Lest We Forget, From Wence We have Come

For African Americans, remembering our collective and personal histories is crucial. Folk tales and true tales of our struggles and perseverance provide courage, perspective, and insight for generations of children to continue carrying the proverbial torch.
So as a member of a generation that can't even claim remembering the Civil Rights movement, hearing from people who experienced our people's bonded enslavement more than a century ago is absolutely amazing.
"Remembering Slavery," a two-hour audio tape documentary based on the stories of ex-slaves, is a moving auditory adventure. The product of producers Kathie Farnell and Jacquie Gales Webb, the recordings are the result of a Works Projects Administration (WPA) endeavor under Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal in the late '30s and early '40s. The documentary features former slaves telling stories in their own voices and is a remarkably authentic contribution to the volume of slave narratives on record today.
 Hosted by Alabama State University professor Dr. Tonea Stewart, each hour-long episode presents restored recordings of interviews with Fountain Hughes, Laura Smalley, Harriet Smith, and several others who were born slaves, survived the Civil War, and lived through reconstruction. Their narratives are supplemented by dramatic readings of written interview transcripts read by noted actors such as James Earl Jones, Debbie Allen, Clifton Davis, Lou Gossett Jr., Melba Moore, and the late Esther Rolle.
Part one includes narratives of life before the Civil War. Caroline Hunter recalls the agony her mother went through watching the master beat her children until they bled. Hughes — 101 years old at the time he was interviewed in Baltimore — recounts being unable to simply walk across the street without a note from his master, calling slavery a jail sentence.
"We were slaves," recalls Hughes. "We belonged to people. They'd sell us like they sell horses and cows and hogs."
Part two takes listeners through former slaves' experiences during the Civil War and their first days of freedom. For Smith, the end of the war meant sitting on a picket fence in Texas, watching with awe and pride as "colored soldiers in droves" marched by. Another woman remembers not wanting to leave the master's house, crying as her mother tore her away from the White mistress who simply didn't understand why the young girl couldn't stay.
"You took her away from me and didn't pay no mind to my crying," the ex-slave recalls her mother saying. "So now, I'se taking her back home. We's free now."
The heart-wrenching words, whether spoken by the slaves themselves or the illustrious actors, provide invaluable insight to our understanding of a tumultuous period in American history. This well-researched documentary gets an "A-plus" for its premise alone.
History professors hoping the tapes would render profuse historical context and hard facts will, however, be disappointed. The producers choose mainly to rest on the laurels of the spectacular sound bites they provide. The package does come with a learning guide with tips for professors, which may help to put the narratives in perspective.
 Others longing for continuity amongst the snippets may also be vexed. The producers invested little energy in unifying the stories, leaving the tapes with a somewhat choppy, unfinished tang.
Still others used to high quality sound may be irritated by the ear-straining required to hear some of those sound bites as the recordings were made when audio technology was still fairly new, then restored for this documentary.
Then many have questioned the degree of candor the former slaves expressed to the WPA interviewers — most of whom were White. While it appears as though many of the ex-slaves who were interviewed — of whom there were more house slaves than field hands —  found a way to make several brazen points, many must certainly have felt they were treading on slippery rocks when answering the questions of White correspondents.
Nonetheless, these recordings are abundant with historical merit and therefore deserve a place beside the most treasured of history texts, if only for their ability to bringing these powerful voices — conveying the unbearable pains and ultimate triumphs of our predecessors — to a new generation of torch bearers.