Great Slave Narratives
Great Slave Narratives is a significant anthology that revives the powerful tradition of American slave narratives, highlighting the lived experiences of former enslaved individuals. Compiled by Arna Bontemps in the 1960s, the collection reflects a renewed interest in African American culture and history, spurred by the Black Power movement. The anthology includes three pivotal narratives: Olaudah Equiano’s recounting of his life and African heritage, James W.C. Pennington’s story of resilience and intellectual pursuit despite slavery, and the thrilling escape of William and Ellen Craft from bondage. These narratives not only provide personal insights into the struggle for freedom but also serve as crucial historical documents that illuminate the broader African American experience. Bontemps emphasized the importance of these stories in shaping America’s self-perception and literary landscape. Overall, Great Slave Narratives offers readers an opportunity to engage with a vital aspect of American history through the voices of those who endured and overcame the harrowing realities of slavery.
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Great Slave Narratives
First published: 1969
The Work
Great Slave Narratives, Arna Bontemps’ 1960’s revival of a once-popular American literary genre, is a compilation of three book-length narratives written by former slaves. During much of the nineteenth century, slave narratives were best-sellers for American publishers. The reintroduction of this literary form was inspired by the Black Power movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s and the resurgent interest in black culture and the African American experience. Readers were again curious about how it felt to be black and a slave; they wanted to know how the world looked through the eyes of one who had achieved a measure of freedom by effort and suffering. Who, readers wanted to know, were the people who had passed through the ordeal, and how had they expressed their thoughts and feelings?
Bontemps chose for this book three outstanding examples of the genre. The first, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789), by Olaudah Equiano, who was given the name Gustavus Vassa, gained wide attention, and is particularly interesting for the author’s vivid recall of his African background. In 1794, it went into its eighth edition, with many more to follow in America and Europe.
The second book, The Fugitive Blacksmith; Or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington, Pastor of a Presbyterian Church, New York, Formerly a Slave in the State of Maryland, United States (1850), is the colorful tale of a full-blooded African who was honored with the degree of Doctor of Divinity by the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Yale University denied him admission as a regular student but did not interfere when he stood outside the doors of classrooms in order to hear professors lecture. Pennington also was the first black to write a history of his people in America: A Text Book of the Origin and History of the Colored People (1841).
The final narrative in the trilogy, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: Or, The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery (1860), an exciting story of a courageous slave couple’s escape, is perhaps the high point in the development of the slave narrative genre. Apparently no two slaves in their flight from subjugation to freedom ever thrilled the world so much as did this handsome young couple. Not everyone was pleased, however. President James Polk was so infuriated by their success that he threatened to use the Fugitive Slave Law and the military in their recapture. By then the Crafts were in England.
Bontemps, in his introduction to Great Slave Narratives, explained the importance of this “half-forgotten history,” placing it in the context of American literature: “Hindsight,” he wrote, “may yet disclose the extent to which this writing, this impulse, has been influential on subsequent American writing, if not indeed on America’s view of itself. . . . The standard literary sources and the classics of modern fiction pale in comparison as a source of strength.”
Bibliography
Aptheker, Herbert. A Documentary History of the Negro People. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1973.
Blackett, R. J. M. Building an Antislavery Wall. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983.
Blockson, Charles L. The Underground Railroad: First Person Narratives of Escapes to Freedom in the North. New York: Prentice Hall, 1987.