Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation

by Ira Berlin, Marc Favreau, Steven F. Miller

Overview

In 1998, The New Press published Remembering Slavery, a book-and-tape set that offered a startling first-person history of slavery. Using excerpts from the thousands of interviews conducted with ex-slaves in the 1930s by researchers working with the Federal Writers’ Project, the astonishing audiotapes made available the only known recordings of people who actually experienced enslavement—recordings that had gathered dust in the Library of Congress until they were rendered audible for the first time specifically for this set.

Remembering Slavery received the kind of commercial attention seldom accorded projects of this nature—nationwide critical and review coverage as well as extensive coverage on prime-time television, including Good Morning America, Nightline, CBS Sunday Morning, and CNN. The tapes have been aired repeatedly on public radio stations across the country. Reviewers called the set “chilling … [and] riveting” (Publishers Weekly) and “something, truly, truly new” (The Village Voice).

Now this groundbreaking set is available for a new generation of readers and listeners, offering remastered compact discs in MP3 format of the extensive original live recordings of interviews with former slaves.

*The audio for this new edition is on MP3 compact discs. MP3 audio books on compact disc can be played on newer CD players that support MP3 technology and accept a 4.75”-diameter disc and on any personal computer that has Microsoft’s Media Player or similar software.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781595582287
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	10/30/2007
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	359
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x (d)

About the Author

Marc Favreau is the editorial director of The New Press. He is the editor of A People’s History of World War II: The World’s Most Destructive Conflict, as Told by the People Who Lived Through It. He lives in New York City and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

Until his death in 2018, Ira Berlin was one of the preeminent historians of American slavery. He was the author of Many Thousands Gone, Generations of Captivity, and Slaves Without Masters. He co-edited Families and Freedom (with Leslie S. Rowland) and Slavery in New York (with Leslie M. Harris). His books have won the Frederick Douglass Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, among many other awards.

Steven F. Miller is a co-editor of the Freedmen and Southern Society Project and a co-editor (with Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland) of Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War.

Editorial Reviews

"This project will enrich every American home and classroom."
—Publishers Weekly

"As vital and necessary a historical document as anyone has ever produced in this country."
—The Boston Globe

"Moving recollections fill a void in the slavery literature."
—The Washington Post Book World

"Ira Berlin’s fifty-page introduction is as good a synthesis of current scholarship as one will find, with fresh insights for any reader."
—The San Diego Union-Tribune

"Invaluable."
—Chicago Tribune

From the Publisher