In 1929, the Social Sciences Department at Fisk University in Nashville,
Tennessee, began recording the oral histories of former slaves. During
the mid-1930s, the Federal Writers' Project undertook a similar effort,
ultimately compiling more than two thousand interviews and ten thousand
pages of material in seventeen states. In this volume, thirty-six former
slaves living in Tennessee recount what it was like to live under the
yoke. Tennessee was not a large slaveholding state compared with others
in the South. On the other hand, it was a leader in the abolition
movement prior to 1830 and a powder keg of mixed Union and Confederate
sympathies at the time of the Civil War. The voices in this volume thus
recall the extreme conditions of slavery in the border country.
Originally from San Antonio, Andrea Sutcliffe has a journalism degree
from the University of Texas at Austin. She was a writer, editor, and
publications manager in the Washington, DC, area for twenty years. Her
writing and editing career began in 1990 as director of the EEI Press in
Alexandria, Virginia. In 1996, Andrea Sutcliffe moved to Virginia's
Shenandoah Valley to devote herself full-time to writing. Andrea's love
of her new home in the mountains of western Virginia, and a desire to
learn more about the region's fascinating history, led to her book,
Touring the Shenandoah Valley Backroads.
