From 1936 to 1938, the Federal Writers' Project (FWP), a part of the New
Deal's Works Progress Administration, hired writers, editors, and
researchers to interview as many former slaves as they could find and
document their lives during slavery. More than 2,000 former slaves in 17
states were interviewed. With Weren't No Good Times, John F. Blair,
Publisher, continues its Real Voices, Real History(TM) series with
selections from 46 of the 125 interviews now archived in the Library of
Congress that were earmarked as interviews with Alabama slaves. Also
included is an excerpt from Thirty Years a Slave: From Bondage to
Freedom, a memoir written by Louis Hughes. This selection reveals a
different aspect of the Alabama slavery experience, because Hughes was
hired out by his master to work at the Confederate salt works during the
Civil War. Alabama was a frontier state and from the beginning, its
economy was built on cotton and slavery. That its laws were fashioned to
accommodate both becomes obvious when related through the experiences of
Alabama's slaves. A year after it obtained statehood, Alabama had a
slave population of 41,879, as compared to 85,451 whites and 571 free
blacks. By 1860, the slave population had swelled to 435,080, while
there were 536,271 whites and 2,690 free blacks. When emancipation came
to the slaves, Alabama's slave owners lost an estimated $200 million of
capital. These narratives will help readers understand slavery by
hearing the voices of the people who lived it.
Horace Randall Williams describes himself as "among the last of
Alabamians - black or white - who have memories of picking cotton by
hand not for a few minutes to see how it felt but because I needed the
few dollars I would get for a day's hard labor under a hot sun," an
experience he says helped him recognize the cadences and dialect in the
slave narratives. An Alabama native, he has researched and written
extensively about civil rights, segregation, and slavery during three
decades as a reporter, writer, editor, and publisher of newspapers,
magazines, and books. He was the founder and, for many years, the
director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Klanwatch Project. He is
the co-founder and editor-in-chief of NewSouth Books in Montgomery,
Alabama. He recently authored 100 Things You Need to Know about
Alabama.
"For a century and a half, these stories and the truths they disclose
have been hidden from view. They are far too important to stay neglected
and ignored. Williams has resurrected the last generation of America's
slaves and allowed them to speak in their own voices." - Elizabeth Breau
Foreword Review
