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Seth Holm

Mr. Gagnon

History 3090

March 5, 2004

Influence of Interviewers, the Great Depression, and the New Deal on WPA Slave Narratives

The slave interviews compiled by the social workers of the Works Progress Administration for the Federal Writers’ Project from 1936 through 1938 provide an insightful, yet not debate free, view of slavery in the American South. Furthermore, these interviews are vital to our understanding of the “peculiar institution” in America because life on the plantation is no longer hearsay, at least in the sense that the experiences are not recounted by a biased white assembly who wish to alleviate the misery of day to day slave life. Nonetheless, there are many inconsistencies present in the two thousand interviews compiled that are noteworthy, and one must be consciously skeptical when comprehending the validity of the information recorded from the slave’s mouth. Many controversial factors are present in the interviews, including: race, gender, political views, background, class, and other attributes of the interviewer as well as the interviewee. The substantial importance of the environment surrounding these interviews must also not be overlooked in view of the fact that the Great Depression and the New Deal had profound effects on American life.

In examining Edwin Driskell’s interview with William Ward, such factors are essential to our conception of the reliability of this account, most notably the race of the interviewer. The interview that takes place between Driskell and Ward is an exceptional case, considering the fact that Edwin Driskell is black. Being a black man and working for the Federal Writers’ Project was quite novel, although assigning unemployed blacks was the original intention of those renewing the slave narratives in the 1920’s. However, the African Americans in charge of the national office in Washington for the writing project could not exert significant influence upon an operation that was vastly controlled by white state governments. Therefore, whites were by far the majority in interviewing the ex-slaves, thus the rare black interviewers served as special cases that could be used to compare and contrast the information collected by blacks as opposed to whites.^{^[i]}

One must begin his quest for insight into the slave narratives with the interviewer and his background. Through research in Atlanta’s city directories, Edwin Driskell seems to have committed himself to a life of service to the community. As cited in the 1941 Atlanta city directory, Edwin Driskell was a social worker in the County Department of Public Welfare and lived at 457 Waterford Road Northwest. In 1956, Edwin appears again, but this time married to a woman named Nellie C and working as a carrier at the post office. Later, in 1965 Edwin serves as an inter-group relations assistant in the U.S. Public Housing Administration. Finally, Edwin seems to have retired by 1978, but still lives with Nellie C on 457 Waterford RD NW. Through inference of his occupations, one may assume that Edwin genuinely cared for Atlanta’s well being and felt a high sense of civic duty. Therefore, it would not be unreasonable to assert that William Ward would trust and open up to a man of Driskell’s stature, especially since he held a rare and distinguished position for a black man.^{^[ii]}

Having both a black interviewer and interviewee helps to dispose of the race-based communication problems which many historians believe undermine the worth of the narratives. White people in the South were still very racist and held to their preconceived notions of the inferiority of the black race, and the white interviewers, though well-intentioned, were no exception. Due to the complexity of race relations, ex-slaves were often not willing to give full answers to controversial questions or topics because it was still a societal taboo to speak out against a white man. Interviewers were also known to intimidate and asks leading questions to their informers, as well as to call them “nigger” or “boy” . In addition, some slaves were interviewed by offspring of their former slaveholders. None of these elements was very conducive to an open and completely honest description of slave life. ^{^[iii]}

On the other hand, Driskell and Ward are both black, making many of these objections to the narratives’ worth irrelevant. WPA interviews are notorious for their exclusion of topics that dealt with “songs and religious sentiments… cruel punishments, forced marriages, family separations, and ridicule of whites” (Using Testimony of Ex-Slaves). However, William Ward speaks openly to Driskell about each of these topics without the least bit of regret. Ward’s narrative is very descriptive and sheds light on the daily lives of slaves; for example, he graphically describes the beatings that he and other slaves would receive from his second owner “Ol’ Mack Williams”, saying “Dat man would kill you sho” . The cruelest example of plantation owners abusing their slaves occurs when Mack Williams tells Ward that he would kill him if his wife was good-looking and have children with her. This description is a far cry away from how many other described the good life on the plantation. This was not a typical statement made to interviewers in the narratives; thus, there must have been an understanding and connection between Ward and Driskell, made apparent in the last lines of the interview in which Ward waves happily goodbye to Driskell and asks him to come back and see him.

Many historians criticisms of the WPA narratives say that slaves were not old enough by the breakout of the Civil War to have truly experienced slavery and its reality. However, William Ward is one-hundred and five years old in the 1937 interview, meaning that he was around thirty at the outbreak of the Civil War and has much more slave experience than the vast majority of interviewees. In fact, he is part of the interview group over 30 at emancipation that represents three percent of those interviewed. The theory amongst historians is that the slave narratives are not highly critical of the “peculiar institution” because most interviewees were not old enough to have seen a severe beating, but had just heard of it. Ward is not a slave who succumbs to this stereotype of slaves viewing their masters as kind, noble gentlemen and plantations life as “the good ol‘ days”. Ward describes even Mr. Brown, his sympathetic master whom he likes, as regularly beating slaves, and deciding which slaves could marry each other. Even if two slaves were in love, they were not permitted to sleep together without Mr. Brown’s permission. ^{^[iv]}

Moreover, the age bias view that slaves were too young to remember genuine, factual memories is not a factor because Ward had been a slave for thirty five years before emancipation and for forty more in the “Peonage System” in Mississippi. Ward routinely emphasizes the fact that he is speaking not from what he has been told rather from personal experience, and few can argue with the amount of memories Ward has, having been enslaved for seventy years. The ironic fact is that Ward’s description of his slavery under the Peonage System in Mississippi after emancipation as much more dreadful, and his masters are inhumane and grossly misogynistic. Thus, because Ward does not conform to age statistics in reference to WPA interviews, his testimony can be viewed in a more legitimate light than many of the other narratives.

However, one may then assume that his extreme old age causes distortion in his memory, but such is not the case because Driskell informs the reader of Ward’s remarkably young appearance and physical and mental sharpness. William Ward can remember all the way back until he was nine playing with the master’s children, this would have been quite a memory for a one hundred and five year old man. In addition, Ward portrays his life as a slave in a very vivid and detailed manner.

Antebellum narratives served to dispute the notion that slave life was pleasant and that in fact slaves were better off than factory workers in the North. Abolitionist sentiments were echoed in these narratives, and the slave narratives were diametrically opposed to the recounts of proslavery whites. However, the sample of these narratives is biased because most of the slaves had run away. These narratives were very popular and helped people realize that the institution of slavery is not as pleasant as described by southern whites.

However, slave narratives of the antebellum variety failed to surface again until the 1920’s with a renewed interest in African American culture and folklore. Much of the resurgence was in response to people like Ulrich B. Phillips, who described the slaves as content, yet he completely disregarded the slave narratives as valid historical information. This unfounded, controversial research caused private individuals to investigate for themselves. Powerful, intelligent blacks also inspired the WPA narratives because they knew they could not stay content with the white man’s view of history that slavery was not so horrible. Prior to the 1920’s and since the Civil War, literature focused on how slavery converted many heathens to Christians and civilized a scientifically barbaric and inferior race. This type of literature laid the ground for the theory that ran through the WPA narratives that slaver could be best understood through the individual stories of slaves. The focus shifted from the ideological perspective to the day to day lives of slaves. One cannot truly understand slavery in America just by viewing it from the perspective that it was morally wrong.^{^[v]}

In order for the reader to understand why ex-slaves do not speak openly about life on the plantation, it is necessary to look at the larger world of the Great Depression and New Deal. Many of the slave’s reluctance to speak openly about the horrors of slavery can be linked to the social situations that were present within Atlanta and Georgia in the 1930’s. The Great Depression struck Atlanta and many were left jobless. The present social caste system in which whites ruled over blacks caused many blacks to lose their jobs to whites. The jobs that white people were stealing form blacks were white-collar jobs that not many white men would have even considered before the Depression.

Unemployment soared for blacks in Atlanta during the Depression and this produced the need for financial aid to black citizens. African American organizations such as the NAACP were still in their infancy at this time but were working to improve African Americans position in society. Many blacks were impoverished and needed aid from the government during the Depression; however, the local Atlanta private black organizations were not having much success eliciting funds. The NAACP’s method for gaining welfare involved gradual, non-aggressive reform efforts, and they were continually shot down by the white governing class and given less money than whites. In order for blacks to receive financial aid, they needed to be involved in government issues and be viewed as equals. ^{^[vi]}

It is at this time that the Communist Party starts to draw a following in Atlanta. W.E. DuBois and other high status black men who wanted reform and wanted it immediately. The Communist party and its legal wing, the International Labor Defense were making strides in court for equality. The aggressive method which was proving successful started to catch on with the local Atlanta black community, and Communist meetings sprang up around town. The Communist leaders at this time started to verbally attack the NAACP and essentially called them cowards.

The Communist movement eventually died out when the Red Scare started to reach the Atlanta white community. For blacks to be practicing Communism meant that they thought they were equal with whites, and whites responded with violence against anyone who could be connected to the party. Eventually, the Communist party was doomed to fail anyways because it called for the equality in social classes and not race. However, whites suppression of communism served as a reminder that efforts by blacks to better themselves would not be tolerated.

When Roosevelt was elected, he began several federal projects to try to restore the nations economy and confidence in the government. The New Deal reforms in Atlanta were aimed at the right purposes in that they planned to distribute aid on the basis of need rather than race, and generally did. However, those in control of the funding did not wish to elevate blacks to higher standing socially or to any “vocational”, skilled jobs in the workplace, but wanted to alleviate the poverty that many blacks faced. Many white people still felt the paternalism that was present in Antebellum years. Though liberal, white social workers still believed blacks to be an inferior race that could not handle skilled jobs but only manual labor and domestic service. Essentially, in return for funding distributed to blacks, they had to accept their position as a lower class with no civil rights. Blacks began to learn that “Georgia’s white New Deal social workers sought to modernize and rationalize, indeed to institutionalize their caste position”.⁹

Gender roles come into play in the Great Depression and New Deal era as well. The jobs offered by the federal officers for black women were always domestic service jobs, and many were employed in factories sewing. Moreover, whenever funds had to be cut down, women’s relief had to go first. It was clear that the government had no intention of disturbing the status quo amongst males and females and blacks and whites. New Deal actions showed “this project to be a peculiar mix of the modern and the retrograde; it attempted to reinforce customary social and race relations in the South by encoding them in state programs”. Consequently, accepting welfare money then was very costly for blacks.^{^[vii]}

Nonetheless, black women would not stand for their roles as purely domestic servants, so they fought back by holding many different jobs and never staying anywhere for long. This caused a renewed racism in whites because they constantly compared the docile, obedient slave of the South to the new generation of disrespectful and lazy blacks. The Depression was a rough time for everyone and especially female blacks because even though they supplied all the family’s money a lot of the time, they were never able to get jobs that were not in the domestic service or private circuit.

The overall misery, hunger, and dreary nature of the Depression provides historians with a theory about why so many slaves described plantation life as the “good ol’ days”. Historians point to the fact that many ex-slaves lived in more poverty in the present and received less food than they did in slavery, and believe that because of this, the interviewees tended to view the past with “rose-colored glasses”.

Edwin Driskell describes William Ward as being one hundred and five years old living in a small, back alley, one-room apartment. Ward also has no help from children and has to be a lonely man. Ward has seventeen children, yet does not know where a single one of them is. Needless to say, Ward is certainly not living a worry-free life unaffected by the Depression. Nonetheless, Ward does not view his past in slavery anything like many of the typical narratives. Ward describes his life as a slave in Mississipi as hell, “Man, dey wus devils; dey wouldn’t ‘low you to go nowhere --- not even church” (132). Ward, on the other hand, liked his first master, Mr. Brown, but he still says that he would rather live under present conditions than in slavery again.

Attitudes resembling Ward’s seems to have been the prevailing opinion of most Georgians at this time. Though times were rough and they would not want to go back and relive it, the Depression was not so terrible that they wholeheartedly did not enjoy life. Most Georgians blaim the Depression on the “government’s farm policy of the 1920’s, reckless spending and inflation, overproduction, World War I, and the protective tariff”. Most importantly, nearly every Georgian blaims the Depression wholly on President Hoover and there was an overall disgust for the man. Even so, the arrival of Rooselvelt in office and his plans renewed confidence in the American people and many Georgians saw his election as a turning point for better times to come.

One must not blindly accept these slave narratives as God’s honest truth. There were many situations that could cause an ex-slave to fictionalize his story. Overall white bigotry could cause a communication block between the interviewer and the ex-slave; there is no logical way that a black man in the 1930’s would reveal his darkest secrets or deep-seated hate for plantation owners to a white interviewer and not fear for his well-being. Furthermore, roles of blacks in society as second class citizens during the Depression and New Deal era multiplied the possibility of ex-slave not telling the truth. Most interviews took place in the “Jim Crow” south, which was still largely dominated by racist ideologies and practices. Blacks were given no chance in the workplace or representation in government, so it is not unreasonable that they would be introverted in their opinions about slave society.

All these factors lead one to believe that slave narratives cannot be counted on as reliable historic information. However, no matter how biased, these interviews were the deepest look into American slavery that we have ever had because they were experienced by the eyes of the slave. The narratives can be viewed as shedding light on the everyday roles of slaves in the Antebellum South, an area which historical records previously lacked entirely. It is for this reason that the interview between Driskell and Ward is so significant, for many of the barriers to straightforward communication were removed because they were the same race. Thus, the account by William Ward can be thought of as in the most reliable category of the narratives, and I believe that interviews such as Ward’s prove vital to our understanding of the slave’s thoughts and experiences in slavery.

Related Sites

Slavery--The Peculiar Institution

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart1.html

Voices from Slavery : 100 Authentic Slave Narratives

http://ssl-myth.stories-more.com/detail.php?asin=0486409120&mode=books

The Bee Hive Press’ Slavery

http://www.southernhistory.com/slavery.html