Ex Slaves talk about Slavery in the USA

Video Statistics and Information

Video

Captions Word Cloud

Captions

but John Henry Faulk may have experienced the most profound effect he was a graduate student when he interviewed the former slaves including the two women you hear in this broadcast himself interviewed just before he died in 1979 Faulk was going on about how he believed in giving blacks the right to go to school giving them the right to vote giving them the right to go into anything they qualified for and then he said he experienced an epiphany yes something out on a wagon ton with this old black man and was telling what a different kind of white man I was I remember him looking at me fair saddling kind of sweetly and condescending and say you know you still got the disease honey I know you think you're cured but you're not cured you can't give me the right to be a human being I'm born with that right now you can keep me from having that if you've got all the policemen and all the jobs on your side you can deprive me up but you can give it to me and I've born with it just like it was I got it had a profound effect on me I'm furious with him but the more reflect out the more profoundly in effect I realized this was where it really was tell you the truth when I sent over today I don't know how I'm living I knew that this is well look like for me I can't you saved all our lives motherless live fishing the free-falling the slave they know that battery right all the dyno the teachers mind you must marry mrs. mom didn't wear gold she has a single this star just like he's thrown from launching anyone good they are haunting voices from the past not actors reading a script or scholars reading a text but the actual voices of men and women Americans who were born in slavery my name is housing huge I was born in charge of Virginia my grandfather Blanca taught ourselves my grandfather were a hundred and fifteen years old when he died and now I am 101 yo hope you didn't have no beds when you saved he won't sit on the floor solitude a lot of wire people we didn't we didn't know nothing didn't I wrote a notebook of Harriet Smith remembering what she saw as a small girl during the final days of the Civil War we said I spit on that picket fence all day long seeing them soldiers going back the silence on different pages coming solely colored soldiers and joy to Stewart house right these recorded memories were along a thousands of interviews done within slaves in the 1930s and 40s did you remember slavery days there was I remember I liked food nor the name of all the children call everyone the children's name did you belong in the days of all the results of these digitally enhanced recordings are arresting almost unbelievable the idea of hearing the voices of actual slaves from the plantations of the Old South is as powerful as startling really as if you could hear Abraham Lincoln or robert e lee's speak listen again to fountain hughes who was born in 1848 we were saved we browned people the sellers like yourself horses without hope Nora get our option bench than there for children of only bitch who beat on Eunice singers who didn't own a canyon much of what these three former slaves say may at first seem unremarkable much of what they say may surprise and upset and their calm demeanor is at odds with the evil and violence we associate with slavery here is 91 year old Texan Laura Smalley talking in the 1940s about the outcome of a tussle between two women one black one white one slave one mistress the mistress tried to slap the slave but the black woman pushed into a chair Laura Smalley was a girl at the time but she remembers vividly what happened to the black woman when the master came home but I think that woman poor old woman cat in the peach orchard and flip them and no just title has this waiting around the peachoid the truth I remember that guess is well the black to me I can and round a tree and flip them and what she couldn't do them but just to go st. you know mystically but it just had a closed off down so a tional didn't have a plum naked but they had a total down so a waste and ever non dented football you know I didn't snuff the pipe out on a steel pipe out on you know damaging the paper will shoot a fight smoking all out on the plantation on which Smalley was a slave sounds brutal she recalls scrambling with other children for food from a huge wooden tray like a hog trough oh let me know would get around that tree wood spoon and eat should you like moisture soup something like that no I'm chilling it around and just fountain Hughes tells his interviewer about the relentless round of work for him on a Virginia plantation time cut tobacco with the module cut all night long with you you've got launching your hangover night on didn't you tired we tied you afraid to share your time it was cotton not tobacco that solidified slavery though the invention of the cotton gin at the end of the 18th century made its processing easy but the crop still needed enormous amounts of unskilled labor control of the slave and his labor through laws and regulations became paramount fountain Hughes talks about one of those controls the past system now I couldn't move him here across the street well I could go for nobody's house out I'll have a look for something from my master and if I had that pass at will-call pass if I had that pass I could go wherever he sent me and not have to be back you know who are you said we totally they'd give me another past not be let back so it's a shoehorn even Emancipation didn't truly free the slaves freedom freed slaves for more travail the end of the Civil War found many cast adrift without skills and no place to go and the Yankees who freed them weren't always seen as benevolent liberators a Yank along to all the good horses to holy sword our flower shows up out in the room let's go down the road you know the people the ex-slaves left one hell for another perhaps an even more dangerous one no longer property they didn't have the protections afforded property when we were slaves we couldn't either see I forgot free we did not leave you my mother she did she hunted places and you bound yourself for dollar month but we didn't have no property we didn't have no none you have no well nothing we didn't have nothing against food like you Carol this tandem and get along the best record in Texas the slaves weren't told they were free until two months after the war ended Smalley remembers that her masters gave the slaves a dinner and then they were free I don't have the outside is functional food we didn't know they just thought you know we'll just feed this you know them didn't know we're going see after she wrote that time just like he turns a mouse you know then why to go like this well just a you didn't where the group told us all just like you know it's on our camera in the narratives the slaves used an interesting phrase for the end of slavery they say when the break came good times easy times were not at hand the trials for millions of black Americans didn't end in 1865 they continued Laura Smalley and her family became sharecroppers Harriet Smith's first husband was killed by whites during the Reconstruction probably because of his political organizing fountain Hughes went north to Baltimore and worked at numerous jobs including hauling manure not an enviable job but it was the job of a free man

Info

Channel: John L. Brooks

Views: 1,361,114

Rating: 4.8248367 out of 5

Keywords: canis lupus productions, ABC news, slavery, negors, paltations, civil rights, cotton, JBUrban, black lives matter, black culture, blacks in America, historic records, born in Salvery

Id: fZfcc21c6Uo

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 9min 55sec (595 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 11 2016

Reddit Comments

I wish the narrator would shut up for more than 20 seconds at a time so we could listen to the complete story

👍︎︎ 97 👤︎︎ u/Master_Iridus 📅︎︎ Feb 27 2019 🗫︎ replies

This was incredible to listen to. Thank you for posting.

👍︎︎ 9 👤︎︎ u/speecyspicymeatball 📅︎︎ Feb 27 2019 🗫︎ replies

"I've heard educated people say, 'Slavery was 400 years ago!'. No it very much wasn't! It was two 75 year old ladies living and dying back to back." -Louis CK on Jay Leno of all places.

👍︎︎ 9 👤︎︎ u/Wingardienleviosah 📅︎︎ Feb 27 2019 🗫︎ replies

Thanks for sharing! This was really interesting to watch, I hope they’ve preserved all of those interviews

👍︎︎ 12 👤︎︎ u/nidayz 📅︎︎ Feb 27 2019 🗫︎ replies

"OMG slavery was like so long ago, get over it"

Seriously though... people like to think of slavery and oppression as something than happened so long ago but it is very recent and the scars are still lingering.

👍︎︎ 4 👤︎︎ u/Chemical_Castration 📅︎︎ Feb 27 2019 🗫︎ replies

Seriously cool. Thanks for sharing.

👍︎︎ 7 👤︎︎ u/unknowndatabase 📅︎︎ Feb 27 2019 🗫︎ replies

Funny thought and also not in subject at all but it is amazing that generations from now on will know what every politician, actor, or any famous person was like just as well as we are able to observe them today. pretty interesting when you think about it hundreds of years from now they will actually get to see how society evolved.

👍︎︎ 4 👤︎︎ u/TheRealWorldNigeria 📅︎︎ Feb 27 2019 🗫︎ replies

They seam surprisingly chill about it

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/badmemes123 📅︎︎ Feb 27 2019 🗫︎ replies

r/history would like this.

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/Sun-Anvil 📅︎︎ Feb 27 2019 🗫︎ replies