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Slave Voices

STORY PREFACE

The race must not forget the rock
from whence they were hewn,
nor the pit
from whence they were digged.

William Still
"Father of the Underground Railroad"
1879
Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner, has dedicated his career to one objective: making sure no one forgets what happened to his people during Hitler’s Third Reich. To that end, thousands of survivors have had their stories electronically recorded. We are able to see their anguished faces and hear their breaking voices as they describe their personal tragedies.

But what of that other long-persecuted people - Africans - who were uprooted from their homes, transported to unknown lands and made to serve the needs of foreigners? Where are their stories?

Thanks to people like William Still, slave narratives have been preserved in books and sketches. And thanks to the Library of Congress and the U.S. National Archives, some of their stories have been digitized and are available on-line.

Here, then, are slave voices speaking (and singing) to us from the past.

To cite this story, using MLA Guidelines:

Bos, Carole D. "Slave Voices" AwesomeStories.com. Date of access
       <http://www.awesomestories.com/history/slave-voices>.

IN OTHER WORDS: Author. Title of story. Name of web site. Date of access <URL>.

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