Slave narrative


The slave narrative is a type of literary genre involving the autobiographical accounts of enslaved persons, particularly black Africans enslaved in the Americas, though many other examples exist. Over six thousand such narratives are estimated to exist; about 150 narratives were published as separate books or pamphlets. In the United States during the Great Depression, more than 2,300 additional oral histories on life during slavery were collected by writers sponsored and published by the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program. Most of the 26 audio-recorded interviews are held by the Library of Congress.
Some of the earliest memoirs of captivity known in the English-speaking world were written by Europeans colonists and later on Americans, captured and sometimes enslaved in North Africa by local Arab Muslims, usually Barbary pirates. These were part of a broad category of "captivity narratives". Beginning in the 17th century, these included accounts by European colonists and later American settlers in North America who were captured and held by American Indian tribes. Several well-known captivity narratives were published before the American Revolution, and they often followed forms established with the narratives of captivity in North Africa. North African accounts did not continue to appear after the Napoleonic Era; accounts from North Americans, captured by western Indian tribes migrating west continued until the end of the 19th century.

As a literary genre

The development of slave narratives from autobiographical accounts to modern fictional works led to the establishment of slave narratives as a literary genre. This large rubric of this so-called "captivity literature" includes more generally "any account of the life, or a major portion of the life, of a fugitive or former slave, either written or orally related by the slave himself or herself". Whereas the first narratives told the stories of fugitive or freed slaves in a time of racial prejudice, they further developed into retrospective fictional novels and extended their influence until common days. Not only maintaining the memory and capturing the historical truth transmitted in these accounts, but slave narratives were primarily the tool for fugitive or former slaves to state their independence in the 19th century, and carry on and conserve authentic and true historical facts from a first-person perspective. They go further than just autobiographies, and are moreover "a source for reconstructing historical experience". The freed slaves that wrote the narratives are considered as historians, since "memory and history come together". These accounts link elements of the slave's personal life and destiny with key historical phenomena, such as the American Civil War and the Underground Railroad.
In simple, yet powerful storylines, slave narratives follow in general a plot common to all of them: starting from the initial situation, the slave in his master's home, the protagonist escapes in the wilderness and narrates the struggle for survival and recognition throughout his uncertain journey to freedom. After all, these narratives were written retrospectively by freed slaves and/or their abolitionist advocate, hence the focus on the transformation from the dehumanized slave to the self-emancipated free man. This change often entailed literacy as a means to overcome captivity, as the case of Frederick Douglass highlights. The narratives are very graphic to the extent as extensive accounts of e.g. whipping, abuse and rape of enslaved women are exposed in detail. The denunciation of the slave owners, in particular their cruelty and hypocrisy, is a recurring theme in slave narratives, and in some examples denounced the double standards.
According to James Olney, a typical outline looks the following way:
There is no consensus about what exact type of literature slave narratives are, whether they can be considered as a proper genre, comprised in the large category captivity narrative, or are autobiographies, memoirs, testimonials, or novels; nonetheless, they play a big part in keeping up the memory of slavery and in approaching a topic that was considered as a taboo for a long time – especially since many denied and still deny the existence of slavery. Given the participation in the 19th century of abolitionist editors, influential early 20th-century historians, such as Ulrich B. Phillips in 1929, suggested that, as a class, "their authenticity was doubtful". These doubts have been criticized following better academic research of these narratives, since the late 20th-century historians have more often validated the accounts of slaves about their own experiences.

North American slave narratives

Slave narratives by African slaves from North America were first published in England in the 18th century. They soon became the main form of African-American literature in the 19th century. Slave narratives were publicized by abolitionists, who sometimes participated as editors, or writers if slaves were not literate. During the first half of the 19th century, the controversy over slavery in the United States led to impassioned literature on both sides of the issue.
To present the reality of slavery, a number of former slaves, such as Harriet Tubman, Harriet Jacobs, and Frederick Douglass, published accounts of their enslavement and their escapes to freedom. Lucy Delaney wrote an account that included the freedom suit waged by her mother in Missouri for their freedom. Eventually some 6,000 former slaves from North America and the Caribbean wrote accounts of their lives, and over 100 book-length accounts were published from formerly enslaved people worldwide.
Before the American Civil War, some authors wrote fictional accounts of slavery to create support for abolitionism. The prime example is Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The success of her novel and the social tensions of the time brought a response by white Southern writers, such as William Gilmore Simms and Mary Eastman, who published what were called anti-Tom novels. Both kinds of novels were bestsellers in the 1850s.

Tales of religious redemption

From the 1770s to the 1820s, slave narratives generally gave an account of a spiritual journey leading to Christian redemption. The authors usually characterized themselves as Africans rather than slaves, as most were born in Africa.
Examples include:
Some more recent narratives, such as Petro Kilekwa's Slave Boy to Priest: The Autobiography of Padre Petro Kilekwa, followed a similar theme.

Islamic slave narratives

By contrast, some slave narratives demonstrate the resiliency of Muslim spiritual identity while enslaved by Christian masters. These narratives tend to highlight the civilised, often aristocratic and scholarly background of their subjects, to emphasise their respectability and defy efforts at racial dehumanisation; and similarly, also tend to discuss their subjects' African Islamic background, to demonstrate that they have a civilisation of their own.
The slave narratives of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo are one such example. Educated as an Islamic scholar in the Fulani state of Futa Toro, Diallo was captured and sold to the Royal Africa Company in 1730, and thereafter brought to Maryland as a slave. During his enslavement, Diallo continued to practice Islam; and his aristocratic blood, education, literacy in multiple languages, and cultivated manner impressed elite audiences in America and Britain, challenging efforts to dehumanise him and his race. He was freed and returned to his homeland in 1734. James Oglethorpe—once governor of the Royal Africa Company—was moved by Diallo's suffering; and when he founded Georgia, he introduced a ban on slavery in 1735. Two contemporary slave narratives of Diallo's life exist: a biography by Thomas Bluett, titled Some Memories of the Life of Job, the Son of the Solomon; and a firsthand memoir, within Francis Moore's Travels Into the Inland Parts of Africa.
Other examples include:
  • Abdur-Rahman Ibrahim ibn Sori: A Fulani prince and Islamic scholar from [Futa Djallon, enslaved in 1788 on a tobacco plantation in Mississippi. His story caught the attention of abolitionist newspaper editor Andrew Marschalk, whose articles about ibn Sori gained national attention. In 1826, Sultan Abdur-Rahman of Morocco petitioned for ibn Sori's freedom; and Secretary of State Henry Clay convinced President John Quincy Adams to free ibn Sori in 1829. His narrative were also a boon to the American Colonisation Society, and ibn Sori would live out the rest of his days in Liberia. His narrative was adapted into a PBS film—Prince Among Slaves—in 2007.
  • Omar ibn Said: A Fulani Islamic scholar from Futa Toro, notable for his taqiyah. He publicly presented as a Christian for much of his life; but his manuscripts including his autobiography—The Life of Omar ben Saeed, Called Morro, a Fullah Slave in Fayetteville, N.C. Owned by Governor Owen —either allude or outright reveal that he had kept his Islamic faith in secret. As with the previous examples, his multilingual education and scholastic credentials were an important part of his life and narrative—while enslaved, he also wrote texts on history and theology, some of which was in service to Christian missionaries in Africa.
  • Yarrow Mamout