• Project Timeline

• Introduction to the LOC collection (PDF)

• 1941 introduction to the LOC collection (PDF)

• Introduction to the Mississippi Narratives

• Instructions to the interviewers (PDF)

• Sample narratives

• Introduction to the Index

• Acknowledgements

• Foreword by Dr. Charles Joyner

Mississippi

by Ken Lawrence

The Scope and Potential of the Mississippi Narratives

In 1937, there were approximately 20,000 former slaves living in Mississippi. About 560 of them (2.8 percent) were noted in WPA materials, and about 450 of these were actually interviewed. (In a few cases, it is difficult to be certain whether a particular ex-slave was actually interviewed, so it is not possible to be exact.) This collection of Mississippi narratives is therefore statistically representative of the whole WPA collection if we revise the percentage reported by Norman Yetman (“approximately 2 percent of the total ex-slave population in the United States at the time”) upward to include all of the WPA material uncovered since his book appeared.

In some ways, these interviews may be more representative of the surviving ex-slaves than of those from most states. Although the bulk of them are grouped around urban areas—Jackson, Vicksburg, Meridian, Gulfport, Natchez, McComb, and Clarksdale—none of these cities compares in size to those in every other southern state; some of their “Negro quarters” were in the country.

When reading the narratives, it is often important to differentiate between counties as the lines were drawn in 1860 and those of the 1930s. Some counties that are well represented—Copiah and Simpson in Central Mississippi, for example—have no cities at all. Some of the most rural counties of the Delta, the most remote counties of the Piney Woods, and the “whitest” counties of the Northeast aren't represented at all.

Sixty of the state's eighty-two counties are represented, with an excellent geographic spread.

To a certain extent, this makes it possible to contrast the experiences of slavery in different localities within Mississippi, but not without difficulties. The narratives vary widely in quality. The Writers’ Project had six district offices, with state headquarters in Jackson. In some districts, the narrative assignment was assumed by the supervisor, who was usually the most experienced writer. In others, the task was neglected or assigned to an inexperienced writer.

Despite these differences, the size of the collection is sufficient to reveal a great deal of geographic variation. Readers can learn the difference between the clothes worn in the winter by slaves in the northern counties and those worn in the central and southern parts of Mississippi. Many other examples will occur, and researchers who are sensitive to the quirks and complexities will undoubtedly be able to work out methods to reveal everything from the location of buried treasure to a family's missing genealogy.

When working with this collection, scholars should bear in mind the dictum of astronomer Martin Rees: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” In some respects, these WPA narratives clearly cannot safely be used to measure the ex-slave experience. Political militancy, for example, would have to be underrepresented. Not only were rebellious slaves and their suspected collaborators, black and white, routinely executed in antebellum times and during the Civil War, but during and after Reconstruction Mississippi set a record for barbarism by lynching more black people than any other state. The systematic extermination of black Republicans and the restoration of white Democratic rule—the so-called Mississippi plan—was carried out with clockwork precision under the leadership of former Confederates James Z. George and L. Q. C. Lamar (both later rewarded with seats in the U.S. Senate).

Charles Caldwell's case is a good example. A former slave from Clinton, he was widely recognized, especially by his white enemies, as the most courageous and one of the most talented Reconstruction leaders. He was murdered by the racist “Redeemers” on Christmas Day, 1975. A letter to a WPA researcher from one of the white men who played a minor role in these crimes indicates the extent of the racists’ determination to wipe out every vestige of radicalism: he and a friend had attempted to locate and lynch Charles Caldwell's son in Oberlin, Ohio. No WPA narrative describes any of this, but George Washington Albright, who escaped and survived, did tell the story of the coup d’etat to a Marxist interviewer in New York at the same time that the WPA interviews were being collected. (One exception to this general problem in the WPA collection is Sam McAllum's inside report of “Bloody Kemper.”)

George Washington Albright, Mississippi supplement

Sam McAllum, LC version
Sam McAllum, Mississippi supplement

By the late 1930s in Mississippi, those elderly black Radicals who had survived and had not been driven from the state would certainly have learned to conceal their political views from inquisitive whites. The WPA narratives, then, cannot be used to gauge past rebelliousness quantitatively. The very fact that they contain as many anecdotes of resistance as they do—in the form of slave strikes, tripping patrollers’ horses with vines, hot coals thrown at patrollers, and runaway experiences—must be considered the tip of the iceberg, indications that such events were much more widespread than reported here.

There are many other materials about Mississippi left by former slaves that can help fill out the picture of slavery and the struggle for freedom: Henry Watson, Israel Campbell, William Wells Brown, Louis Hughes, Ida B. Wells, and John Roy Lynch all wrote autobiographies. More than a dozen refugees from slavery interviewed in Canada by Benjamin Drew and included in his book A North-side View of Slavery describe Mississippi experiences. One of Drew's interviews with a former Mississippi slave, Martha Bentley, is reprinted in Abraham Chapman's anthology Steal Away. Simon Gray and Benjamin T. Montgomery wrote letters to their masters that revealed aspects of their privileged stations in life. Freedmen's Bureau records, court and legislative testimony, and black periodicals contain additional first-hand views of ex-slaves.

No doubt, other materials will appear as more aggressive scholars join the search. One unexplored area might be Mexico, probably at least as accessible to Mississippi slaves as the “free” North (and which offered slaves a commitment to freedom unknown in the United States). Until the appearance of Rosalie Schwartz's fine book Across the Rio to Freedom, there was little or nothing available in English about this path to emancipation. A scholarly search south of the Rio Grande might uncover narratives of ex-slaves who lived in many southern states, including Mississippi.

The Once and Future History of Slavery -->