by Ira Berlin
First published 2007
Ira Berlin opens a window into American slavery through the voices of those who lived it. In the 1930s, Federal Writers' Project researchers interviewed thousands of former slaves, creating the only known audio recordings of people who actually experienced bondage. These interviews had sat unused in the Library of Congress archives for decades. Berlin brings together excerpts from these conversations, letting readers hear directly from men and women who survived plantation life, emancipation, and Reconstruction. The book pairs transcripts with remastered audio recordings, preserving the speakers' own words, dialects, and inflections. Through their testimonies, a complex picture emerges of daily life under slavery, moments of resistance, family separations, and the long journey toward freedom. These first-person accounts cut through historical abstractions to reveal the human reality of America's most shameful institution.
Genres: history, 20th-century, african-american, non-fiction, biography-memoir, american-history
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: first-person-accounts, historical-narrative
Setting: America
Period: 1930s, Plantation Life, Reconstruction
408 pages · Paperback · New Press
Content warnings: slavery