Basil Forest wrote:
> I don't think anyone has suggested that Black slavery in the South was an  
> acceptable institution by today's standards.  Clearly, it is not, at least  in 
> this country, although it still does exist in Africa and portions of the  
> Islamic world.  However, I also have never supported the "everyone knows"  school 
> of history which takes as Gospel whatever the majority, and usually most  
> vocal, historians believe to be true.  Historical "truth" should always be  
> reexamined and tested based on the most current evidence.  There is clearly  first 
> hand evidence in these interviews that at least some of the former Black  slaves 
> preferred their pre-war conditions to those they lived in after the war,  for 
> whatever reason.  I find it interesting that in spite of their  'testimony" 
> that this was the case many want to deny it for some reason, or find  a reason 
> to discredit their perspectives in order to make them seem  illegitimate.  I 
> find this very presumptuous, and demeaning of these brave  people who lived 
> through the slavery period and knew what they were talking  about.....unlike 
> anyone in this forum.  I, for one, take people at their  word unless there is 
> verifiable evidence to the contrary.  I don't see that  here.  If you read these 
> narratives you will see that when the interviewee  decided it was time for the 
> interviewer to leave, they typically told them so  and that was the end of the 
> interview.  No one was holding a gun to their  head as far as I can tell.
>  
> So, I take it that only one person in the forum actually teaches that there  
> may be another side to the treatment of American slaves in the  South?
>   
Mr. Forest:

1) We try to understand slavery and help our students do the same.
2) To understand it properly, we use many different types of evidence 
and arguments, and we always feel obliged to assess the reliability and 
plausibility of both.
3) We would be doing a profound disservice to our craft of history if we 
routinely "took people at their word," no matter what they said--memory 
is faulty, people have biases, and documents from the past often reflect 
these and other unfortunate realities.
4) We know that the ex-slaves did not write the WPA interviews 
themselves; we know that many, if not most of the interviews were the 
product of heavy editing by the interviewers; we know that the context 
in which these interviews were conducted was not free of circumstances 
and pressures that could cause interviewees to be cautious and guarded 
about what they said; we know that most of the ex-slaves were elderly 
(in their 70s and up) when interviewed; we know that the vast majority 
of them only experienced slavery as children; we know that the 
"positive" testimony in these interviews is more than overmatched by 
"negative" accounts recorded while slavery still existed; we know also 
that neither the interviews nor any other body of evidence supports a 
monochromatic view of what was a complex institution; we know that 
master-slave relations ran the gamut from the unimaginably monstrous to 
the incredibly affectionate; we know that the "logic" of the institution 
(as Langdon eloquently described it) poisoned those relations, even in 
the "best" of circumstances; and we know a human tragedy when we see one.

To whitewash or candy-coat the tragedy of slavery with naive 
speculations extracted from one body of evidence only, while refusing to 
question the evidence at all, is to play with history as if it were some 
sort of parlor game that one wins by outmaneuvering all comers. Several 
of the historians on the list have patiently explained how they teach 
about slavery. No one has indicated that he or she sees just one "side" 
of this institution. And all have endorsed the importance of evaluating 
the available evidence, in order to understand its strengths and 
weaknesses. You were, if I recall correctly, more than willing to cast a 
critical eye on the self-justifying speeches and writings of President 
Lincoln. Why should we scrutinize and doubt the veracity of what Lincoln 
said but trust, without question, what a group of elderly ex-slaves were 
*reported* to have said about slavery 70 years after it was ended?

Doug Deal

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