Back in 1937 President Roosevelt created the Federal Writers Project. He told the people working in the FWP to interview every former slave they could, before they all died, to capture our countries history better. Although it was not a simple task, in her book titled Long Past Slavery: Representing Race in the Federal Writers Project Catherine Stewart states: “Competing visions of the past and conflicting views on black identity and black citizenship offered different prisms for interpreting the remembrances of former slaves.” Some ex-slaves were scared to tell the full truth in these interviews, some thought they would receive some benefits if they did not tell the full truth, and the interviewers would even change the story to make the government not sound so bad. 1 In this blog post, I want to investigate that idea more based on two narratives one by Charlie Smith and the other by Fountain Hughes.
Charlie Smith and Fountain Hughes seemed to have similar lives. They were both interviewed in their late 100’s and they both went into slavery when they were in their early teens. In Charlie Smith’s interview, there seems to be nothing wrong with his life. He was bought by a man who raised him as one of his own children. Later in life he worked as a mason, then a state officer and helped hunt the man who killed President Garfield. Then he moved to Florida and lived out the rest of his days there. Fountain Hughes went into slavery at the same time as Charlie but stayed with his family. Although he does not go much into his childhood, when he does talk about it he contradicts himself 2a little. He talks about how the masters treated them well and how he did not have shoes until he was twelve, then at the end of his explanation he says “Yes, many time I’ve stump my toes, and blood run out them. That didn’t make them buy me no shoes.”3
Another instance in Fountains interview he says that they were treated like cattle and as soon as he finishes his sentence it seems the interviewer, Hermond Norwood, changes the topic4. Later on in the interview Hughes then talks about the bidding5 process. In his explanation of the bidding process he says “But if you was bad and mean and they didn’t want to beat you and knock you around, they’d sell you”. Right after he’s done explaining how the bidding works Norwood asks him if he was ever sold and Hughes seems to hesitate but said no that he was never sold because he was too young to sell. 6
Throughout the interview it seems that Hughes wants to talk about what happened in his life as a slave but is heisting to say something or when he starts to the Norwood asks him another question. In Charlie Smith’s interview he never has these moments; however, he only says the same things in his interview. Smith brings up that his dad treated him like his own and that he helped him on the farm, then when his dad died he was free, later in life worked as a state officer, and lastly moved to Florida. Smith never hesitates or dive more into it like Hughes did.
As I mentioned, in the beginning, many slaves were scared to say something to the interviewers in fear of backlash. Many writers wanted to shape the way the stories were told. 7 That could be what is going on in these two cases; however, Charlie has a better way of hiding it. At the end of Hughes interview Norwood asks if he goes to church. Then Hughes says “Ill tell you why I don’t go to church” then stops. Norwood asks him: “You rather not have this on? Hm? You rather not tell me or you rather not have this on when you tell me?” and Hughes replays: “It don’t make any difference. I ain’t going to say nothing wrong. I ain’t going to [tape cuts out] If I, I, I, I say…” and it ends there.8 I’m not sure if he was referring to the church or his life in general, either way I feel that shows that Hughes could not say all that he wanted to.
I think using audio in blog posts really shows the reader what your talking about instead of having to explain everything. I know that in this argument it would be hard for me to explain the point Im making if the reader never listened to the audio and interpreted it for themselves. Either way it is hard to close this argument fully since we cant talk to Fountain Hughes or Charlie Smith themselves. Finding a different interview similar to Charlie Smith’s defiantly shed a bright light onto this topic for me.
- STEWART, CATHERINE A. Long Past Slavery: Representing Race in the Federal Writers’ Project. University of North Carolina Press, 2016. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469626277_stewart.
- “Interview with Fountain Hughes, Baltimore, Maryland, June 11, 1949,” Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1950037_afs09990a/
- “Interview with Fountain Hughes, Baltimore, Maryland, June 11, 1949,” Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1950037_afs09990a/
- “Interview with Fountain Hughes, Baltimore, Maryland, June 11, 1949,” Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1950037_afs09990a/
- “Interview with Fountain Hughes, Baltimore, Maryland, June 11, 1949,” Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1950037_afs09990a/
- “Interview with Fountain Hughes, Baltimore, Maryland, June 11, 1949,” Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1950037_afs09990a/
- Tilton, Lauren. “Race and Place: Dialect and the Construction of Southern Identity in the Ex-Slave Narratives.” Current Research in Digital History, http://crdh.rrchnm.org/essays/v02-14-race-and-place/.
- “Interview with Fountain Hughes, Baltimore, Maryland, June 11, 1949,” Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1950037_afs09990a/
