COMPLETE [FOLK HIST] Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the US, Vol 11-mas

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silverquill
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Post by silverquill »

Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XI, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 , by Various

This project is now complete. All audio files can be found on our catalog page: https://librivox.org/slave-narratives-vol11-part2/


These volumes of slave narratives are the product of the Federal Writers Project sponsored by the Library of Congress and the Work Project Administration. They consist of verbatim records of personal interviews with former slaves conducted during 1936-1938

"These life histories, taken down as far as possible in the narrators' words, constitute an invaluable body of unconscious evidence or indirect source material, . . . The narratives belong to folk history—history recovered from the memories and lips of participants or eye-witnesses,” This is volume two for the state of North Carolina.
(Summary by Larry Wilson)
Source text (please read only from this text!): https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31219

DEADLINE: Please submit your recording within TWO months of placing your claim. (Most of these are very short sections, so quicker completion would be appreciated). If you cannot complete the recording within this time, please post in the thread to relinquish your claim or to ask the BC for an extension. If your recording is not completed by the deadline, your claim may be reassigned at the BC's discretion.

Claiming sections: Look in the Magic Window below for the list of available sections. Post a reply in this thread asking for the section you would like to record.

New to recording? Please see our Newbie Guide to Recording for further instructions. A quick guide to our required technical settings can be found here. When you post your file, please tell the BC what name you would like to use in our catalog.

Prooflistening level: Standard
Prospective PLs, please see the Guide for Proof-listeners.

Please don't download or listen to files belonging to projects in process unless you are the BC or PL. Our servers are not set up to handle the greater volume of traffic. Please wait until the project has been completed. Thanks!

Magic Window:



BC Admin
LibriVox recording settings: mono (1 channel), 44100 Hz sample rate, 128 kbps constant bit rate MP3. See the Tech Specs

Intro to recording:
Leave 0.5 to 1 second of silence at the beginning.

SPECIAL READING NOTE:
These personal narratives are recorded from the lips of former slaves and reflect their vernacular language. You don’t need to attempt a strong accent; just read the narrative as written. More information about the nature of these narrative is given in the next post.

CAUTION: Some of these narratives may contain racially offensive words which were embedded in the language of the slaves themselves. They must be read as written, so please review the sections and do not select anything that you are not comfortable reading.

NOTE: Please skip the statistical section at the beginning or each section. Do NOT read the internal HW or TR notes. Do NOT read picture captions. Do NOT read any footnotes.

DEADLINE: For this project of many short sections is ONE month.

Say:
"Section # of Slave Narratives, Volume XI, North Carolina Part 2 . This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit librivox.org." [Optional: "Read by your name."] "Slave Narratives Volume XI, North Carolina, Part 2 Section Title."
End of recording:
Say:
"End of section #." [Optional, and if not stated in the intro: "Read by your name, city, date."]
If you are recording the final section of the book, add:
"End of Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XI, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 , by Various."
Leave 5 seconds of silence at the end.

Filename: slavenarrativesvol11pt2_##_various_128kb.mp3 where ## is the section number. (e.g. slavenarrativesvol11pt2_01_various_128kb.mp3)

Upload to the LibriVox Uploader: https://librivox.org/login/uploader
Image
(If you have trouble reading the image above, please contact an admin)

MC to select: maryannspiegel

Copy and paste the file link generated by the uploader into a new post in this thread along with the file duration (mm:ss). Watch this thread for prooflistening notes.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask! Just post in this thread.
Last edited by silverquill on August 16th, 2021, 6:55 pm, edited 6 times in total.
~ Larry
silverquill
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Post by silverquill »

Today is Juneteenth, the newest official U.S. national holiday. It seems fitting to launch this series of books, an important documentation black history in the United State from the mouths of former slaves themselves. There are 17 volumes reflecting 17 states, with some in multiple parts, resulting in 34 books. We'll see how far we get. The sections are short, and easy to read given the instructions and cautions mentioned in the project description.

"Set beside the work of formal historians, social scientists, and novelists, slave autobiographies, and contemporary records of abolitionists and planters, these life histories, taken down as far as possible in the narrators' words, constitute an invaluable body of unconscious evidence or indirect source material, which scholars and writers dealing with the South, especially social psychologists and cultural anthropologists, cannot afford to reckon without. For the first and the last time, a large number of surviving slaves (many of whom have since died) have been permitted to tell their own story, in their own way. In spite of obvious limitations—bias and fallibility of both informants and interviewers, the use of leading questions, unskilled techniques, and insufficient controls and checks—this saga must remain the most authentic and colorful source of our knowledge of the lives and thoughts of thousands of slaves, of their attitudes toward one another, toward their masters, mistresses, and overseers, toward poor whites, North and South, the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, religion, education, and virtually every phase of Negro life in the South.

The narratives belong to folk history—history recovered from the memories and lips of participants or eye-witnesses, who mingle group with individual experience and both with observation, hearsay, and tradition. Whether the narrators relate what they actually saw and thought and felt, what they imagine, or what they have thought and felt about slavery since, now we know why they thought and felt as they did. To the white myth of slavery must be added the slaves' own folklore and folk-say of slavery. The patterns they reveal are folk and regional patterns—the patterns of field hand, house and body servant, and artisan; the patterns of kind and cruel master or mistress; the patterns of Southeast and Southwest, lowland and upland, tidewater and inland, smaller and larger plantations, and racial mixture (including Creole and Indian).

The narratives belong also to folk literature. Rich not only in folk songs, folk tales, and folk speech but also in folk humor and poetry, crude or skilful in dialect, uneven in tone and treatment, they constantly reward one with earthy imagery, salty phrase, and sensitive detail. In their unconscious art, exhibited in many a fine and powerful short story, they are a contribution to the realistic writing of the Negro. Beneath all the surface contradictions and exaggerations, the fantasy and flattery, they possess an essential truth and humanity which surpasses as it supplements history and literature.

Washington, D.C.
June 12, 1941

B.A. Botkin
Chief Editor, Writers' Unit
Library of Congress Project"
~ Larry
Kalamareader
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Post by Kalamareader »

Larry,

This sound very interesting. I am sure that I have read something like this for LV in the past, but can't find it going through my readings. This is driving me crazy. There is something else that I can't find, as short story I read, that I can't find either. I know I had listened to the story before, but can't find it now in any of the short story collections. Likewise I can't find the interviews with former slaves that I did a couple of years ago. Have you ever had anything like that happen?

Wayne

P.S. I didn't see a reference to a source document.
Wayne
We never really grow up, we just learn how to act in public. :mrgreen:
silverquill
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Location: Southern California

Post by silverquill »

Kalamareader wrote: June 19th, 2021, 11:51 am Larry,

This sound very interesting. I am sure that I have read something like this for LV in the past, but can't find it going through my readings. This is driving me crazy. There is something else that I can't find, as short story I read, that I can't find either. I know I had listened to the story before, but can't find it now in any of the short story collections. Likewise I can't find the interviews with former slaves that I did a couple of years ago. Have you ever had anything like that happen?

Wayne

P.S. I didn't see a reference to a source document.
I do have a project that is getting close to completion Narratives of Colored Americans, by Abigail Mott (1795 - 1846) and M. S. Wood (1805 - 1894) viewtopic.php?f=28&t=87120 but I don't think you read for it. But I'll do some digging later if I can.

And, YIKES, I did leave off the source link :shock:
I think that's a first for me in over 200 projects. I know the template will not go through without some of the other fields, but apparently it will go through without this one. Thanks for the alert, and it has been added.
~ Larry
Kalamareader
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Post by Kalamareader »

Larry,

I just went to your link, and then to Gutenberg and I swear that that is in the same format as the other one and was also done by the WPA. :hmm: I have no idea. When I have a minute I will pick a section or two.

Wayne
Wayne
We never really grow up, we just learn how to act in public. :mrgreen:
silverquill
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Location: Southern California

Post by silverquill »

Kalamareader wrote: June 19th, 2021, 10:10 pm Larry,

I just went to your link, and then to Gutenberg and I swear that that is in the same format as the other one and was also done by the WPA. :hmm: I have no idea. When I have a minute I will pick a section or two.

Wayne
Hmmm. Well, I've searched the LV catalog, and can't find any of them as complete books. There are individual stories read for things like Short Nonfiction collections, but as far as I can tell, these have not been done. The sections are short for the most part, and in this volume the word counts are actually given at the beginning of each narrative. There will be plenty to go around.
~ Larry
MaryAnnSpiegel
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Post by MaryAnnSpiegel »

Larry,

I'd be happy to MC this for you ...

And the other project that Wayne is thinking about is one that I BC'd. Let me check and I'll get back with the title and a link. (It was different than this).

MaryAnn

Edit: Ah yes, The Underground Railroad - 5 volumes of personal stories. https://librivox.org/group/551
MaryAnnSpiegel
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Post by MaryAnnSpiegel »

OK Larry, your MW is up.

If this is volume 11, I don't think you need part 2. Part 1 would be volume 10 ... that simplifies the file name.

And you might consider shortening the intro 'a bit' after the first section. What I have in mind is that the first section, and the "end of section" at the end of the last section, include "a Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves", but that the intro for the second and later sections leave this bit out -- definitely the second time it's said, but maybe also the first time? It seems a very long title for a project where many of the sections will be rather short.

I'm thinking:
For the second and subsequent sections, you may use the shortened intro if you wish:
"Section # of Slave Narratives: [Omit?: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves,] Volume XI, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 . This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit librivox.org." [Optional: "Read by your name."] "Slave Narratives, Volume XI, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2. Section Title."
Let me know what you think. I'm cognizant that you are setting the patter for the series. Not to say that you can't switch it up later, but it would be nice to get close on the first volume ... so it's worth a bit of discussion.

MaryAnn
Kalamareader
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Post by Kalamareader »

I will stick my nose in here. :D

As said in the second post, there were 17 states in which former slaves were interviewed. But, like some of the long chapters we often have, in order to keep the 'volumes' down to a reasonable size, in five of the states they made multiple "parts (or books)" for those States, Arkansas (7 'parts'), Georgia (4), North Carolina (2), South Carolina (4) and Texas (4), and called each of them a "Part" of Volume "x".

So this is the second book (or 'part' as they call them) of two of the 'Volume' covering the interviews from North Carolina.

Wayne
Wayne
We never really grow up, we just learn how to act in public. :mrgreen:
MaryAnnSpiegel
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Post by MaryAnnSpiegel »

Thanks Wayne, I misread it.

MaryAnn
silverquill
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Post by silverquill »

Thanks for picking this up MaryAnn!


Well, you have anticipated my first question about shortening the intro. :D
So, I will do so. To simplify the instructions, I'll read the first section with the long intro then we don't have to mention it. It is an unwieldly title, but I guess we should keep it for the book title.

I suppose I should really start with Vol 1, but I stumbled across this one first and formatted it before I discovered that the full series is available. I was really confused at the beginning because there were multiples of some volumes before I realized what the numbering system actually is. As Wayne has outlined them all, Vol II for Arkansas has 7 parts! There are 34 in all, if my count is correct.

There is a separate book that has the introductory material that I quoted at the beginning. I wish there were a way to include that for each book because for someone finding just one of the volumes wouldn't have that background.

Oh, one other question. Since there are so many sections, and they are short, what do you think about having a one-month deadline for these? Or would that be too confusing?

Anyway, I'll work on getting this set up so we can get rolling.
~ Larry
MaryAnnSpiegel
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Post by MaryAnnSpiegel »

silverquill wrote: June 21st, 2021, 7:04 am There is a separate book that has the introductory material that I quoted at the beginning. I wish there were a way to include that for each book because for someone finding just one of the volumes wouldn't have that background.
Well, once that one is recorded, you can include a link to the section with that quoted language in the book summary.
Oh, one other question. Since there are so many sections, and they are short, what do you think about having a one-month deadline for these? Or would that be too confusing?
That's fine, as long as you are clear in the first post what your expectation is.

MaryAnn
silverquill
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Post by silverquill »

Thanks, MaryAnn!

I'll about that other volume.

And, I've updated the instructions in two place to reflect the one-month deadline.

I hope this will generate the kind of interest I'm hoping for.
~ Larry
Kazbek
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Post by Kazbek »

Larry, I could take 64, if you help me figure out the editorial instructions.

Michael
silverquill
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Post by silverquill »

Kazbek wrote: June 22nd, 2021, 6:03 am Larry, I could take 64, if you help me figure out the editorial instructions.

Michael
Sure. This one is straight forward since there is nothing at the beginning except the name. Others have other material in the beginning such as, "Ex-Slave Story An interview with William Sykes 78, of State prison, Raleigh, N.C." But, I see that I need to revise that part of the instructions to make it clearer. Also, do NOT read the internal TR and HW notes, since they are not necessary to the spoken narrative. I'll add that as well.

Thanks for your interest in this project, Michael.

PS: Let me know if you think the changes I made to the instructions are clear enough now.
~ Larry
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