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Introduction to the Mississippi Narratives - Corn Pone and Wine Bottles
Critics like John Blassingame, Eugene D. Genovese, Kenneth Stampp, and
C. Vann Woodward have observed that the WPA ex-slave narratives contain
a great deal of distortion. They are right, and scholars who plan to use
these as source materials must develop methodologies which filter out
as much distortion as possible and bring their truth into proper focus.
Nonetheless, a lot of the criticism is exaggerated: first of all because
virtually every type of source material contains potential sources of
distortion, yet similar standards are rarely applied to “traditional”
sources (for example, critics who consider testimony from a WPA narrative
suspect unless independently confirmed are likely to consider a New
York Times report true unless proven false); second, because distortions
often serve as a prism to help reveal deeper, normally hidden truths.
Here are two possible examples: (1) Ex-slaves who report Ku Klux attacks
during slavery times when the KKK didn't exist may be revealing the
similarity between antebellum “pattyrollers” and the Klan later
on. (In the same vein, other ex- slaves referred to the KKK as “pattyrollers.”)
(2) Charlie Davenport reported that when he was a fifteen-year-old slave
on a large Adams County plantation,
Abe Lincoln, what called hisself a rail splitter, come here
to talk wid us. He went all through de country jest a rantin and preachin
’bout us bein his black brudders. Ole Marse didn't know nothin
’bout hit ’cause hit was sorta secret like. Hit shore riled
de niggers up en lots ob ’em run away.
Charlie Davenport, LC version
Charlie Davenport, Mississippi supplement
He is certainly wrong about Lincoln, but he may be accurately remembering
a visit from John Brown or his emissary, an event reported in the Vicksburg
Whig after Old Brown was executed.
It would be a grave error to discard these sources because they contain
errors like these; instead, we must develop methods to learn as much as
possible from them.
We may profit from a consideration of the sources of distortion noted
by the critics, and perhaps one or two of our own. One of the most persistent
criticisms of the WPA narratives is that the age of the ex-slaves at the
time of the interviews biases the information they contain. One version
of this argument points out that memories color and fade in old age. Certainly
this is a problem, but few historians have suggested discarding the memoirs
of Winston Churchill or Dwight D. Eisenhower because of their aged, fading
memories at the time of writing—and unlike the memoirs of a Churchill
or an Eisenhower, the massive number of ex-slave witnesses offers a corrective
to the warping of an individual narrator's memory. Users of the narratives
would be well advised to seek independent confirmation of events reported
by a single ex-slave, but many experiences that pervade the narratives
(examples are “jumping the broom” wedding ceremonies and “turning
down a pot” to catch sound in religious meetings, both described
in George Rawick's From Sundown to Sunup) can be confidently
believed with or without outside confirmation. Certainly, the mass of
testimony tends to correct individual distortions about food, clothing,
shelter, work, punishment, recreation, religious activity, plantation
technology, and the like.
Another variant of this criticism points out that most of the ex-slaves
interviewed in the late 1930s had been children during the antebellum
era and were emancipated before they reached adulthood. No doubt that
had an effect on their recollections; some writers think they give a rosier
view of slavery times than an earlier generation would have. There are
several internal correctives to this distortion. For one thing, a smaller
but significant percentage of narrators were very old and therefore had
been slave adults; a preliminary study of their narratives does not seem
to offer a measurably different view of slavery than that provided by
the rest. In any event, the recollections of those interviewed would certainly
not be discretely their own; they would certainly have been shaped by
their elders, who had experienced more fully the harshness of slave life.
John Blassingame's book The Slave Community relies mostly
on autobiographies of those who had experienced slavery as young adult
males, but the picture that emerges does not differ in important ways
from the one drawn from stories told to WPA interviewers, though the latter
add a huge number of women's and children's experiences.
Anthropologists warn us that histories based on oral testimony tend to
be “telescoped,” that is, certain remote events will be transmitted
while more recent ones may be forgotten. I would offer two observations.
First, this is true of every kind of history, not just the oral variety;
second, it is a strength, not a weakness. If we generally know more about
the years 1861 to 1865 than the years 1905 to 1909, say, it is probably
because the events of the former period were more important. If the ex-slaves
have similarly “telescoped” their recollections, they have probably
done us a great service.
There are, however, factors which have distorted these narratives in
more consistent and pernicious ways, and these we will have to consider
more carefully to avoid some potential pitfalls in interpretation.
Mark Twain gained a great deal of his wisdom and keen insights into human
ways from his slave teachers. In an essay discovered and published after
his death, the great humorist and social critic related a lesson he had
learned from a sermon preached by Jerry, a slave:
“You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I’ll
tell you what his ’pinions is.”
I can never forget it. It was deeply impressed upon me. By my mother.
Not upon my memory, but elsewhere. She had slipped in upon me while I
was absorbed and not watching. The black philosopher's idea was that
a man is not independent, and cannot afford views which might interfere
with his bread and butter. If he would prosper, he must train with the
majority; in matters of large moment, like politics and religion, he must
think and feel with the bulk of his neighbors, or suffer damage in his
social standing and in his business prosperities. He must restrict himself
to corn-pone opinions—at least on the surface.
Not surprisingly, much of the material in the WPA slave narratives
consists of corn pone. Especially in Mississippi, most of the interviews
were conducted by white women upon whose goodwill the elderly blacks
may have depended, directly or indirectly, for their continuing survival.
Often the interviewers were descendants of the former owners of the
interviewees. Even when they were not, it is likely that when the
choices were being made about which elderly blacks to interview, “good”
ones would be sought and “bad” ones shunned.
Most of the corn-pone opinions are easy to spot, and that very fact means
that anyone armed with an intelligent view of history will not encounter
much difficulty on this score. It is not necessary to rely on intuition,
however. In “Slavery—the Historian's Burden,” Kenneth
Stampp has noted that in the previously published WPA narratives,
slavery was remembered as a harsh institution by 7 percent of
the narrators interviewed by whites and 25 percent of those interviewed
by blacks, by 16 percent of the narrators living in the South and by 38
percent of those living in the North, by 3 percent of the narrators clearly
dependent on white support and by 23 percent of those who seemed to be
financially independent.
Though Stampp's calculations should be redone to incorporate
the recently discovered narratives, the results will probably be similar.
There is also evidence in many of the individual narratives or groups
of narratives that reveals the underlying reality. To illustrate: a huge
majority of the ex-slaves reported that Ole Marster and Ole Miss were
fine, quality folks who treated them kindly (absolutely guaranteed when
Ole Marster was “your father, Miss”). But many times the very
same interviewees will report that they left the plantation the minute
they were freed (or earlier)—strange behavior indeed if Marster was
really such a loving and beloved man. Other times, another former slave
from the same plantation or one close by will reveal the seamy side of
life.
There were always enough ex-slaves who didn't seem to worry about
the consequences of telling the horrors of slavery—possibly one in
ten—to provide relief for the reader from the corn-pone litany. Also,
there was always a small group of white interviewers who were able to
record what they were told despite the prejudices imposed upon them by
the rules of white racist etiquette. This often comes as a surprise to
readers who have learned to expect only the worst. If the narratives of
elderly white people collected by the WPA during the same period ever
draw the attention they deserve, much of this will be placed in perspective.
Some of the worst horrors of slavery are described in them. Here are three
examples from WPA papers in the Mississippi Department of Archives and
History:
J. H. Williams of Lincoln County said:
I’ll never forget the cruel treatment the slaves received.
It was reported that a run-away slave had killed a white woman, and everyone
was on the look-out for him. One evening a Negro boy and I were returning
from a rabbit hunt when I noticed a black hand upon a log on the edge
of the path and poking the boy, I asked if he saw the hand. He said he
did, but not to stop; we went on home and told what we had found. It turned
out to be the run-away Negro. A group of the slave owners took him out,
undressed him, and tied him to a log and whipped him until blisters were
formed; then, they took a large tom-cat by the tail and dragged him up
and down the Negro's back. After this, they sprinkled salt and pepper
over the mangled back and rubbed it in. Such were the hideous treatments
the slaves received before and just after the War between the States.
I love the South, but I did not love her way of slavery.
The narrative of John Wooley, another white Lincoln County resident,
contains this:
I do not remember much about the slaves being free, but some
of them hated to tell my papa they were leaving him, so they slipped off
during the night. Before they were declared free, some of them would form
groups and try to run away. A Dr. Johnson, living this side of Natchez,
would way-lay these run-away slaves and killed several of them. It was
said he cut their heads off. He did cut the head of one off and put it
on the end of a long, sharp stick and stuck this up at the crossroads
so the slaves would see it and get scared and go back to their owners.
And a white WPA worker, C. Sessions Fant, wrote:
There is really no evidence to support a wide spread belief
that they are in any intrinsic sense inferior to the whites. Given equal
opportunities they would in all probability make rapid intellectual progress.
It might be said of them that the fault, dear reader, is not in their
stars but in their overlords that they are underlings.
Though these are rare words from native white Mississippians of their
day, there is ample precedent and every reason to believe that a proper
search would turn up similar materials elsewhere. Mark Twain, by way
of example, was the son of a slaveowner and didn't object to
slavery; he even fought for the Confederacy for a short time. Yet,
in later years he was amanuensis for a classic slave narrative, and
he learned enough from slaves and former slaves to record fictionally
many truths about slavery and freedom that are often concealed by
historians who traffic in documented facts.
Few honest scholars will have any trouble locating and filtering through
the corn pone in this narrative collection, though some, for ideological
reasons or out of sheer stupidity, will take it at face value. Robert
William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman have done this when they write in
Time on the Cross that “the overwhelming majority of the ex-slaves
in the W.P.A. narratives who expressed themselves on the issue reported
that their masters were good men.”
Many ex-slaves report that they were better off as slaves. Sometimes
this is corn pone; in other cases it is nostalgia. But anyone who has
seen the pictures that accompanied many of these narratives (there are
a couple dozen in the Mississippi Department of Archives and History)
would conclude that such a declaration was often literally true—the
condition of the homes, the tattered clothes, and the forlorn expressions
permit no other judgment. Frederick Douglass explained it:
When these false reasoners assert that the condition of the
emancipated is wretched and deplorable, I agree with them. I even concur
with them that the negro is in some respects, and in some localities,
in a worse condition to-day than in the time of slavery, but I part with
these gentlemen when they ascribe this condition to emancipation.
To my mind, the blame for this condition does not rest upon emancipation,
but upon slavery. It is not the result of emancipation, but the defeat
of emancipation. It is not the work of the spirit of liberty, but the
work of the spirit of bondage, and of the determination of slavery to
perpetuate itself, if not under one form, then under another. It is due
to the folly of endeavoring to retain the new wine of liberty in the old
bottles of slavery. I concede the evil but deny the alleged cause.
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