UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

Edited by B. Eugene McCarthy and Thomas L. Doughton

A rare set of personal accounts by eight ex-slaves who settled in the same northern community

First published between 1842 and 1895, the autobiographical narratives gathered in this volume document the experiences of eight former slaves who eventually took up residence in Worcester, Massachusetts. Each narrative tells a gripping individual story, its author clearly visible in the dress of his or her own words. Together they illuminate not only the inhumanity of slavery but also the dreams and dilemmas of emancipation, tracing the personal journeys of seven men and one woman from bondage to freedom.

In their well-researched introduction, B. Eugene McCarthy and Thomas L. Doughton situate the Worcester slave narratives within a broader historical framework and analyze their meaning and significance. Drawing on a wide range of sources, they reconstruct the black community of Worcester and compare it with other New England black communities of the time, describing how the town evolved from a society with slaves in the colonial era to a hub for free blacks by the eve of the Civil War. They explain why these writings must be understood as part of a long-established tradition of African American self-representation, and show how the four narratives published before 1865 focus on the experience of slavery, while the four written after the war offer the fresh perspective of living in freedom.

Headnotes describe the distinctive literary features of each narrative and provide additional information about the lives of the authors. The editors discuss why these ex-slaves came to Worcester, the circumstances in which each wrote his or her narrative, and the audiences they had in mind. No other collection of slave narratives offers such a diverse range of testimony within a specific historical and literary context, or a more compelling account of the transition from bondage to belonging.

“Eugene McCarthy and Thomas Doughton have done a great service in collecting and editing these stories, for taken together they give us a vivid sense of what it felt like to be a slave. Here are people enduring and witnessing countless scenes of subjection; living in constant fear; feeling alienated from family, friends, community, and self; and struggling to hang onto dreams of freedom, only to discover that life after slavery is much different than freedom's dream. Read these stories straight through, and you will find yourself emotionally exhausted. They are that powerful.”

John Stauffer, Harvard University, from the Foreword

B. Eugene McCarthy is professor of English emeritus at the College of the Holy Cross. Thomas L. Doughton is senior lecturer at the Center for Interdisciplinary & Special Studies, College of the Holy Cross.

American History / Black Studies
384 pp.
$22.95 paper, ISBN 978-1-55849-623-1
$80.00 library cloth edition, ISBN 978-1-55849-622-4
February 2008

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