Lay My Burden Down A Folk History of Slavery

by Botkin, B. A.; Hirsch, Jerrold I.

• ISBN13: 9780385311151
• ISBN10: 038531115X
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-01-01
• Publisher: Delta

Summary

In the 1930's, the last decade when many men and women who were born under slavery and freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.still lived, the New Deal's Federal Writing Project made an extraordinary and important decision. It sent interviewers to ask these African-American survivors : What does it mean to be free? Even more, how does it feel? "Does I remember much 'bout slavery times? Well, there is no way for me to disremember unless I die." B.A. Botkin compiled nearly three hundred of these narratives to create a rich, unvarnished portrait of lives lived half slave, half free. In it, people who experienced the seasonal rhythms of plantation life . . .who were eyewitnesses to Lincoln, Douglas, and Tubman . . .who had their conciousness shaped by bondage . . .and who felt the anguish of the lash have their memories brought to life again. Their voices reach out across the decades and teach us what they know -- our history and our legacy in their telling of an indelible truth.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Preface	p. xxxiii
Introduction	p. 1
Mother Wit	p. 7
Fooling Master and Catching John	p. 9
Tall Tales and Tall Talk	p. 17
How Come	p. 20
Lincoln and Others	p. 23
Birds and Beasts	p. 29
Pastor and Flock	p. 33
The Power	p. 38
Hants	p. 48
Anecdotes	p. 59
Long Remembrance	p. 71
From Can to Can't	p. 143
Count the Stars through the Cracks	p. 145
Going High, Going Slow	p. 159
Praying to the Right Man	p. 170
The Slave's Chance	p. 182
A War Among the White Folks	p. 199
They Made Us Sing "Dixie"	p. 201
We've Come to Set You Free	p. 212
All I Know About Freedom	p. 229
How Freedom Came	p. 231
The Breaking-Up and After	p. 238
The Equalization War	p. 265
I Take Freedom	p. 279
List of Informants and Interviewers	p. 283
Index	p. 307
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