This document summarizes the African American slave narrative genre. It discusses some of the earliest and most well-known slave narratives like Olaudah Equiano's from 1789. Narratives were used by abolitionists to expose the inhumanity of slavery and prove the intelligence and humanity of African Americans. They became a dominant form of writing by African Americans during and after the Civil War. Abolitionists saw eyewitness testimony as an effective way to change northern minds about slavery.

1. The African American Slave
Narrative
Adapted By: Zikia Jones-Martin

2. Background Information
• Equiano's Interesting Narrative of the Life of
Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the
African (1789) considered as the formative
example early in the tradition
• The book established the emblematic subtitle
“written by himself/herself”
• Most well-known examples of the 19th century:
Frederick *Douglass, William Wells *Brown, and
Harriet A. *Jacobs
• “end of the tradition:” thousands of oral histories
of former slaves gathered by the Federal
Writers' Project in the 1920s and 1930s

4. Purposes
– narratives were used by abolitionists to
proclaim the antislavery gospel during the
antebellum era in the United States
–exposed the inhumanity of the slave system
–Truth/authenticity: proving both the credibility
of the personal account and its representative
quality for the treatment of slaves in general
–gave evidence of the humanity of the African
American, esp. the intellectual equalities and
capacities of African Americans

5. Thomas Jefferson, from
Notes on the State of Virginia
•“Comparing them by their faculties of memory they
are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I
think once could scarcely be found capable of tracing
and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and
that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and
anomalous. [. . .] But never yet could I find that a black
had uttered a thought above the level of plain
narration: never see even an elementary trait of
painting or sculpture. [. . .] Misery is often the parent of
the most affecting touches in poetry.—Among the
blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry.
[. . .] Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whateley
[sic.]; but it could not produce a poet. The
compositions published under her name are below the
dignity of criticism. The heroes of the Dunciad are to
her, as Hercules to the author of that poem.”

6. Slave Narratives
• were the dominant genre of writings by
African Americans during and after the
Civil War
• reached from a few pages in length to
large, independently published volumes
(e.g. Frederick Douglass and Harriet
Jacobs)
• first known American slave narrative, A
Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings,
and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton
Hammon, a Negro Man (1760)

7. • Most narratives from the late eighteenth
century decry the slavery of sin much
more than the sin of slavery
• with the rise of the militant *antislavery
movement in the early nineteenth century
came a new demand for slave narratives
that would highlight the harsh realities of
slavery itself

8. • abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison
were convinced that the eyewitness
testimony of former slaves against slavery
would touch the hearts and change the
minds of many in the northern population
of the United States who were either
ignorant of or indifferent to the plight of
African Americans in the South
• by mid 19th century developed a
standardized form of autobiography in
which personal memory and a rhetorical
attack on slavery blend to produce a
powerful expressive tool both as literature
and as propaganda

9. • Influence on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• Most well-known and most successful:
Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass, an American Slave, Written by
Himself (1845)
• Selling more than thirty thousand copies in
the first five years
• Garrison’s preface: focusing on
representativeness of Douglass
experience, but also acknowledging his
individuality