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. 1
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. 2 For example, the southern life histories project changed people opinion about the South. Indeed, it helped them see social and economic challenges, and inequalities. 3
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.
