Slave Narratives: An Overview

A free man "cannot see things in the same light with the slave, because he does not, and cannot, look from the same point from which the slave does," argued Frederick Douglass (1817–1895) in his second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (2003, p. 254). Removed from the experience of slavery and incapable of ever looking at the world from the point of view of the enslaved, scholars of American history have relied on slave testimony, such as slave narratives, to represent the experience and impact of slavery. Written and dictated by American slaves, slave narratives recount the bondmen and bondwomen's struggles from slavery to freedom. These firsthand accounts discuss a wide range of topics, including, but not limited to, life under slavery, relations among slaves, interactions with white masters and overseers, abolitionism, rebellion, and resistance. Although there are several slave narratives from as early as the mid-eighteenth century and some that extend into the early decades of the twentieth century, this literary genre reached the peak of its popularity in the mid-nineteenth century. Slave narratives had a dual purpose: exposing the abominations of bondage and persuading a removed readership to actively oppose the institution of slavery.

Slavery in the Narratives: A Communal Definition, a Collective Critique

Although slave narratives describe the slaves' personal hardships and struggles, there is nothing individual about these texts. Each slave narrator, "in writing about his or her personal life's experiences, simultaneously wrote on behalf of the millions of silent slaves still held captive throughout the South" (Gates 1987, p. x). Thus, while each narrative is a personal argument and plea for the abolishment of slavery, it is also part of a larger effort. By following a common pattern and emphasizing similar themes, slave narratives create a unified voice that not only communally defines slavery, but also collectively criticizes it.

Slave narratives are laden with descriptions of physical maltreatment. Beatings, whippings, rape, imprisonment, and denial of adequate food and clothing are some of the most common abuses detailed by the slave narrators. One of the most notorious accounts of slavery comes from Moses Roper's narrative (1999), which provides explicit detail as well as illustrations of the instruments of torture used by Mr. Gooch, Roper's master. But not all narratives contain such horrific descriptions. The 1868 account of Elizabeth Keckley (1818–1907), for example, rarely mentions physical abuse. This absence, however, is as pronounced as Roper's graphic descriptions. In her long and detailed narrative, Keckley devotes only a few lines to recounting her rape. She writes, "a white man … had base designs upon me…. Suffice to say, that he persecuted me for four years, and I—I—became a mother" (p. 39). This brief and hesitant description shows both Keckley's profound pain and the long-lasting repercussions of slavery. Whether described in great detail or mentioned only in passing, the abuses of slavery leave in (and on) the narrator's body a story of violence and inhumanity.

Yet not all abuses were physical. Many narrators believed that the prohibition of education scarred far deeper than the whip ever could. In his narrative, Henry Bibb (1815–1854) wrote that the sole purpose of forcing slaves to remain illiterate was "to degrade and sub-ordinate" them (2001, p. 155). Leonard Black (1847) recalled how his master not only discouraged him from reading, but also severely punished Black for trying to educate himself. Frederick Douglass, perhaps the most famous narrator to discuss slavery's educational limitations, believed there was power in learning how to read. "The more I read," wrote Douglass "the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers" (1987, p. 278).

For most slave narrators, however, it was the auction stand, not literacy, that led them to truly "abhor and detest" their enslavers. The slave market—the selling and buying of human beings—fused together slavery's physical and mental tolls. Slave narratives depict the heartless slave trade, which tore husband from wife, parent from child, and brother from sister, as slavery in its basest and most heinous form (Johnson 1999). In his 1847 narrative, William Wells Brown (1814–1884) recounts seeing a mother being torn from her newborn baby. Although Brown did not know this woman, he was overcome by the injustice of the event, "a feeling akin to horror, shot through my frame," remembered Brown (1996, pp. 128-129).

Although no social relation could completely escape the threat of dissolution, slaves resisted the auction block by any means they could employ. In his narrative published in 1860, Reverend Offley describes how his mother told the slave buyers that she would rather kill her children than see her family torn apart (1971, p. 131). Although Offley later explained that his mother did not truly intend to carry out her threat, her conviction was so strong that her master was eventually compelled to believe her.

Tales of Resistance

For all their descriptions of slavery, narratives are, above all, an expression of a struggle for freedom. They serve as both an abolitionist tool, advocating for the end of slavery, and as an outlet, allowing slaves to document, in their own words, their life stories. These narratives detail how slaves worked through and overcame the most difficult of circumstances. By describing the slaves' ingenious methods of escape, such as disguising their identities, mailing themselves, petitioning abolitionists, and even living in hiding, the narratives are a testament of triumph.

These slave accounts not only influenced abolitionist thought, they also helped define and develop African American literature. The impact of these nineteenthcentury accounts can be seen in twentieth-century autobiographies, such as Richard Wright's Black Boy (1945) and The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), and also in novels such as Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) and Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose (1986). Slave narratives are stories of life, which document the horrors of slavery and the unwavering fight against this institution.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bibb, Henry. The Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb: An American Slave [1849]. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001.

Black, Leonard. The Life and Sufferings of Leonard Black, a Fugitive from Slavery. New Bedford, MA: Press of Benjamin Lindsey, 1847.

Brown, William Wells. "The Narrative of William Wells Brown, a Fugitive Slave." In Flight from the Devil: Six Slave Narratives, ed. Loren Katz. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1996.

Douglass, Frederick. "The Life of Frederick Douglass." In The Classic Slave Narratives, ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. New York: Penguin, 1987.

Douglass, Frederick. My Bondage and My Freedom. New York: Penguin, 2003.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., ed. The Classic Slave Narratives. New York: Penguin, 1987.

Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life inside the Antebellum Slave Market. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Katz, Loren. Flight from the Devil: Six Slave Narratives. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1996.

Keckley, Elizabeth Hobbs. Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. New York: G. W. Carleton, 1868.

Offley, G. W. "A Narrative of the Life and Labors of Rev. G. W. Offley, a Colored Man, and Local Preacher." In Five Black Lives, ed. Ann Bontemps. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1971.

Roper, Moses. "A Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper, from American Slavery." In I was Born a Slave: An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives, ed. Yuval Taylor. Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1999.

                           Alejandra Dubcovsky