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From 1936 to 1938, the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP), a part of
the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration, hired writers,
editors, and researchers to interview as many former slaves as they
could find and document their lives during slavery. More than 2,000
former slaves in 17 states were interviewed. With Weren’t
No Good Times, John F. Blair, Publisher, continues its Real Voices,
Real History™ series with selections from 46 of the 125
interviews now archived in the Library of Congress that were
earmarked as interviews with Alabama slaves. Also included is an
excerpt from Thirty Years a Slave: From Bondage to Freedom, a
memoir written by Louis Hughes. This selection reveals a different
aspect of the Alabama slavery experience, because Hughes was hired
out by his master to work at the Confederate salt works during the
Civil War. Alabama was a frontier state and from the beginning, its
economy was built on cotton and slavery. That its laws were
fashioned to accommodate both becomes obvious when related through
the experiences of Alabama’s slaves. A year after it obtained
statehood, Alabama had a slave population of 41,879, as compared to
85,451 whites and 571 free blacks. By 1860, the slave population
had swelled to 435,080, while there were 536,271 whites and 2,690
free blacks. When emancipation came to the slaves, Alabama’s
slave owners lost an estimated $200 million of capital. These
narratives will help readers understand slavery by hearing the
voices of the people who lived it. Horace Randall Williams
describes himself as “among the last of Alabamians - black or
white - who have memories of picking cotton by hand not for a few
minutes to see how it felt but because I needed the few dollars I
would get for a day’s hard labor under a hot sun,” an
experience he says helped him recognize the cadences and dialect in
the slave narratives. An Alabama native, he has researched and
written extensively about civil rights, segregation, and slavery
during three decades as a reporter, writer, editor, and publisher
of newspapers, magazines, and books. He was the founder and, for
many years, the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s
Klanwatch Project. He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of
NewSouth Books in Montgomery, Alabama. He recently authored 100
Things You Need to Know about Alabama. "For a century and a half,
these stories and the truths they disclose have been hidden from
view. They are far too important to stay neglected and ignored.
Williams has resurrected the last generation of America’s slaves
and allowed them to speak in their own voices." - Elizabeth Breau
Foreword Review
“One day, I went to the slave market and watched em barter off
po’ niggers lak tey was hogs,” said George Lycurgas, as
recalled by his son, Edward. “Whole families sold together, and
some was split—mother gone to one marster and father and children
gone to others. They’d bring a slave out on the platform and open
his mouth, pound his chest, make him harden his muscles so the
buyer could see what he was gittin’.” The ex-slaves in No
Man’s Yoke on My Shoulders speak of a Florida that no
longer exists and can barely be imagined today. Now the fourth most
populous state in the country, Florida has more than 100 times the
people it did in 1860, just before the Civil War. And it was only
40 years removed from Spanish rule. In the 1930s, the Federal
Writers’ Project dispatched interviewers to record the
recollections of former slaves, many in their 80s or 90s. Only one
percent of the 2,000-plus transcripts collected in the Library of
Congress told the stories of people who had experienced bondage in
Florida. That makes the narratives of former Florida slaves in this
volume doubly precious. Readers will get a glimpse into the lives
of these rare survivors as they told their stories at the height of
the Great Depression, a time many found little better than the
slave days. Horace Randall Williams describes himself as “among
the last of Alabamians—black or white—who have memories of
picking cotton by hand not for a few minutes to see how it felt but
because I needed the few dollars I would get for a day’s hard
labor under a hot sun.” He was the founder and for many years the
director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Klanwatch Project.
He also edited Weren’t No Good Times: Personal Accounts of
Slavery in Alabama.
A unique catalog of historic civil rights events, This Day in Civil
Rights History details the struggles, sacrifices, and triumphs on
the road to equal rights for all U.S. citizens. From the Quakers’
17th-century antislavery resolution to slave uprisings during the
Civil War, to the infamous Orangeburg Massacre in 1968, and beyond,
authors Horace Randall Williams and Ben Beard present a vivid
collection of 366 events—one for every day of the year plus Leap
Day—chronicling African Americans’ battle for human dignity and
self-determination. Every day of the year has witnessed significant
events in the struggle for civil rights. This Day in Civil Rights
History is an illuminating collection of these cultural turning
points.
A personal account of the triumph of Johnnie Carr, a southern black
woman who overcame poverty, limited education, and racism to become
a leader in the civil rights movement. Includes notes on Ms. Carr's
friendship with Rosa Parks, E.D. Nixon, Martin Luther King, Jr.,
and others in the civil rights struggle.
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