5 Classic and Heartbreaking Slave Narratives Narratives by enslaved people became an important form of literary expression before the Civil War when about 65 such memoirs were published as books or pamphlets.
North American Slave Narratives Part of the "Documenting the American South" collection.
American Memory Collections on African American History Includes full-text slave narratives and pamphlets.
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. Courtesy of the Library of Congress American Memory Project.
SlaveryStories.org. These are tales of American slaves, written in their own words and spoken with their own voices. Includes both written and audio narratives. A new, collaborative digital project started February 3, 2014 by Rob Walsh, Scholastica. At time of posting the written narratives include:
(1) Twelve Years a Slave : Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853 by Solomon Northup
(2) Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Ann Jacobs
(3) Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass Written By Himself. Frederick Douglass
(4) Fifty Years In Chains; or, The Life of an American Slave by Charles Ball
(5) Up From Slavery: An Autobiography by Booker T. Washington
(6) Louisa Picquet, the Octoroon or Inside Views of Southern Domestic Life by Louisa Picquet
(7) The Narrative of Sojourner Truth by Sojourner Truth
(8) Slave Life in Georgia : A Narrative of the Life, Sufferings, and Escape of John Brown, a Fugitive Slave by John Brown
Voices from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves Tell Their Stories. As part of the American Memory Project at the Library of Congress, this engaging website offers first-hand audio recollections of the experience of slavery in the American South from 23 African-Americans. The interviews themselves were originally conducted between 1932 and 1975, and contain memories of their lives that include discussions of their feelings on slavery, their families, and on freedom. It is not terribly surprising that very limited biographical information is available about each participant, though the special exhibit that is also available here (titled Faces and Voices From the Presentation), features photographs of some of the interviewees, such as Fountain Hughes, Uncle Bob Ledbetter, and George Johnson. As some of the audio recordings contain a good deal of background noise (and in some cases are incomplete), visitors may also want to follow along by viewing the full-text transcriptions as well. One interview that visitors will want to make sure and listen to is the one with Uncle Billy McCrea conducted in 1940, in which he sings both Blow Cornie Blow and Walk Dooley.