THE MEMORIES of formerly enslaved
people, as told in their own words, form the centerpiece of a multimedia presentation in the Museum’s new permanent exhibit, A People’s Contest. “Struggle for Freedom” explores the breadth of African American wartime experiences by combining text from eight firstperson accounts with archival and modern imagery. Six of the people whose quotations are dramatized were previously enslaved. Their reflections help convey to visitors the brutal nature of slavery, the difficulties encountered by running away, their vital contributions to the U.S. military, the variety of ways they learned they were free, and their reactions to that momentous news.
In Their Words: Recollections of Formerly Enslaved People BY CATHERINE M. WRIGHT
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Frederick Douglass is by far the best known of the six featured formerly enslaved people. His long career as a writer, orator, and statesman provided him with ample opportunities to share stories of his life in bondage with the wider world. In developing the exhibit, the Museum wanted to introduce visitors to other people who experienced slavery and emancipation – people who did not give speeches or write memoirs and who may have been illiterate. Even with such obstacles, the stories of ordinary freedpeople have survived. Identifying and sharing their stories also draws our attention to the organizations and individuals who preserved and collected them.
Octave Johnson U.S. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton established the American Freedmen’s Inquiry three months after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in 1863. Commissioners were to interview newly freed people and U.S. military commanders in the southern states and make recommendations as to how to best support the transition to freedom.
