An HBO Special

UnChained Memories--1930s WPA Slave Narratives

A Response to the Editor 

By Amin Sharif

I have just watched the HBO Special UnChained Memories: Slave Narratives. And as always, I was deeply touched by the words and spirit in the words of our ancestors. When I use the term "spirit in the word," I mean nothing other than the spirit of endurance. How we endure is as much a measure of our humanity as any other. The slave narratives have always baffled me for their wholly human character. They always open my mind to a new order of existence--a new way of being. I have said as much before.

Tell me, if you can, how does one find meaning as a human being in a system that is designed to deny one's humanity? The reason I ask is that our children are on the verge of losing their humanity to the same system that placed our ancestors in chains. Losing their humanity -- that is what all the hype about materialism and hedonism amounts too. We were once a people who had nothing -- forced to deny all that we were. Yet, we held on somehow. Today, we find ourselves and our children more lost than ever.

When I compare the slave narratives to the screams and wails of the hip hop generation, adorned in enough silver and gold, possessing sporting cars that would buy a plantation, I am filled with embarrassment and shame for my children -- for our children. When I hear the words of our fathers and mothers forlorn in a land that amounted to a living hell, I look at the present generation and see nothing but a lot of spoiled cry babies. Could one or any of them endure a day of true slavery! No, they are too busy whining about the false night of their existence. Slavery -- that was the blackest night of all!  If our ancestors could find and maintain their humanity in the darkness of a slave cabin, then why can't our children find their humanity on the streets of the ghetto?

Perhaps, they have lost their desire to be human. I do not say this lightly, my brother. It is easy to give in to bestiality when it has been made so attractive to our babies, our youth. Perhaps the fault is not totally to be found within our children. After all, it is we (the prior generation) you place the first pair of Nikes on their toddler feet. And it is we who continue to feed them the pabulum that all that is of value in the world can be brought and sold. Was it Fanon who said that every slave or oppressed person must participate in their slavery/oppression to make it work? 

Here, we have come full circle. For tonight, I have seen and heard the words of those who were bought and sold. With regret, I find that the spirit in those words are more precious than the silver and gold that adorns the throats of our forlorn children. Time does not permit more to be said.

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A Narrative Sample --

Rev. Ishrael Massie's account of rape: 

"Lord chile, dat wuz common. Marsters an' overseers use to make slaves dat wuz wid deir husbands git up, do as dey say. Send husband out on de farm, milkin' cows or cuttin' wood. Den he gits in bed wid slave himself. Some women would fight an tussel. Others would be 'umble - feared of dat beatin'. What we saw, couldn't do nothing 'bout it..''

Check out also the following material:

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "Not Gone With the Wind: Voices of Slavery." New York Times (February, 9, 2003.

George P. Rawick, The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1979.

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update 5 July 2008