A Slavery Family in North Carolina

Interview

By: Tanner Spikes

Date: 1936

Source: Federal Writer's Project

About the Author: Tanner Spikes, an elderly woman who had been a slave during her childhood, related her memories of slavery to an interviewer for the Federal Writer's Project in the 1930s. Spikes's account is one of the few interviews with African Americans who could remember slave life.

INTRODUCTION

The state of the black family under slavery has been the subject of considerable debate and study. Inevitably, the analysis turns to the issue of control. While slave owners had ultimate authority over slave families, the slaves challenged them in a variety of ways. This power struggle affected family life in ways that scholars are just beginning to understand.

Some researchers claim that the roots of matriarchy and illegitimacy seen in many present-day African American families began in a system that denied slaves the right to marry and severely curtailed men's authority over their children. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 report that linked the problems of blacks in inner cities—including drug abuse, high crime rates, and skyrocketing unemployment—to female-headed households is the most famous example of this scholarly link. Other scholars disagreed, but despite the controversy, it is clear that slave parents, whether mothers or fathers, had a very limited ability to protect and care for their children.

As research has moved beyond questions of authority and family structure to consider the complicated relationship between slave families and those who claimed ownership of them, scholars have been helped by the slave narratives. Although these firsthand accounts are plagued by methodological problems—such as the nature of the questions posed by the interviewers, the interviewers' race (usually white), and bias (reflected in the decision to give black responses in dialect)—they remain valuable sources for the study of the slave family. When reviewing this source one should keep in mind the time and context in which it was written, as some language used would not be considered appropriate today.

PRIMARY SOURCE

A Slavery Family

An interview with Tanner Sikes, 77 years of age, of 43 Bragg Street, Raleigh, North Carolina.

"My mammy had fifteen chilluns which wus all borned on Doctor Fab Haywood's plantation here in Wake County. My mammy 'longed ter him, but my daddy 'longed ter a Mr. Wiggins in Pasquotank County. I think that Dr. Haywood bought him just 'fore de war. Anyhow, we took de name of Wiggins.

"Mammy's name wus Lucinda an' pappy's name wus Osburn. I doan 'member seein' many Yankees on Dr. Haywood's place. I doan reckon many comed dar. Anyhow, we had a gyard.

"I 'members a corn shuckin' what happened 'fore de war wus over, an'what a time dem niggers did have. Dey kisses when dey fin' a red year an' atter dat dey pops some popcorn an' dey dances ter de music of de banjo which Uncle Jed am a-playin'. Dey dances all night de best I can 'member.

"I seed a few Yankees, but dey wus just lookin' fer something ter eat. We ain't knowed nothin' 'bout freedom, but de Yankees tol' us dat we ort ter be free, dey also said dat we ort ter have meat an' stuff in de smokehouse. My mammy sez dat dey ain't got good sense an' she tells mares what dey said.

"De Yankees has done tuck all de rations so dar ain't nothin' lef' fer de niggers ter take but mammy tells Marse Haywood what dey sez anyhow. Marse Haywood sez dat iffen he ketch any niggers in his smokehouse dat he'll skin 'em alive. He also sez dat we ain't free an' dat we ain't never gwine ter be free.

"De nex' year, atter de war, wus a hard year. We ain't had nothin' ter eat but hard tack an' 'lasses an' sometimes not half enough of dat. My pappy still farmed fer Marse Haywood, but hit ain't as good as it is in slavery days.

"Seberal years atter dat, while we wus livin' on Davie Street, I met Frank Spikes an' I married him. I can't tell yo' much 'bout our love-makin' case hit warn't much, but he always called me 'honey gal' an' he axed me ter marry him in de kitchen while I wus washin' dishes. He jist puts his arms 'round me an' he sez, 'I wants ter marry yo', honey gal.'

"Well we gits married by de Baptist preacher in Raleigh fifty odd years ago an' we lives tergether till dis past March, when he dies.

"Other boys comed ter see me but I ain't loved none of dem but Frank. He ain't never whupped me but onct an' dat wus fer sassin' him, an' I reckin dat I needed dat.

"We have five chillns an' I'se stayin' wid my daughter since he died, but I misses him, yes mam, I misses him purty awful."

SIGNIFICANCE

As part of the New Deal's Works Progress Administration work relief programs, the Federal Writer's Project transcribed former slaves' memories about their lives in bondage, the first and only such interviews ever conducted. These memoirs greatly expanded the knowledge and study of slavery.

The value of the narratives, however, was not recognized for decades. In the era before the development of African American history, many historians ignored them, believing that black history was of little significance and that oral history should not be privileged over written sources. Numerous accounts written by whites, in fact, testified to the benefits of plantation living for blacks.

The interviews were finally published in 1945, when B.A. Botkin edited a handful of them for Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery. Many Southern reviewers, however, saw the book as an attack and an attempt to challenge the elevated position of whites in Southern race relations. They denounced the work as unreliable, irrelevant folklore. With the rise of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s, however, the black experience came to be viewed as part of the struggle for freedom in American history. In the 1970s, the narratives were published in their entirety, making them readily available to the public.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Berlin, Ira, Marc Favreau, and Steven F. Miller, eds. Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk about Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Freedom. New York: The New Press, 1998.

Davis, Charles T., and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The Slave's Narrative. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Jones, Jacqueline. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present. New York: Vintage, 1985.