Testaments of Courage: Selections from Men’s Slave Narratives

The abolitionists of the nineteenth century believed that if people in the North knew of the horrors of slavery they would demand its end. Talks by escaped slaves and the publication of slave narratives were sponsored by abolitionist groups in order to inform the public about the evils of slavery. As the struggle to end slavery intensified and the movement grew in numbers after the 1830s, an increasing number of slave narratives continued to appear until the Civil War. Slave narratives followed a similar form, describing the author’s suffering on the plantation, the terrible conditions the slaves endured, and the author’s successful escape North. A new period in the slave narrative arose in the twentieth century as anthropologists and folklorists compiled narratives based on research and on interviews with former slaves. The continuing relevance and popularity of the slave narrative was confirmed when President Franklin Roosevelt, as a way to combat unemployment during the Depression years of the 1930s, initiated an oral-history program as part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Writers and folklorists were sent into Deep South communities to take down the stories of surviving ex-slaves. These accounts provide some of the most richly detailed slave narratives that we have today.