of the master and the demanding realities of the plantation regime, slaves embraced their own human vitality and sought to create lives of their own. The daily lives of slaves in antebellum South as presented here are, therefore, a dynamic story of oppression and resistance. The evidence of this, as we shall see, can be found most compellingly in the words of the slaves themselves as found in the various narratives they wrote before and after emancipation and in the hundreds of interviews they recorded during the 1930s. Indeed, those narratives and interviews focused directly on daily life rather than on abstract discussions of the institution of slavery. In the end, it seems that what former slaves remembered most about their experience under the cruel burden of human bondage was the ways in which they had somehow made it through each day despite the violence and brutality they experienced. It was in their daily struggles for human dignity that the slaves found hope for the future and the strength to continue the fight against a system designed to crush out their dreams for freedom. References Ehlinger, Samantha. 2015. “Did Slavery Cause Civil War? Many Americans Don’t Think So.” McClatchy, August 6. SPLC. 2018. Teaching Hard History: American Slavery. Southern Poverty Law Center. https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/tt_hard_history_american_slavery.pdf Reprinted from the introduction to Daily Life of African American Slaves in the Antebellum South by permission of ABC-CLIO/Greenwood.
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