Category: Timelines

Uncle Bob Ledbetter was interviewed by John and Ruby Lomax in 1940 ¹.This interview ²gives insight for how a slave was treated in regards to education and a personal life.

Ledbetter seemed to have difficulty with his age throughout the entire interview. He was not aware of his birthday and doesn’t know exactly how old he was when certain events happened. Ledbetter is even unaware of how old he is during the interview. He relies on what age people tell him he is, “they say I’m seventy something, two or three.”

On top of this, the interview allowed us to see the level of education that Ledbetter was able to achieve. During the interview, Ledbetter claimed that he was a “poor figurer” and unable to deduct when he was born after being told his age (which was 19) in 1880. This exemplifies that slaves could not have a decent education because Ledbetter was unable to do the subtraction to find out his age. He explains in the interview that he learned how to read and write because of being taught by his father at night, who also had no education. His way of speaking also attributes to not having a formal education as illustrated by Ledbetter’s mispronunciation of words.

The two timeline layers intersect fairly closely. Ledbetter was still enslaved when women gained the right to vote and when World War I started. He was barely freed when the Great Depression started. Ledbetter’s enslavement is more recent than historians seem to let on.

During the interview, I was surprised when Ledbetter mentioned that he joined the Church. I thought that being religious is something that’s instilled in someone from birth, inherited from family. This piece of information was probably surprising to me due to the fact that it was his choice to become religious. He made the decision and that demonstrates that he did have some say in how chose to live his life. I was also surprised that he didn’t mention any children or grandchildren, but then again he just answered the questions that the interviewer gave him.

This interview was useful in the way that it gave the listener insight into how an ex-slave grew up and the education level he/she has based on the language that person uses. However, due to the audio file being older (1940’s), I wasn’t able to understand much of what was being said due to the massive amount of white noise in the file. I gave up trying to hear what was happening in the conversation after about 5 minutes and switched to read the transcript instead. Although it’s interesting to hear the actual voice of Uncle Bob Ledbetter, it was difficult to sit through the interview because the noise was very confusing.

This interview can tells us that in the 1930’s, there were many events happening internationally (WWI), throughout the country (The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl), and for the ex-slaves themselves. The interview demonstrates that massive changes were happening in the world, and especially the nation in regards to the social climate.

The interview I chose was with Uncle Bob Ledbetter and took place in Louisiana at an Oil City. This interview was published in 1940 with the main contributors being John Lomax and Ruby Lomax. ¹ Throughout this interview, one can come to the conclusion that Uncle Bob was a down to earth, happy human being who did not let his past experiences get in the way of his new life. I was surprised at how Uncle Bob rarely mentioned a mortifying event in his life, with his only comments about his boss Mr. Noeller, was that he was “the meanest man on earth, but he never cussed at me”. Uncle Bob reminisced on how he was the oldest slave of the boys and never received any money. At a young age his father taught him how to read and write. From this interview, it can be noted that faith and devotion to church is what helped many slaves get through this difficult era. Uncle Bob joined church at the age of 19 and from then on, claimed he was devoted to always doing the right thing.

Uncle Bob’s interview reminded me of Chapter XII of The American Yawp where it states “The Negro was born in depression. It didn’t mean too much to him. The Great American Depression . . . only became official when it hit the white man.” ³ Black workers were generally the last hired when businesses expanded production and the first fired when businesses experienced downturns.” While analyzing my interview, this statement became reality because Uncle Bob was never paid and hardly mentioned times of eating because Mr. Noeller would not feed him. It can be estimated that Uncle Bob was 78 years old at the time this interview took place.

Although major events occurred during this time period, such as the construction of the panama canal and the stock market crash, these events subtly affected slaves. My overall perspective was that people of color have always been struggling, and in their struggles they found it in themselves to pickup the pieces and continue with the little they had and move forward. History is told and experienced in a different way for everyone. The way historians speak about history can be seen through the bigger picture, while smaller interviews help us see and determine how these events came about as well as how they molded Americans throughout the years.

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“Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories” was a project done by the Federal Writers’ Project that interviewed former slaves who discussed their experience as enslaved people. They described vivid memories of slavery as well as the hardships and harsh conditions faced by Black people during and after the Civil War.

Fountain Hughes, a former slave from Baltimore, Marylamd was interviewed by Hermond Norwood on June 11th, 1949. During the interview, Hughes explains how difficult his life was during the 1800’s – mentioning “if ever a slave again, he would end it all right away.” At the time, Blacks were treated as property or even like dogs, Hughes adds. They did not have much and did their best to live according to their means. Hughes mentioned that slaves would often gather into a log cabins for worship and ask God to deliver them from adversity.

When discussing his former life, it was surprising to hear Hughes say that he never had shoes until he was thirteen ⁴. Yet, he continued his hard labor as he was hired out for “one dollar a month” by his mother. Hearing Hughes compare the dollar value from the 1800’s to the 1900’s was vile. A dollar bill was worth much more than what it was fifty years ago and even today as some slaves were paid only a few cents a day. 

Remembering The Voices of the enslaved people in my opinion is imperative to American History. Growing up, I was “told” how blacks were taken from Africa by white colonialists and were forced to work against their will. Though, I was never informed of their inhumane living conditions, the ill- treatment, violence and abuse, and most importantly, their impact on American society. Black people have played a key role when shaping the U.S. today and continue to do so.  

Though useful, the interviews had limitations in which many narratives were impaired. The former enslaved people were unable to remember much about past events such as the Civil War as many of them were young in age. Being that they were unaware of the details regarding the Civil War of 1861, events like the Mexican War (1846), the assassination of former U.S. President James A.Garfield (1881), and Tennessee’s adoption of a new constitution abolishing slavery (1865) were more than likely unknown. Historians categorize these historical events and define them as things of the past. However, many of our ancestors have lived through these traumatic events and have experienced the social, economic and political effects of the country. 

The former enslaved people were unable to remember much about past events such as the Civil War as many of them were young in age. Being that they were unaware of the details regarding the Civil War of 1861, events like the Mexican War (1846), the assassination of former U.S. President James A. Garfield (1881), and Tennessee’s adoption of a new constitution abolishing slavery (1865) were more than likely unknown. Historians categorize these historical events and define them as things of the past. However, many of our ancestors have lived through these traumatic events and have experienced the social, economic and political effects of the country.

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References:

Norwood, Hermond, and Fountain Hughes. Interview with Fountain Hughes, Baltimore, Maryland. Baltimore, Maryland, November , 6, 1949. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1950037_afs09990a/.

The Jefferson Monticello. Getting Word: African American Families of Monticello. Retrieved from https://www.monticello.org/getting-word/people/fountain-hughes.

For my interview I listened to Uncle Bob Ledbetter, who was around 79 years old at the time of the interview and lived in Oil City Louisiana. In mine specifically, Ledbetter only talked a little bit about slavery, mostly how he never got into trouble, but he was only 2 years old when emancipation happened. But I think that in any interview with an enslaved person we can learn a lot about them, and what being a slave was like because there’s no third part coming in and only taking out parts they believe are important. When there are direct interviews, it not only humanitizes them, but it also makes sure that any information they wanted to share, is shared.

A lot of Ledbetter’s big events happened at very different times than the national events. For example when he spoke about getting married around 1881, and in my timeline, there are many big events that happened around then. People experience history in a completely different way than it’s told which is why first hand accounts are so important.

I was surprised that the audio ended right before Ledbetter could say what presidential election he voted in, because I think that would’ve been interesting to hear about, and he might’ve explained why he voted the way he did which I would have loved to hear about. I was also surprised he really never talked about any big events in history, he just talked about his own personal life, which is great but unexpected. I think it’s unexpected to me because if I were to make an account of my life I probably would talk about some big events, but then again we live in a very different time and I am a very political person so that would change how the interview goes.

The interview is useful if you want to get to know more about daily life for a black person in the late 1800s to early 1900s but it has its limitations in that it‘s very short, so you don’t get a lot about their life, it’s hard to figure out dates, although I was lucky because Ledbetter talks about his age a lot in them so using that I can work backwards and figure out what year the events he talked about happened. However it can be really difficult to hear sometimes, and sometimes they talk over each other as well, so the transcript was very helpful but without one I think it’d be hard to understand everything they’re saying. It confirmed what I thought of oral history as a primary source, because it’s great if you want to know about the subjects life, but it’s also difficult to hear and you never know what answers you’re going to get so it’s best to have an open mind about whatever they’re saying.

Their voices added a lot of the meaning behind their words in the interview, and since Ledbetter would sing, it added another layer of exploring who Ledbetter was as a person, not just as an interviewee. Transcriptions definitely allow you to understand what people are saying, but they can take away some of the meaning behind the words. However it can also show the transcribers bias. The transcriber may over exaggerate some words and phrases that they think the interviewee might’ve used based solely on stereotypes, this is especially true if there is no recording because that makes it difficult to hold them accountable for changing what people have said ⁵.
The interview itself can’t tell us a lot outright because they’re usually talking about the past and not the time of the interview itself. However the way they interact and how they talk is history itself, which tells us a lot about the time period. Like how Ledbetter would still call Lomax, the  white man interviewing him, “sir” sometimes, indicating that despite the 15th amendment and emancipation, many black men still felt like they had to be respectful to white men, because white people still had social power over black men. Some interviewees even thought the interviewers were government workers so they would change how they spoke to them, hoping to get government help ⁶.

The WPA Slave Narratives collection and in general oral history regained interest within the scholars’ community only after 1972. There is much more to explore within this collection. Listening to the story of former enslaved people, through the interview of WPA’s employees, adds emotion and human sensitivity to history facts.

We rediscover the life of enslaved people through their own feelings. We will analyze the “Interview with Uncle Bob Ledbetter, Oil City, Louisiana, 1940”. Bob Ledbetter, a former slave in the fields of cotton helps us understand what it was to be born black in 1861, not far from Oil City, Louisiana.

We learn that they used to sing in the fields, hollered and sang reels. At least Bob did. He never went to school, but he learned writing and reading thanks to his father. He also taught himself.

Throughout the interview, Bob Ledbetter makes us imagine his life in a positive way. It is true that he was enslaved for twelve years by Mr. Norris, but he also got married and his master always treated him well.

Bob tells us a different experience of enslaved people. His life seemed to be calm and peaceful. Learning with his dad, singing, going to church, getting married, and always leading a law-abiding life.

Does it sound too good to be true? After being enslaved, people would prefer to remember the positive side of their life and bury anything that would hurt and haunt them.

It was interesting to notice that the birth of Bob Ledbetter corresponds to the same year Louisiana seceded from the United States. While Bob was enslaved, in the 1880s, plantation owners pulled worker wages down, and created an unfair scrip as their pay. In October 1877, Duncan F. Kenner increased inequalities by holding the workers’ pay until harvest to keep them working.

The same year a sugar strike started. While Bob was enslaved, all those events happened in Louisiana and ended as the infamous Thibodaux massacre in November 1887.

Bob Ledbetter mentioned during his interview that at the age of 61 or 62, corresponding to 1922 or 1923, he had already lived a peaceful law-abiding life. By 1923, Louisiana established the all-white primary.

Many major historical events coincide with Bob’s life events. As we can see, sometimes lived experiences of people can be far from the way historians categorize or define the past.

For example, much happened in Louisiana after Bob’s birth, from the Louisiana secession and the Thibodaux massacre in 1887. Bob does not seem affected by those events, at least he does not mention them at all. He even says that he was telling people in 1923 that he lived a peaceful life with no troubles while the same year the all-white primary was established in Louisiana. In 1940, the same year that Bob Ledbetter is interviewed by Lomax, Roosevelt won the election for his third term.

There is a big gap between the lived experiences of people versus the way historians define the past. On one hand, the first mentioned helps us define what real life was at the time, sharing emotions and feeling, up to the point that we can imagine the scene. On the other hand, the second mentioned brings the main key historical events, drawing the big lines of the centuries. Both styles are important contributors to history, and they are both complementary.

I was surprised that the interviewee barely spoke about when he was enslaved. He did not mention the conditions of work neither of living. He only said that he was treated well. This was definitely unexpected.

This interview can be extremely useful if properly researched. Through the small events of Bob’s life, we can dig into the past and associate it with bigger events. This leads us to better grasp what happened at the time, and also explore and discover historical clues and artifact we would not have thought of otherwise.

Of course, the interview is short, hard to hear and understand. We sometimes have to extrapolate and guess a little. This could lead to misinterpretations and confusion.

I actually changed my opinion about using oral history as a primary source. While it is not a strict science, oral history does abound of clues from the past useful in the field. Oral history contains records of voices from the past, and they must be heard, as much as books must be read. Through a small interview that I heard, I explored and discovered much more than what I expected. Oral history must be considered as a primary source.

On one hand, Lomax seems a little insistent on Bob Ledbetter. He is trying to make him repeat things said off record. From what I could hear, it seems that Lomax was trying to set up the conversation, as a film director would, and Bob would be the actor.

On the other hand, I could hear a real conversation between the famous Lomax and a former slave. This is a piece of history and I have the chance to listen to it and build my own opinion out of it. I could hear the former slave’s perspective on his life without any filter.

Interviews were transcribed from memory and field notes and then revised by state and national editors. FWP writers flattened regional variations into a single speech style. ⁷

Indeed, Lomax supported the idea that the writing style of the narratives was a source of authenticity while Brown thought it would marginalize voices by signifying their position as second-class citizens. The dialect is understood as a regional identity and a cultural geography. The dialect connected to people who were rural, uneducated, and southern.

This means that the transcript is already an interpretation of the primary source. When I will read the transcript, I will already be using a secondary source. The way the former slave talks, the moments of confusion which are hard to understand or to interpret, will already be processed and thought within the transcript.

Oral history and ethnographic work lead to a voluminous social knowledge. It put to light historical knowledge from the 1930s. ⁸ For example, the southern life histories project changed people opinion about the South. Indeed, it helped them see social and economic challenges, and inequalities. ⁹

Some scholars argue that the Ex-Slaves Narratives isolated slavery to a southern problem. The dialect positioned interviewees in the “bottom socioeconomic and education strata of southern society”.

From what I could hear, Ledbetter lead a poor life, but he tried to keep the moments of happiness in his heart and mind. His passion for singing, his righteousness, and his humor made him cross slavery with pride and strength. The interview depicts a different vision of social history from the 1930s.

While most scholars and transcripts insist on the terrible human conditions under slavery, this interview reminds us that those people had a life, like everybody else. Former slaves had great obstacles and pain for sure, but also moments of happiness. Those moments are as important as anything else, and we must remember them thanks to oral history.

Laura Smalle suffered as a slave throughout her childhood, however, she does not talk a lot about the abuse she received. It seems like those memories were farther away from her and she did not like to bring them back into her current life. In part 5 of the interview, Laura mentions that colored people would get beat up. The interview asked if they still did and she said, “They do not beat them up so, so bad like the use to.”. ¹¹. She then goes into talk about how she was scared but never mentioned any direct abuse. However, we can imply that she was because she says ” But there ain’t nobody never have bothered me since I’ve been here, and none of my children. “. From this interview, we can also learn about how slave children were treated. Their parents obviously really cared about their children, but they could not really prevent them from being badly treated by others. They would receive “whoopings” from their owners. She also mentions how women received a great number of beatings. For example, in the interview, she tells the story about a plantations mistress who beat a woman slave in the “peach orchard garden” and she says they “snuffed out a pipe on her skin.”. ¹². Through these stories, we can see how many bad experiences that the enslaved men, women, and children faced for a very long time.

Throughout the interview, I learned that most of the enslaved people did not hear about major monumental things that happened in history when they were enslaved. If they did hear, it was much later than everyone else. Laura brings up a very interesting example of this that I was surprised to read. She said that when the Civil War ended that she and all the other enslaved people were unaware that it happened. Their master failed to mention that they had been freed until a whole six months after. Historians categorize the past on these specific events, such as the Civil War, Reconstruction, or Worl War 1, etc. Historians always mention the monumental moments and mainly the great things that happened in the past. They tend to generalize the events whereas personal timelines go more in-depth. When Laura talked about her past she failed to mention any big moments in history when she was enslaved; probably because she was not aware of most of them. She tended to focus on the smaller events that happened to her and enslaved people.

The most surprising moment to me is when I learned that she did not know she was freed until six months later after the Civil War had happened. That is one thing that I never thought about that effected the enslaved people. They do not have much access to the outside world. I was surprised that they left out specific days and events. I could not really get a great grasp off of when certain things happened. The usefulness of this interview is that we were able to learn about enslaved people through one person. We could experience her enslaved life through the oral interview. I also like how we can hear her reactions to certain events that happened to her; it allows us to be more in touch with her emotion. One limitation that stood out to me was trying to understand the interview. When I would go to listen to the quality of the interview would be pretty bad at some points that I could not even understand what they were saying. It confirmed that oral history interviews may be hard to transcribe because of the quality that was used back then. I was able to look at the pdf files which was helpful, but even the transcriber for that was unable to fill in everything they said. I also had trouble with certain dates. However, I was able to guesstimate the years that things happened base on some of her answers in the interview. For example, in one section she mentioned the Civil War; so I was able to find a somewhat accurate date for that time in her life. She never mentioned specific years but she did mention how old she was at a few times in the interview. This helped me distinguish between certain events and how far apart they were which was helpful.

I believe this interview was comfortable for Laura. They did not seem to ask too many questions to the point that it would overwhelm her. The FWP treated the interview as if it was a normal conversation. Turning the interview into a conversation allowed Laura to open up more and go into depth about her past life. To me, this shows that the Federal Writers Project had the best intentions in all of their projects and wanted people to feel that they could be as involved as they chose to be.

Timeline link: Here is the other link since the embed link would not work.

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Throughout everyone’s educational careers, the mistake of slavery is taught over and over and over again. We learn about those who fought to abolish it, about those who didn’t, and about what the slaves were used for. However, very rarely are the voices of the actual slaves heard. By listening to the audio tracks in this collection, it makes it that much more real that the slaves were real life people, with real life memories, and real lives. And that realization just makes the history of slavery all that much more awful, even though it already was before. In the interview with Uncle Bob Ledbetter ¹, a former slave, Ledbetter describes quick memories he has of his life, but he doesn’t even remember his own birthday. He claims he never knew it. He never learned to read or write either. It just shows such a stark contrast of the way people live today and the way things once were. Thus, there’s usefulness in that it demonstrates a sort of more active level of history. It’s not just text that one is reading about things that happened in the past. The listener actually gets to hear the voice of history, which is all that much more powerful. This mimics the story told through Jennifer Rittenhouse’s novel as well, where a man travels through the south, interviewing the people of an ever changing America ¹³.

For the timeline included above, the major thing that becomes apparent once there’s a visualization of Bob Ledbetter’s history is that there’s not much “history” to it. So, upon realizing that, it makes one thing differently of the interview that was conducted. It’s no question that Bob Ledbetter had more history. He was a 73 year old man by the time the interview was conducted, but one can question why more of his memories weren’t recorded. Then when listening to the interview and how it was recorded, the listener realizes it’s because it was a white man recording the interview and dominating the conversation. The interviewer who interviewed Uncle Bob Ledbetter was John A. Lomax. Now, this isn’t to say Lomax purposely dominated every aspect of the interview in a malicious way, however Lomax repeatedly asked Ledbetter to sing the same song, when he could have asked him to tell him about a memory from when he was younger. So with that being said, why would Ledbetter speak about something he wasn’t asked about, when he was raised in a way in which black people were taught to do as the white man said. Consciously or subconsciously, those sort of things effected all the interviews in this collection. Of course, this shouldn’t take away from the collection. It is still a valuable piece of history that can be used in many different ways, however it does make one realize how the culture and social customs of a certain time most definitely effect the way history is recorded, and one must keep that in mind when evaluating any sort of historical account.

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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/

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Aunt Harriet Smith’s interview, Interview with Harriet Smith, Hempstead, Texas, 1941

¹⁵

teaches us that slave narratives can be happy and light-hearted. Through her life, she was able to find some things to laugh about and tell stories about later. Even though she went through the absolute lowest form of treatment, she derived some positives from it all. The two timelines intersect through the big wars, big bills, and big social events that occurred during her life. They had an impact on everyone, including her. For example, the Model T was a car that she never saw but, her husband did, and he came back to tell her all about it. It’s evident that big events had an impact on almost everyone who lived during them but in very different ways. Some people have funny stories and some have the opposite. I was surprised that she spoke about all of her husbands. It made me laugh the way she spoke about them all. She really valued her first husband but he was killed and then the three that followed seemed to be more fun for her. Not that she didn’t have fun with her first husband, but she told wilder stories about her other husbands. This interview is useful because she is a former slave who reports little issues with her master. We can see her becoming so used to slavery that she excused and justified any act that her master did, no matter how severe. It takes her a little while to get to the crux of the subject or remember what really happened which is funny but a little frustrating, too. I believed that oral histories were important to the documentation of our past but, I forgot to address that they can sometimes be hard to understand

¹⁶

. My recordings had cracking sounds and you can hear Faulk periodically saying “lean in” or “speak up”. I also forgot that the people who had the means to record it had to have the equipment and might be in a higher social standing than their interviewee. I was happy that Faulk was not racist towards aunt Harriet Smith and that she was comfortable enough to speak so candidly with him, despite them discussing an issue that confronts race head-on. ¹⁷It’s clear that the social standing of the 1930s is better than it was before. They’re able to converse about the past and let her tell her whole story which, she’s not always been able to do. I liked how he asked questions and that you can hear someone cooking something in the background, it gives off the feeling that maybe they would have a meal together at the end.