffrey Brace, as told to Benjamin F. Prentiss, Esq., St. Albans, Vermont, 1810
• John Jea, The Life, History, and Unparalleled Sufferings of John Jea, the African Preacher, 1811
• Greensbury Washington Offley, A Narrative of the Life and Labors of the Rev. G. W. Offley, a Colored Man, Local Preacher and Missionary, 1859

Later stories, like Petro Kilekwa's Slave Boy to Priest: The Autobiography of Padre Petro Kilekwa (1937), also followed a similar theme.

Stories to Fight Slavery

From the mid-1820s, writers purposely chose to write their autobiographies to create excitement for the abolitionist movement. Some writers used literary techniques, like making up conversations. Between 1835 and 1865, more than 80 such narratives were published. Common features included: slave auctions, families being broken apart, and often two escape attempts, with one being successful. During this time, about one million slaves were forced to move from the Upper South to the Deep South through the internal slave trade. So, experiences of auctions and family separation were common.

Some examples include:

• William Grimes, Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave, New York, 1825
• Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, London, 1831
• Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Boston, 1845
• Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, Auburn, and Buffalo, New York, and London, 1853
• Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Boston, 1861

Stories of Life After Slavery

Slave narrative of Thomas H. Jones published in 1871

After the slave states of the Confederate South were defeated, authors didn't need to focus as much on the evils of slavery. Some gave a more gentle account of plantation life and ended with the narrator getting used to their new life of freedom. Writers started to focus more on individual and racial progress rather than just gaining freedom.

Some examples include:

• James Mars, The Life of James Mars, A Slave Born and Sold in Connecticut, Hartford, 1864
• Paul Jennings, A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison, 1865
• Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House, 1868
• William Still, The Underground Railroad Records, 1872, which tells the experiences of hundreds of slaves.
• Lucy Delaney, From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom, 1892 — this is special because it's the only first-person account of a successful freedom suit.
• Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery, Garden City, New York, 1901

Stories from the WPA Project

During the Great Depression in the 1930s, the New Deal program called the Works Projects Administration (WPA) hired writers and researchers. Their job was to interview and record the stories of African Americans who had been slaves. Most of these people were children when the Thirteenth Amendment (which ended slavery) was passed. These stories, collected between 1936 and 1938, tell the experiences of over 2,300 former slaves. Some interviews were recorded as audio; 23 of 26 known audio recordings are kept at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress. The last interview with a former slave was with Fountain Hughes, who was 101, in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1949. He was a grandson of a slave owned by President Thomas Jefferson.

Slave narratives often involved travel and are an important type of travel writing. As John Cox says, "travel was a necessary step before a slave could publish a narrative, because slavery could not be experienced and written about at the same time." While many travel stories are written by people who are free to travel, slave narratives show people traveling despite big legal barriers. This makes them a unique and important part of how travel stories shaped the American character.

Stories from North Africa

Compared to North American and Caribbean slave narratives, the North African slave narratives in English were written by British and American white people. They were captured (often at sea by Barbary pirates) and enslaved in North Africa in the 1700s and early 1800s. These stories are different because they often highlight how "different" the Muslim slave traders were. In contrast, African-American slave narratives often challenged slave traders who were also Christians.

These narratives focused on the main ideas of freedom and liberty, inspired by the American Revolution. Because the stories often repeated themes and events, quoting and relying on each other, scholars believe that other narratives were a main source of information, more so than actual captivities. Female captives were often shown as characters from Gothic fiction, holding onto hope for freedom, which made them more relatable to the audience.

Some examples include:

• A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mahometans by Joseph Pitts (1663–1735). This tells of his capture as a boy by pirates and his life as a slave in North Africa.
• Thomas Pellow, The History of the Long Captivity and Adventures of Thomas Pellow, In South Barbary, 1740
• Captain James Riley, Sufferings in Africa, 1815
• 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, 1816

Stories by Enslaved Women

Stories written by enslaved women include the memoirs of Harriet Jacobs, Mary Prince, Mattie J. Jackson, and "old Elizabeth," among others.

In her story, Mary Prince, a woman born in Bermuda who was enslaved, talks about her strong connection with her master's wife. She felt pity for the wife because she saw the "ill-treatment" the wife suffered from her husband. Prince was taught to read by Moravian missionaries. However, being able to read was not common for all enslaved women. The life story of "old Elizabeth" was written down from her spoken account when she was 97 years old.

Other Historical Slave Stories

Slavery has happened all over the world for thousands of years. So, some narratives cover different places and times. One example is the story by John R. Jewitt, an English armourer who was enslaved for years by Maquinna of the Nootka people in the Pacific Northwest. The Canadian Encyclopedia calls his memoir a "classic of captivity literature." 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

Maria ter Meetelen (1704 in Amsterdam – fl. 1751) was a Dutch writer of an autobiography. Her story is seen as an important firsthand account of the life of a former slave (1748).

• Maria ter Meetelen, The Curious and Amazing Adventures of Maria ter Meetelen; Twelve Years a Slave (1731- 43), Translated and Introduced by Caroline Stone. (Hardinge Simpole, 2010) [1].

Modern Slave Stories

Real-Life Stories Today

A modern slave narrative is a recent memoir written by a former slave, or written for them by a ghostwriter. Today, slavery still happens in parts of the world, like Sudan. 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, and Slave by Mende Nazer and Damien Lewis, describe experiences of slavery in Sudan.

"Another Slave Narrative" is a film series started by filmmaker Michelle Jackson in 2016. Jackson was inspired by an interview with a former slave. She decided to share the stories of previously enslaved people in short films. A group of 22 actors of different genders, races, and ages read individual slave interviews from the Slave Narrative Collection. This collection includes over 2,300 interviews done from 1936–38. Jackson's goal is to document every single story and help people talk about slavery, keeping the memory of the slaves alive through these videos.

Fictional Stories Today

The Underground Railroad by National Book Award winner Colson Whitehead takes place in an alternative version of the 1800s. Cora, a slave on a cotton farm in Georgia, escapes using the Underground Railroad. The novel was very well-received. People said it had "the chilling, matter-of-fact power of the slave narratives collected by the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s, with echoes of Toni Morrison's Beloved." It can be seen as a modern fictional slave narrative.

"Neo-Slave Narratives"

A "neo-slave narrative" is a term coined by Ishmael Reed in 1984. It refers to a modern fictional work set during the slavery era by current authors. These stories are mainly concerned with showing the experience or effects of enslavement in the New World. Most are novels, but some can be poems. The rise of postmodern slave narratives in the 1900s was a way to look back at slavery. It allowed authors to give a fictional account of historical facts from a first-person perspective.

Some examples include:

• Octavia E. Butler, Kindred (1979)
• Ernest J. Gaines, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971)
• Alex Haley, Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976)
• Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)
• Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad (2016)

See also

In Spanish: Narrativa esclavista para niños