During the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration sent workers to
interview over 2,200 former slaves about their experiences during
slavery and the time immediately after the Civil War. The interviews
conducted with the former Louisiana slaves often showed a different life
from the slaves in neighboring states.
Louisiana was unique among the slave-holding states because of French
law and influence, as demonstrated in the standards set to govern slaves
in Le Code Noir. Its history was also different from many Southern
states because of the prevalence of large sugar cane as well as cotton
plantations, which benefited from the frequent replenishment of rich
river silt deposited by Mississippi River floods. At Frogmore
Plantation, which is located in Louisiana across the Mississippi River
from Natchez, co-owner Lynette Tanner has spent 16 years researching and
interpreting the slave narratives in order to share these stories with
visitors from around the globe. The plantation offers historical
re-enactments, written by Tanner, that are performed by descendants of
former Natchez District slaves.
In this collection, Tanner gathered interviews conducted with former
slaves who lived in Louisiana at the time of the interviews as well as
narratives with those who had been enslaved in Louisiana but had moved
to a different state by the 1930s. Their recollections of food, housing,
clothing, weddings, and funerals, as well as treatment and relationships
echo memories of an era, like no other, for which America still faces
repercussions today.
Lynette Tanner and her husband own Frogmore Plantation, a working cotton
plantation and gin distillery, as well as Terre Noir, a second
plantation in Concordia Parish. Tanner has received numerous awards for
her preservation efforts and her promotion of Louisiana tourism. Tanner
was the author and narrator of "The Delta: A Musical History" for the
Smithsonian traveling exhibit which was on display in the La. Delta
area.
