"Back 'fore the sixties, I can 'member my Mistress, Miss Sara Ann, comin' to de window an' hollerin', "De niggers is arisin'! De niggers is arisin'! De niggers is killin' all de white folks, killin' all de babies in de cradle!" It must have been Nat Turner's Insurrection; which wuz sometime 'fo de breakin' of de Civil War..." -- Fannie Berry, February 26, 1937, Slave Narrative Project, Virginia Narratives, Volume 17. CASS' CLIP (WARNING: **spoilers below**) More than four million slaves were emancipated after the Civil War ended in 1865. During the Great Depression, 1936-1938, it was estimated that there were 100,000 former slaves still living in the United States. The Work Projects Administration (WPA) hired writers and journalists to interview former slaves to preserve a historical record of their lives. Through the Federal Writers Project, 2,000 plus former slaves were interviewed to document the eyewitness accounts of their horrifying experiences, their years of insufferable bondage and the brutal treatment they endured at the hands of their white oppressors and slave owners. Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives is narrated by Whoopi Goldberg and the stories of these former slaves are read, almost in a stage like performance, by African American actors, Angela Bassett, Michael Boatman, Roscoe Lee Brown, Don Cheadle, Sandra Daley, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Robert Guillaume, Jasmine Guy, Samuel L. Jackson, CCH Pounder, LaTanya Richardson, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Roger Guenveur Smith, Courtney B. Vance, Oprah Winfrey, and Alfre Woodard. Dressed in black in front of a black backdrop, the actors sit alone, while old Negro spirituals and slave songs play in the background. They bring to life the vivid stories of slave auctions, plantation life, beatings, slave weddings, lynchings, rapes, attempted escapes, the lack of education, the Underground Railroad and finally freedom. Interspersed between these testimonial recollections, as if to authenticate their existence, are photographs, film clips, and newspaper articles. Many of the ex-slaves told their stories to the white interviewers despite their apprehension or even fear of retaliation. From 1936 to 1938, ex-slaves from seventeen states were asked a set of questions from a list of subjects and their stories were recorded and chronicled. Samuel L. Jackson begins the narrations with a reading from James Green's interview: "I never knowed my age till after de war, and then marster gits out a big book and it shows I's 25 year old. Shows I's 12 when I was bought. $800 dollars he paid fa' me. My mammie was owned by John Williams in Petersburg in Virginia and I come born ta huh on dat plantation. Then, long came a Friday and that an unlikely star day, and I playin' 'round da haus and Masta Williams come up and say, 'Dellis, will you allow him to walk down da street wif me.' My mammie say, 'Alright Jim, you be a good boy, and dat the last time I ever herd her speak or ever see her." Slave Narratives, Vol. 16, Texas. Each actor's reenactment is both surreal and riveting. For a brief moment, it's almost as if the souls of these ex-slaves came back to life to make sure their stories were told. My ancestors' bodies may have been in bondages and their souls may have been battered, but their memories weren't shackled, and now the truth has been told. As Katie Rowe said about the day she remembered her master told them they were free: "It was de fourth June in 1865...Today you is free; I come to tell you, you gotz all the rights like white people. I begins to live, begins to live, begins to live." DA 411 In association with the Library of Congress, Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives is an HBO documentary adaptation of the Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. These 41 volumes are archived at The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Stories of how Africans were stolen from their homeland in the slave trade and brought to the United States to their Civil War emancipation, are spoken in the vernacular of these former slaves, but retold by today's Black actors. This combination, along with The McIntosh County Shouters performing "slave era shout" songs, makes for an unforgettable and powerful documentary. To learn more about these narratives, go to http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/unchained_memories/. CASS' CONCLUSION Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives is a must-see 75-minute extraordinary documentary about the inhumane treatment of African Americans during a time in American history called SLAVERY. UNCHAINED MEMORIES:   back to top Copyright Cassandra Henry, 2003 EMAIL: cass@3blackchicks.com