| On Jordan's Stormy Banks: Personal Accounts of Slavery in Georgia Contributor(s): Waters, Andrew (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0895872285 ISBN-13: 9780895872289 Publisher: Blair OUR PRICE: $17.96 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: January 2000 Annotation: The idea of interviewing slaves about their experiences dates to the 1760s, when abolitionists first began to publish slave narratives as a way to educate the public to the horrors of slavery. From 1929 to 1932, the social sciences department at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, sponsored a project to gather more interviews. In 1934, one of the Fisk project workers suggested the federal government hire unemployed white-collar blacks to undertake similar projects in Indiana and Kentucky. Two years later, the Works Progress Administration directed the Federal Writers' Project teams in four more states to begin interviewing former slaves living in their states. The project soon expanded to cover fourteen states. By the time the WPA project ended in 1938, some 2,000 interviews, representing about two percent of the ex-slave population in the United States at the time had been completed and transcribed. The editors of the volumes listed on this page combed through the transcriptions to find the most interesting of the narratives from each particular state. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Ethnic Studies - African American Studies - History | United States - State & Local - General - Social Science | Slavery |
| Dewey: 976.804 |
| LCCN: 00062104 |
| Series: Real Voices, Real History Series |
| Physical Information: 0.6" H x 5" W x 7.5" (0.50 lbs) 196 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 19th Century - Cultural Region - South - Ethnic Orientation - African American - Geographic Orientation - Georgia |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: During the Great Depression, the Federal Writers' Project engaged jobless writers and researchers to interview former slaves about their experiences in bondage. Most of the interviewees were by then in their eighties and nineties, and their memories were soon to be lost to history. The effort was a huge success, eventually encompassing more than two thousand interviews and ten thousand pages of material across seventeen states. This collection presents the personal narratives of twenty-eight former Georgia slaves. As editor Andrew Waters notes, the "two ends of the human perspective--terror and joy" are often evident within the same interviews, as the ex-slaves tell of the abuses they endured while they simultaneously yearn for younger, simpler days. The result is a complex mix of emotions spoken out of a dark past that must not be forgotten. Andrew Waters is a writer and former editor. A native North Carolinian, he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with Honors in Creative Writing and received a graduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is the executive director of the Spartanburg Area Conservancy in Spartanburg, SC. |
Contributor Bio(s): Waters, Andrew: - Andrew Waters is a writer and former editor. A native North Carolinian, he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with Honors in Creative Writing and received a graduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is the executive director of the Spartanburg Area Conservancy in Spartanburg, SC. |
