In Their Words

Recollections of Formerly Enslaved People

BY CATHERINE M. WRIGHT

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: Struggles for Nation and Freedom in Civil War America” 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.

Frederick Douglass (pictured above) 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.

Twenty-threeyear-old Octave Johnson was serving as a corporal in Company C, 15th Regiment Corps d’Afrique, when he provided testimony to the Commission in 1864. His succinct and matter-of-fact deposition is incredibly powerful. Born in New Orleans, he worked as a cooper until one morning when, facing the threat of being whipped, he ran away. Hiding with other runaways in the Louisiana swamps for a year and a half, Johnson endured hunger and eluded slave hunters and their dogs before finally reaching a U.S. fort. He eventually joined the Corps D’Afrique, one of the U.S. Army’s first all-black regiments. His unit later became the 99th U.S. Colored Infantry.

Lila Nichols and Daniel Waring

In 1935, as millions of Americans struggled to find gainful employment with the Great Depression dragging on, the Roosevelt administration created the Works Progress (or Work Projects) Administration (WPA). A subdivision of the WPA called the Federal Writers’ Project sent field workers to 17 states to record the oral histories of former slaves. Between 1936 and 1938, they interviewed more than 2,000 formerly enslaved people. The transcripts were deposited at the Library of Congress (LC), then compiled and released in 1941 as Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves (now available on the LC website as the Born in Slavery collection.)

Lila Nichols, born circa 1848, was living in Cary, North Carolina, when interviewed on May 18, 1937. She described her early life in slavery as a difficult one, with scant food, poor clothing and housing, physically exhausting work, and physical abuse from her owners. She recalled the arrival of U.S. soldiers with mixed feelings: they stole or destroyed nearly everything and insulted black and white Southerners alike, but Lila and her family were finally free to leave the plantation.

Lila Nichols, age 89

Library of Congress

Daniel Waring was born in Fairfield, South Carolina, in 1849. He was 14 years old when news came of the Emancipation Proclamation. “We didn’t know where to go or what to do,” he told the interviewers, “and so we stayed right where we was...” Then his family moved toColumbia, South Carolina, where he took up odd jobs and received scant assistance from the Freedmen’s Bureau.

Hamp Santee

When historian Dr. George Rawick began compiling and editing the WPA slave narratives for publication, he discovered the additional narratives that the LC never released, as well as WPA interviews in various repositories that were never sent to the LC. He included these previously overlooked narratives in his comprehensive series The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, published 1971- 1979 and spanning 41 volumes.

One of these previously overlooked narratives was that of Hamp Santee, who in 1865 was only six years old and living in Leaksville, Mississippi. He recalled U.S. soldiers temporarily camping on his owner’s plantation and stealing his family’s hogs. When Confederate surrender finally made emancipation a reality, it stamped his memory with the overwhelming joy expressed by the new freedpeople.

Laura Smalley

After the WPA Federal Writers’ Project stopped collecting former slaves’ oral histories, the Library of Congress continued the work on a much smaller scale. Having received a grant to purchase a portable audio recorder in 1942, Dr. John Henry Faulk traveled through Texas to document the memories of formerly enslaved people. His unfamiliarity with the technology resulted in only a few successful recordings.

One of these surviving interviews was with Laura Smalley of Hempstead, Texas, who was about 10 years old in 1865. Despite her youth, she clearly recollected violence against enslaved people by slaveholders. Beyond her owner’s long absence while serving as a Confederate soldier, she described being largely unaware of the War. She recalled that, after his return, he did not tell his enslaved workers they were free until the arrival of U.S. troops in June 1865.

Patsy Moses, a formerly enslaved woman living in Waco, Texas, was interviewed and photographed on November 15, 1937, for the WPA’s Federal Writers’ Project.

The challenging circumstances and choices confronting enslaved people during the War and the uneven process of emancipation become intensely personal and meaningful for Museum visitors when heard through the words of formerly enslaved people. By featuring a few of their stories in our new exhibit, theMuseum is privileged to facilitate a new audience in discovering the power of these unique narratives.

Catherine Wright was a Curator in the Museum’s Collections Department, 2008 - 2019, and was the principal researcher and writer for “A People’s Contest.” She now lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.