The experiences of enslaved people in some ways feel truly conveyed through these interviews, while in some ways they feel somewhat hidden. I was surprised to hear in many of the interviews that the interviewees were asked to sing. This was surprising in that it does feel like preservation of a culture; many of these songs are considered slave songs and were an important part of that culture. On the other hand, it left seemingly more important testimony about experiences during enslavement left untold. Susan A Quall’s interview did not discuss much of her childhood when she was actually enslaved. She shared a powerful story about how her and her father ran from their home during a Yankee raid that gave a lot of insight to the situation enslaved people were trapped in during the Civil War, and also garnered sympathy simply through the power of storytelling. However, when asked what she did during the time she was enslaved, she left it at simply, “farm work and all that.” Her story does not quite tie in with the idea of the contented slave, in that she touched on some struggles, but one does get the sense from the tone in her voice that she was hesitant to discuss details regarding the hardships of enslavement. While she detailed a harrowing encounter in the escape of the Yankee raid, this event places no imposition on the slavery practitioners; only the damage that was caused from the Union Army that fought against the states to which those slavery practitioners belonged.
Hearing these interviews rather than reading them shed some light on the atmosphere of the interview; for example it was evident that Susan Quall was hesitant to share more than “farm work and all that” with the interviewers from the tone in her voice and pauses on her part surrounding these questions. Of course, the quality of the audio recordings makes it difficult to decipher what both the interviewers and interviewees are saying. This difficulty was reflected in the transcriber’s inability to discern some portions, where in the transcript these portions were replaced with [????].
While Susan Quall shared a few specific dates regarding the events in her life, it is unfortunate that either she did not know the dates of other events or was not asked by the interviewers when the event happened. Throughout listening to other interviews, there also seemed to be a common theme of the interviewees not knowing their own age, either because they didn’t remember or because their date of birth simply had never been shared with them. For some, this was because they did not know their family. This is a sad fact to realize, which is highlighted by the intersections with events of mainstream history. For some interviewees, connecting events in their life with the current events of the time were the only way they could give even a general idea of the time in which the event took place. Looking back at the interviews now, it is relatively easy to gain an understanding of the approximate time in which events in the interviewees personal histories may have occurred through comparison with events of mainstream history.
References
Library of Congress. American Life Histories Introduction. https://www.loc.gov/collections/federal-writers-project/articles-and-essays/introduction/
Tilton, L. Race and Place. http://crdh.rrchnm.org/essays/v02-14-race-and-place/
