Sights & Sounds of Slavery

Primary & Secondary Sources in History

• Primary– Direct or firsthand– Examples:

• Bill of sale• Letters• Diaries• Oral histories• Photographs

REMEMBER: Some of these sources can be biased

• Secondary– Derived from

something original or primary

– Examples• Textbook• TV documentary• Recent Magazine

articles• Recent Newspaper

articles• Encyclopedias

Abolitionists• What is an

abolitionist?• What did they think

of slavery?– Morally wrong– Cruel and

inhumane– Violates the

principles of democracy

Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of he man who wishes to take the good of it by being a slave himself

-Abraham Lincoln

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck

- Frederick Douglass

The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery

- Frederick Douglass

Slave Narratives• Narrative: to tell in detail, in this case to tell

about part of a person’s life• Interviews with people who had been

slaves before and during the American Civil War

• Done from 1935-1938 by the WPA (Works Progress Administration)—audio tapes now in the Library of Congress

The Words of Fountain Hughes, Former Slave

• Born 1848 • Interviewed by Hermond

Norwood,Baltimore, Maryland, June 11, 1949

• My name is Fountain Hughes. I was born in Charlottesville, Virginia. My grandfather belong to Thomas Jefferson.

Life as a Slave: Fountain Hughes (continued)

We had no home, you know. We was jus' turned out like a lot of cattle. You know how they turn cattle out in a pasture? Well after freedom, you know, colored people didn' have nothing.

Didn' allow you to look at no book. An' there was some free-born colored people, why they had a little education, but there was very few of them, where we was.

Now I couldn' go from here across the street, or I couldn' go through nobody's house out I have a note, or something from my master. An' if I had that pass, that was what we call a pass, if I had that pass, I could go wherever he sent me.

Slave Children

An' my father was dead, an' my mother was living, but she had three, four other little children, an' she had to put them all to work for to help take care of the others.

They'd have a regular, have a sale every month, you know, at the court house. An' then they'd sell you, an' get two hundred dollar, hundred dollar, five hundred dollar

Advertisement for sale of human beings

Homework Assignment– Picture yourself as a slave before the Civil War– Write a paragraph describing the three things you

would like LEAST about being a slave, and explain why

– Draw a picture to illustrate what life was like for you as a slave.