Norman Yetman lecture, "The Uses of the Slave Narrative Collection," at the University of Iowa, June 14, 1974

Speaker 1: The following was recorded June 14th, 1974, as part of the Sixth Annual Institute on Afro-American Culture held at the University of Iowa. Speaking on The Uses of the Slave Narrative Collection is Assistant Professor Norman Yetman of the American Studies Department at the University of Kansas. Making the introduction is [Mary Burger], an Assistant Professor of Afro and Modern American Literature at the University of Missouri in St. Louis. Mary Berger: My introduction of Norman Yetman is going to be kind of anticlimactic because I think he's already had his Time on the Cross earlier this morning. But I think we might kind of interrupt that, so that I can tell you a little bit about him. We are indeed very glad to have him here. And I think that we will all benefit a great deal by it. Professor Yetman is Associate Professor of American Studies and Sociology and Chairman of the American Studies Department at the University of Kansas. He received a BA from the University of Redlands and both a Master's and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. His most important publications include the book, which we have been looking at and reading at this institute, Life Under the Peculiar Institution. Mary Berger: He has another essay among lots of other publications. But another essay that I think is important to us, and one that I found useful in my own study of slave narratives. And that is the Background of the Slave Narrative Collection, which was first published in the American Quarterly, but which is included as an appendix lies a part of Life Under the Peculiar Institution and the book that we have now. He has also published some other works in connection with our subject today. One, Black Americans in Sports, Unequal Opportunity for Equal Ability, and The Civil Rights Digest. Welcome Professor Yetman and thank you for coming. Norman Yetman: Thank you very much, Mary. When Darwin wrote to me and asked if I would be interested in speaking here, he gave me a very broad kind of field. And I wrote back and said that what I'd really be interested in talking about are, not knowing again what would precede me, would be the issue of the ways in which the Slave Narrative Collection with which I'm most familiar among the slave narratives can be used or potentially used. And so I've titled what I have to say as, The Uses of the Slave Narrative Collection. In a 1967 article, The Background of the Slave Narrative Collection, I attempted to delineate historical and social factors that contributed to the interviewing of over 2000 former slaves by members of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration. Today, nearly a decade after the research for that article was conducted, I would like to review some of the salient features of the collection and discuss more fully some of its potential uses. Norman Yetman: Let me briefly sketch some of the factors that led to the Writers' Project efforts to obtain the narratives. The Slave Narrative Collection represented the culmination of nearly a century of efforts to have slaves describe in their own words the nature of life under the Peculiar Institution. Preceded in the 19th century by scores of narratives, most of them utilized as abolitionist propaganda, and in the 20th century by independent projects by John B. Cade, Charles S. Johnson, and Lawrence Reddick. The collection of these oral histories of former slaves began almost fortuitously from the efforts of individual members of Writers' Projects in several states. The collection grew out of the Writers' Project interest in and concern for local history and folklore. And was fostered by the egalitarian spirit of the 1930s. Norman Yetman: Although there has been a considerable amount written about the Writers' Project, most importantly, Jerre Mangione's, The Dream and the Deal, and William F. McDonald's ponderous, Federal Relief Administration and the Arts. Much of the story of the Writers' Project remains untold. In the end, it may never be told. This is so, because most of the research concerning the Writers' Project has thus far focused almost exclusively upon the activities and objectives of the national office, infrequently consulting local and state records. Many of the activities and projects of the state units were unknown to the national office. And when the project terminated, the local records and data were hurriedly boxed and stored in local libraries in anticipation of a renewal of the project after World War II. There, they have remained untouched or in some cases destroyed. Norman Yetman: For example, despite our efforts for several years, it has been only within the last month that two of my colleagues at the University of Kansas and I, have succeeded in even locating any records from the Kansas Writers' Project. I have not yet had an opportunity to examine these materials, but I am hopeful that they will produce more slave narratives, as well as some of the interviews with aged Kansas pioneers described in the correspondence with the national office. The situation in other states is similar. As the records of state units are examined, it is virtually certain that they will reveal other such oral history materials, because this was a strong emphasis of the Writers' Project. Within the past month, for example, I have received an inquiry from the Ohio Historical Society concerning narratives that they have located from among Writers' Project materials that were not sent to Washington. And Professor Rawick, who will discuss this matter more fully later, and it was made a much more systematic inventory of these materials and I, informs me that in Mississippi alone, he's uncovered more than 300 additional interviews. Norman Yetman: Similarly, Charles Purdue, who is currently investigating the collecting of interviews with former slaves in Virginia has uncovered a voluminous number of narratives. Many of which were edited and literally cut up for use in the Virginia Writers' Project, The Negro in Virginia. And in addition, he has found more than a hundred additional narratives not sent to the national office in Georgia. Moreover, the Slave Narrative Collection contains interviews only from Southern and border states, yet the Archives of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress has copies of interviews collected in several Northern States, as do some of the state Writers' Projects in the North. But interviewing former slaves under WPA auspices was not undertaken by the Writers' Project alone. I have found several excellent narratives in the National Archives that were obtained by writers on the Federal Theater Project. And incidentally, for those of you who interested, Professor Rawick has two of those right back there now, and you might be interested in looking at them when we're through. It is possible as well, that in many states they were also obtained by workers for the Historical Record Survey. Norman Yetman: Moreover, in many states there were white collar projects separate from the Federal Arts Project, which included the Federal Art Writers' Theater and Music Project. And their research has been largely unexplored. In Louisiana, for instance, interviews undertaken after termination of the Federal Writers' Project were not included in the Slave Narrative Collection, but remain unpublished in the Louisiana State Library in Baton Rouge. One of the most ambitious, enduring, and valuable of these separate projects was the effort of a WPA unit in Oklahoma, headed by the Indian historian, Grant Foreman, to capitalize upon the unparalleled opportunity that the WPA represented to scour the entire State of Oklahoma for historical records from Whites, Indians, and Blacks. Foreman's research design call for his cadre of workers to interview aged individuals of all groups for their recollection of Frontier Oklahoma. The result is the massive 112 volume. And I should contrast this with the Slave Narrative Collection that is 17 volumes. Norman Yetman: And the enormity of this, I think is staggering. This massive 112 volume project is entitled, The Grant Foreman, Indian Pioneer Historical Project, copies of which are found in two locations, The Oklahoma Historical Society and The University of Oklahoma Library. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of the interviews are verbatim or at least, given our discussion earlier this morning, are written in the first person. Most of them having been written in the third person. Nevertheless, the Indian Pioneer Historical Project provides a unique opportunity to compare reminiscences of the three racial groups present in Frontier Oklahoma. Moreover, and the enormity of this accomplishment is staggering, the entire Indian Pioneer Historical Project is superbly indexed, both for proper names and subject categories. Thus I believe, and I'm sure Professor Rawick will concur in this judgment, that we've just begun to realize the vast number of oral history materials that were produced by federal agencies during the 1930s. Norman Yetman: The Slave Narrative Collection, which I described in my 1967 article, as one of the most unheralded achievements of the Federal Writers' Project, today is merely the most widely recognized of the several sources of slave narratives emanating from the '30s. The widespread existence of other materials should spur us to follow Professor Rawick's lead. As I have previously argued, the Slave Narrative Collection provides a unique and for their social historian, virtually unsurpassed collective portrait of a historical population. Aside from the large number of autobiographies it contains, it's most attractive feature is the composition of the sample of the slave population. Almost all of those interviewed had experienced slavery within the States of the Confederacy and still resided there. The major categories of slave occupations are all represented. The slave holdings of an ex-slaves owner varied considerably, ranging from over a reported thousand slaves to situations in which the informant was the only slave owned. The treatment ran the gamut from the most harsh, impersonal, and exploitative to the extremely indulgent, intimate, and benevolent. Norman Yetman: They accepted the informants were relatively young when they experienced slavery and that older slaves had died before the interviews were undertaken. All the major categories of the slave population appear to have been well-represented in the collection. Although no claims for total randomness can be made, the collection does provide far greater diversity in representativeness than any other group of slave reminiscences. The collection represents a broader universe, it emits a greater diversity of individuals than does the Antebellum Narratives considered collectively. At least the sample biases, the disproportionate number of runaways, individuals who had purchased their freedom or had been freed, young males, craftsmen, and individuals from border states. In other words, a relatively elite group that characterize the Antebellum Narratives are absent. As I shall argue more fully in a few minutes, one of the invaluable aspects of this large sample is that it therefore permits comparisons of subgroups within the slave population. Norman Yetman: For example, house servants versus field hands, those in rural versus urban areas, those on large plantations versus small ones, males versus females. It thus enables us to begin asking questions somewhat more definitively than previously about the role such factors as occupational differences, geographical location, plantation size, and sex played in affecting the slaves' adaptation. By adroit manipulation of the data, many of the biases found in the collection can be minimized or discounted as having exerted a significant effect. In addition to providing a broader, more representative sample of the slave population than the Antebellum Narratives, those obtained by the Federal Writers' Project differ in another significant way. Although the Antebellum Narratives are much more lengthy, stylistically, they are highly formalized, even stylized. And consequently lacked the spontaneity and vernacular quality of those of the Slave Narrative Collection. Norman Yetman: Moreover, and most significantly, they frequently omit many of the informal folk aspects of slave life that are most crucial to fully understanding it. Thus, Rawick's analysis of the religious life of the slave community, derived from the Slave Narrative data is far more penetrating in my mind than Blassingame's analysis in the slave community, which understates the informal surreptitious component of slave religious life. The religious activities that took place without the master's presence. And here I'm quoting, "Down in the woods in back of the barn, down in the hollow, in the arbors in the woods, in the bottom, in the praying grounds." And frequently without the knowledge or blessing of the master, appear to me to be far more significant experientially and emotively than the formal religious activities defined by the master. Norman Yetman: One of the most interesting aspects of slave religious activities is the recurrent references to the integral role of overturned pots, which were employed allegedly to dull the sounds of these frequently boisterous gatherings. Fannie Moore, who had been a slave in South Carolina reported, and I hope you will forgive my attempt at dialect. I'm trying to read the narratives as they were written. I will attempt this at several points and I hope you will bear with me. Fannie Moore reported, "Never have any church. If you go, you sit in the back of the white folks church. But the nigger slip off and pray and hold prayer meeting in the woods. And then they turned down a big wash pot and prop it up with a stick to drown out the sound of the singing." Norman Yetman: Clara Young, who was raised in Alabama and Mississippi had this account, "The most fun we had was at our meetings. We had them most every Sunday and they lasted way into the night. The preacher I liked the best was named Matthew Ewing. He was a comely nigger, black as night. And he sure could read out of his hand. He never learned no reading and writing, but he sure knowed his Bible, and would hold out his hand and make like he was reading and preach the prettiest preaching you ever heard. The meetings last from early in the morning to late at night. When dark come, the men folks would hand up a wash pot, bottom downwards in the little brush church house near us. So it would catch the noise and the overseer wouldn't hear us singing and shouting. They didn't mind meeting in the daytime, but they thought effen we stayed up half the night. We wouldn't work so hard the next day. And that was the truth." Norman Yetman: References to the presence of pots used in this manner during religious activities, which Rawick attributes to African cultural traditions is ubiquitous in the accounts of the Slave Narrative Collections, yet there are nowhere mentioned in Blassingame's analysis. Wasn't because this spontaneous emotive communal activity might have been perceived as fulfilling negative stereotypes of the "unchristian," "heathen," "savage nature of slaves," and thus undermine the image that the purveyors of the Antebellum Narratives sought to dispel, that such references were excised? We do not know, although such an interpretation could account for other omissions, including the practice of jumping the broom, which I impressionistically feel is the marriage right most frequently mentioned in the collection. Norman Yetman: Elizabeth Spark, a former slave in Virginia told an interviewer, "I went with Miss Jesse and worked at house. I didn't have to cook. I got permission to get married. You always had to get permission. White folks would give you away. You jump cross a broomstick together, and you was married." J.T. Tims, who had been held a slave in Mississippi described the marriage right this way, "Say I wanted this woman for my wife. We would just put down the broom and step over it and we would be married. That is all there was to it before emancipation. Didn't have no matrimony right or nothing. You were married when you stepped over the broom handle." Omission of folk elements, such as these seriously distorts the picture of slave culture presented by the Antebellum Narratives and lessens their utility in describing and analyzing the dynamics of the culture of the slave community. It is only recently that there has been substantial use of the collection. Norman Yetman: For many years, historians generally were reluctant to use personal reminiscences in general and the slave narratives in particular. Personal recollection of the past is always a highly subjective phenomenon. One continually subject to modification and distortion. In addition to this general criticism, the interviews contained in the Slave Narrative Collection represents some unique problems. Not only had over 70 years of lapse since emancipation, but most informants had experienced slavery as children or adolescents, not fully and not as fully functioning adults in the slave work system. It was for this reason that I decided to include in my Life Under the Peculiar Institution, only those individuals who had reached the age of 13 were adolescents at emancipation. Since internal evidence and the narratives themselves indicated that it was at this time that they began to assume adult work roles. But even this included a substantial number of individuals who had not begun to occupy skilled occupational roles, and thus ignores possible mobility within slave society. Norman Yetman: With the exception of those very, very few of extremely aged individuals who would have ranged up to age 75 at time of emancipation. Fogel and Engerman argue that there was considerable mobility among the slave population, that a pre-modern tracking system did not exist as it does today. And the typical male occupational changes were from house servants as children or adolescents to prime field hands as young adults, into craftsmen in later life. An important thesis that I feel demands further testing. Not only were those interviewed extremely old, but most lived in conditions of abject poverty. These two factors often combined to make them look upon the past through rose-colored glasses, as it were. To look fondly upon past events and situations that were not in reality, so positive as they recall them to be. Moreover, it's apparent that some informants mistaking the interviewer for a government representative who might somehow assist them in their plight, replied to the questions with flattery and calculated exaggeration in an effort to curry the interviewer's favor. Norman Yetman: On the other hand, such exaggeration frequently may have been the consequence of the interview itself, which provided the informants an eagerly anticipated once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be the center of attention. It brightened the humdrum world in which they were in case. My own attempts at interviewing aged relatives, which were incidentally stimulated by my belief in the value of personal reminiscences derived from the use of the Slave Narrative Collection, reinforces for me the idea that such factors were involved. In addition to the problem of whether the former slaves reported accurately and truthfully what had occurred during their experience under slavery, a formidable problem in the use of the Slave Narrative Collection concerns the question of whether the interviewers were effectively able to elicit candid responses from their informants, and whether what the informants said was accurately recorded. Norman Yetman: It is axiomatic that the quality of an interview is dependent upon the skill of the individual who compiles it. The quality of the typewritten accounts contained in the collection is grossly uneven, reflecting the varied caliber of the federal writers. Most workers were amateurs, inexperienced, and unsophisticated in the use of interview techniques. Most expressed little concern for the sources of distortion inherent in the interview process and were insensitive to the nuances of interviewer procedure. The questionnaire which was devised by the noted folklorist, John Lomax, to suggest possible categories of discussion was often partially or totally ignored. And this frequently resulted in rambling and trivial protocols. When it was too closely followed, the result was stylized and superficial responses devoid of spontaneity. Norman Yetman: Moreover, it is problematic how effectively and accurately interviewers were able to write down exactly what the interview informants said. In other words, to obtain verbatim transcriptions of their interviews, especially when, as in many narratives, there was great care given to dialect. In addition, the writers themselves, or any one of a number of editors undertook to revise, alter, or censor the accounts. Comparisons of originals with the final versions appearing in the Rare Book Room of The Library of Congress, where the collection is permanently housed, indicates considerable editing. It was to minimize these problems that Rawick and Greenwood published the versions found in the Rare Book Room without any further editing. Which was not the case incidentally, in my own book, Life Under the Peculiar Institution. And I might mention that they are the only substantial editing I did was to attempt to... I did not excise or omit any aspects of them. Norman Yetman: I merely sought to standardize the dialect usage. I realized this is taking the process another step, and I'm sure that George will take me to task for doing that. But again, the audience for which this book was intended was different from the scholarly research interests that I think the set that Professor Rawick has edited was intended for. The race of the interviewer may also have affected an informant's response. The racial composition of the Writers' Project in the states in which former slaves were interviewed was overwhelmingly white. The relative absence of Negro interviewers introduces an important source of bias. For numerous studies have documented that the race of interviewer is an important factor in eliciting significantly different responses on the part of respondents. Because the etiquette of race relations in the South should have influenced the definition of the interview situation for these aged blacks, they may frequently have told the white interviewers "what they wanted to hear." Norman Yetman: Also, numerous blacks were not fully candid or refuse to tell a complete story to white interviewers, resulting in a kind of self-censorship. Fortunately, some black interviewers were involved in obtaining their narratives, and it is therefore possible to assess the influence of this flattery factor by comparing the responses of those interviewed by white and those by black interviewers. For example, my own analysis indicated that for the categories I selected, the race of interviewers significantly affected the frequency with which informants reported observing, but not enacting or being the recipient of aggression. The extent of distortion is not something inherent in the interview situation, but is relative to the specific measures employed. Therefore, depending upon how unobtrusive the measures, the question of how significantly the race of interviewer affected responses is an open one. Despite the large number of interviews obtained by the Writers' Project, less than 2% of the available ex-slaves were interviewed. Norman Yetman: This in itself poses no problem, except that it has been impossible to determine the processes by which informants were selected. There appears to have been little concern in the Writers' Project for systematic sampling procedures or for obtaining a representative sample of former slaves. Since this problem is nowhere mentioned in the extensive correspondent of the project, the skill of the sample can be seen simply in one area alone. While blacks over 85 years of age live primarily in rural Southern areas, those whose accounts are found in the collection are overwhelmingly urban residents. Again, I'm here using the antiquated census definition of 2,500. Apparently, the primary basis for selection was availability. Those close in closest proximity to the cities in which the federal writers were based were most likely to be interviewed. Given the myriad problems of authenticity and reliability of the narratives, one might despair of using them at all. Norman Yetman: Indeed, as I previously noted until very recently, they were not in fact used in serious fashion by scholars. Yet a blanket indictment of the narratives is as unjustified as their indiscriminate or uncritical use. Each kind of historical document has its own particular usefulness for providing an understanding of the past, as well as his own inherent limitations. And therefore the utility of the narratives cannot be determined apriori, but only in the context of the objectives of the researcher. In other words, if one is interested in entering the perennial debate over the profitability of slavery, information obtained from the narratives will be highly impressionistic and much less valuable than other sources, most importantly, plantation records. But, if one is concerned with fully understanding the nature of the Peculiar Institution from the perspective of the slave, or of reconstructing the cultural and social structural milieu of the slave community, or of analyzing the social dynamics of the slave system. Norman Yetman: Then these data are relevant, even essential. It is not to imply that they are inherently superior to other kinds of data or that they should not be used exclusively or without caution, but the hazards of attempting to understand slavery without them seems to me far outweigh the limitations that their use imposes. In the remainder of this paper. I would like to suggest several uses for the slave narrative collection. Many of which I am sure you'll have already been considered by the institute and incidentally, many of which we discussed this morning, this list is not meant to be exhaustive, nor is it necessarily original. Yet, it does indicate to me the wide range of possibilities for these unique materials. First, Personal History, the autobiography, along with folk songs, comprises, to me, the most important genre in black literature, from the antebellum narratives, through the autobiographies of such prominent blacks as Washington to Malcolm X, the narrative has been the most prominent and meaningful form of black literature. Norman Yetman: A point that John Blassingame has emphasized in a recent black scholar article. Even black fiction has been strongly autobiographical or has used the autobiographical form. As I would argue that American literature courses should utilize the sermons of Cotton Mather or Samuel Willard, as most representative of Puritan literature, so I would also argue that black literature courses should focus substantially upon the personal history as a literary form, especially prior to the 20th century. Moreover, as sensitive literary scholars have increasingly recognized the oral narrative represents a unique literary style and a once flourishing cultural form that is today rapidly becoming extinct under the impact of modern mass communications. The former slaves interviewed by the federal writers were among the most able practitioners of this style. More specifically, recording the collections of these age of black people has preserved an important component of the oral tradition of black Americans. Norman Yetman: In these interviews, folk speech, idiom and vernacular storytelling are fused with images, symbols, and myths to convey the sense of the experiential significance and reality of life in bondage. Ben Botkin, who's sensitive Lay My Burden Down was for over a quarter of a century, the only published source of materials from the slave narrative collection, wrote in his very sensitive introduction, "As folks say, what do people have to say about themselves?" An oral literature on an illiterate or some illiterate level. They will be found to possess literary qualities of their own close to folk literature. They have the forthrightness, tang and tone of people talking the immediacy and concreteness of the participant and eye witness and the salty irony and mother wit, which like the gift of memory are kept alive in the bookless world. In a sense, therefore, the narratives contribute the creation and maintenance of the mythic dimension of the black experience. Norman Yetman: I am using the term "mythic" in the anthropological sense, not as something false, but as a shared sacred remembrance, but can recognize this component in his introduction to lay my burden down, the informants he wrote were quote, "natural storytellers who drew for both their material and expression upon group experiences and traditional symbols upon the folklore of slavery, which outlive slavery." Thus the narratives as they develop certain common and traditional patterns of their own may be said to be on their way to becoming folklore. A term that I would hear used to refer to as myth. Certain recurring themes in the narratives take on this mythic dimension. Most among these in my mind is the description of emancipation. And although there are variations, the theme is a recurring one, always set in a communal context. The recollections of former slaves, Mary Anderson and Harriet Robinson. Norman Yetman: Our representative, Mary Anderson's first, she said that "the war has begun and there were stories of fights and freedom, the news went from plantation to plantation and whilst the slaves acted natural and some even more polite than usual, they prayed for freedom. Then one day I heard something that sounded like thunder and Martser and Missus began to walk around and act queer, the grown slaves were whispering to each other, sometimes they gathered in little gangs in the Grove. Next day, I heard it again, boom, boom, boom. I went and asked Missus, 'is it going to rain?' She said, 'Mary, go to the ice house and bring me some pickles and preserves.'. Norman Yetman: I went and got them. She ate a little and gave me some. And then she said, you run along and play. In a day or two everybody on the plantation seemed to be disturbed and Marster And Missus were crying, Marster ordered all the slaves to come to the great house at nine o'clock. Nobody was working and slaves were walking over the Grove in every direction. At nine o'clock, all the slaves gathered at the great house and Marster and Missus came out on the porch and stood side by side, you could hear a pin drop, everything was so quiet. And Marster said, 'good morning.' And Missus said, 'good morning, children.' They were both crying. Then Marster said, 'men, women and children, you are free, you are no longer. My slaves, the Yankees will soon be here.' Marster and Missus then went into the house, got two large arm chairs and put them on the porch facing the Avenue and sat down side by side and remained there watching." Norman Yetman: This is the account of Harriet Robinson. "After the war master Colonel Simmons went to get the mail. And so he called Daniel ivory, the overseer and said to him, 'go around to all the quarters and tell all the niggers to come up, I got a paper to read to em', they're free now, so you can get another job, cause I ain't got no more niggers which is my own. Niggers come up from the cabins, nappy headed, just like these Glen to the field'. Master Colonel Simmons say, 'Caroline.' That's my mammy. 'You as free as me, Paul said, bring you back and I's going to do just that. So you go on and work and I'll pay you, and your three oldest children, $10 a month ahead, and $4 for Harriet.' That's me. And then he turned to the rest and say, 'now you's will receive $10 ahead till the crop is laid by.' And don't you know, before he got halfway through over half them, niggers was gone." Norman Yetman: Descriptions of this momentous experience, recur throughout the slave narrative collection. It provides a communal definition of reality, one wrought with meaning and significance for its participants. It becomes an integral component of the definition of self and community. It is this broad communal recreation that I call myth, again, not in the sense that it's false, but in the sense that it has an experiential emotive involvement for the participants. As Sterling Stuckey and Lawrence Levine have pointed to the mythic components of folk songs and tales, I would argue that these mythic elements are also present in much of the narrative content in the shared recollections and recreation's of life in bondage, the experience of freedom, the trial of reconstruction and the Nadir of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ernest J. Gaines moving novel. The Autobiography of Jean Pittman, captures as much of this mythic impression as does Julius Lester's sensitive volume based upon the slave narratives "To Be a Slave". Norman Yetman: Another potential for which the narratives had not, to my knowledge, been effectively utilized, isn't the burgeoning interest among blacks in genealogical research and interested coincides with growing national recognition of oral history as a legitimate research tool. Interest has been stimulated, especially by Alex Haley's exciting account of his efforts to trace his fore bearers to Gambia an effort relying upon oral history as well as written records. Haley's interest really emanated from his recollections of tales he had been told as a boy by his aging maternal grandmother. Today there's growing recognition that personal recollections are invaluable in this quest, and I think there's a growing recognition of the utility of oral history materials in general and courses in oral history are springing up throughout the nation. Norman Yetman: The slave narrative collection extends this generational pattern back one or two or even three generations from the present for the former slaves frequently detailed their kinship relations and spoke of their ancestors. Gladys Fry, who supplemented the slave narrative collection materials with interviews of our own during the early 1960s, in an attempt to study the mechanisms of white social group control of the black community, has said in regard to the value of reminiscences quote, "family traditions constitute a form of genealogical records insofar as they related oral accounts of the history and descent of families from one generation to another, genealogies are often unconscious means by which reminiscences are related within a given family." Unquote. In retrospect, one of the major deficiencies of my own editing of life under the peculiar institution was the absence of a detailed personal index of both black and white names. But this of course is an even more crucial problem for the collection as a whole, but it is not an insurmountable one. Norman Yetman: And it is probable that much genealogical research could be assisted by the use of the narratives. But it is the experiential involvement, it seems to me, which represents the narratives' principal attraction. The stories they tell are so simple, so moving, so human, so engrossing in their own personal drama that they have an appeal and generate an interest among a wide range of readers from the highly literate and sophisticated to the relatively unlettered. My own experience, an experience which is not necessarily reflected in the sales figures from Holt Rinehart & Winston who published my book has been that the narratives are an extremely effective device for involving students of all ages and levels of sophistication, from elementary through junior high and high school, to undergraduate and graduate students and to try and understand what life under the peculiar institution really was like. Norman Yetman: Within the last month, I spent an exciting session with a class of fifth grade students who had used the narratives as part of their history study. Their teacher reported that these were the most effective materials that she had found in actually involving the students in the subject. But the primary utility of the collection has been and will remain for scholars, historians, and social scientists interested in understanding the dynamics of the institution of slavery and the impact of emancipation and reconstruction. The collection can both suggest new subjects for research as well as provide data for understanding others. One of the most intriguing things to me about the narratives, when I first encountered them, was it, they suggested facets of antebellum slave life with which I was totally unfamiliar and which appeared to have been ignored by historians. I was particularly intrigued by the narratives of individuals who had been held slave in what was then Indian territory, Now Oklahoma, by Indians from the five civilized tribes, Cherokee Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. Norman Yetman: The existence of black slave holding among American Indians provides a unique opportunity to deal with slave holding comparatively within the confines of the United States. Most significantly, it provides an opportunity to determine whether differences in cultural values that is between dominant white culture and the several slave holding Indian tribes where sufficient to affect differences in the treatment and responses of the enslaved. My initial impressionistic survey of the accounts in the slave narrative collection of former slaves held by Indians indicated that Indian slavery was less racist, less brutal, and exploitive and more open and flexible than white slavery typically was. Norman Yetman: I have consequently since embarked upon an attempt to deal more systematically and in greater depth with this study of slave holding Indians, such a study conserve also as an excellent index of the dynamics of a culturation of Indians to white values and to the differential adoption of these values among and within tribal units during the 19th century. One striking feature of my own research thus far is that in many instances, black slaves, because of their more intimate knowledge of white technology and values and their mastery of English, many served as interpreters between whites and Indians, played a significant mediating role in the acculturation process, a role as cultural communicator between Indians and whites. It was through this research, which is still in its initial stages that I became acquainted with the Indian pioneer historical project previously mentioned. Norman Yetman: But in addition to suggesting hypotheses for research with other data, the narratives are themselves crucial for a multiplicity of questions, both qualitative and quantitative. Fogel & Engerman, those apostles of methodological rigor, recognized the qualitative dimension of much historical inquiry and acknowledged that it cannot be assessed by the methods of clue matritions. It is much easier, they write, to obtain data bearing upon the frequency with which slave families were broken up by the intergenerational slave trade, than on the inner quality of the family life of slaves. It is recognition of this qualitative dimension that makes the slave narrative materials crucial for an understanding of the slave experience. In fact, my own perception, that the slavery was the most important social institution qualitatively within the slave community was derived from an examination of the slave narrative collection. One of the basic questions that the narratives raised was the definition of family itself, raw correctly, criticizes Jesse Bernard for her ethnocentrism, employing an overly rigid legal definition of marriage, but he and most other scholars have concurred in the definition of family in a nuclear sense. Norman Yetman: And the battle has raised over whether the family was quote, unquote stable. But in a qualitative sense, whether the family is nuclear, a non-nuclear is really irrelevant, what is crucial are the deep affectional ties between Ken and the solidarity they generated, a solidarity reflected in the intense concern with reestablishing the ties of families that had been separated during slavery. Strong family ties did not as Fogel & Engerman argue have to be encouraged by a master, but were part of the inner dynamic of slave life. An index of the strength of these bonds are the voluminous newspaper advertisements after the civil war placed by blacks seeking to locate and reunite families. This kind of family attachment is typified by two accounts that I have, the first, a rather formal account by Robert Glenn, who had been held Slave in North Carolina and then had been moved to Kentucky after he describes how after he was freed, he went to a number of jobs. Norman Yetman: And then he said, "I went straight to the County seat and hired Dr. George Raspbian Webster County for $100 per year. I stayed there one year. I got an easy in Kentucky. The whites treated the blacks awfully bad so I decided to go to Illinois. As I thought, a Negro might have a better chance there it'd being a Northern state. I was kindly treated and soon began to save money, but all through the years, there was a thought that haunted me in my dreams and in my waking hours, and this thought was of my mother, whom I had not seen or heard of in many years. Finally, one cold morning in early December, I made a vow that I was going to North Carolina and see my mother if she was still living, I had plenty of money for the trip. Norman Yetman: I wrote the postmaster in Roxboro, North Carolina, asking him to inform my mother I was still living and telling him the circumstances, mailing a letter at the same time, telling her that I was alive, but saying nothing of my intended visit to her. I left Illinois bound from North Carolina on December 15th. And in a few days I was at my mother's home. I tried to fool em'. There were two men with them and they called me by a fictitious name, but when I shook my mother's hand, I held it a little too long and she suspicion something. Still, she held herself until she was more sure, when she got a chance, she came to me and said, 'ain't you my child? Tell me my child, whom I left on the road near Mr. Morris, before the war?' I broke down and began to cry. Mother and father did not know me but mother suspicioned I was her child. Norman Yetman: Father had a few days previously remarked that he did not want to die without seeing his son once more. I could not find language to express my feelings I did not know before I came home, whether my parents were dead or alive, this Christmas I spent in the country in state of my birth and childhood with mother, father and freedom was the happiest period of my entire life, because those who were torn apart in bondage and sorrow several years previous were now United in freedom and happiness. Norman Yetman: That the importance of family with a widely held value within the slave community can be seen from this moving account by Henry Johnson, who had never seen his parents until he was an adult. Norman Yetman: "I never even saw my mother and father until I was in my twenties, a white man taking me to Danville, Virginia to drive his carriage for him. After I was there a spell, a colored man kept watching me so much I got plumbed scared. This was after the war was over. Then one day lo and behold, he jumped at me and he grabbed me and he asked me where I was staying. I did not know whether to tell him or not, I was scared. Then he said, 'I'm your father and I'm going to take you to your mother and sisters and brothers down in Greenville, Virginia.' When he got me there, I found two sisters and four brothers. Norman Yetman: They was all so glad to see me. They shouted and cried and carried on, I was so scared I tried to run away. Cause I didn't know nothing about none of them. And I thought that white man, what brought me down here ought to have saved me from all this. I just thought a white man was my God, I didn't know no better. Well, when my folks stop rejoicing, my mother killed and cooked two chickens for me." Norman Yetman: And he goes on to describe the processes by which the family tried to retain him. He was very much scared at this process, but the point I'm trying to emphasize here is that the value placed upon the reuniting of the family seems to me it was implicitly very, very strong in that selection. Norman Yetman: But if the slave narrative collection merely provided qualitative data alone, much of its value would be limited. I previously emphasized the importance of its size and representative this because I feel it can be subjective to systematic analysis. Although, one of the salient features of the collection is its great diversity of experience. The basic concern should be whether there are patterns within this diversity. And if there are what the social correlates of these patterns are. Impressionistic readings of the narratives can be used to support two totally antithetical views. Consequently, the data must be systematically reviewed. For example, one reviewer of life under the peculiar institution concluded from reading those selective narratives, that under slavery quote unquote "family life was unstable" a conclusion directly opposite my own terms such as often, many, frequently, really tell us very little about slavery or any other subject, except that the author has made an impressionistic judgment. Norman Yetman: What we really need to know is how often, how many, and how frequently, what were the modal, that is the most frequent patterns. I would argue that for many questions, not all questions, the slave narrative collection representing a sample of over 2000 former slaves is an appropriate source for systematically testing many of these implicitly quantitative judgments. Indeed, one of my hopes in publishing the narratives in life under the peculiar institution, and I might digress here and say, when I prepared this, I had intended to have a hundred narratives and I did it deliberately because I thought it really would facilitate usage by students if they had an even number so that if they use a hundred, they can have even percentages. You won't have to even sit down and figure out percentages. Evidently I don't have a very good ability to count because the, the book ended up with 102. Norman Yetman: But at any rate, I had intended to have approximately that number, so there would be a sufficiently large sample for individuals to use in this manner. Fogel & Engerman do report that they analyzed the slave narrative collection systematically at one point, reporting that only 4.5% of those discussing the matter said that one of their parents was white, thus supporting allegedly their assertion, that the extent of white sexual exploitation had been previously overemphasized, but Fogel & Engerman are remarkably inconsistent. And again, I have not had the opportunity to examine the second volume, but I don't think the criticism I'm about to make here is dependent upon having read that volume. Had they consistently utilized the collection in a systematic manner they could well have extended their systematic analysis to aspects of slave life for which they make generalizations based solely upon impressionistic evidence. Norman Yetman: For instance, in discussing various forms of marriage, they report that slaveholders often quote "sought to make marriage solemn," some, they say. "Ceremonies were performed in churches," others, they say "by the planter in the big house". the consequence of this highly unsystematic analysis is to support their case, that the horrors of slavery could have been exaggerated. Yet, these impressionistic and imprecise terms could also be used to say that often slaves had no solid or even symbolic marriage right, some merely cohabited without benefit of ceremony while others were joined by the practice of jumping the broom. The point is, that Fogel & Engerman's assertions are no more systematically based than are there and syntheses, what they should and could show is the range of distribution among these various practices, as it is, they are really, unsystematically contributing to a view of slavery by the use of the very methods they condemn. Norman Yetman: Finally, I come to the issue that initially generated my interest in a slave narrative collection, the one that we discussed somewhat extensively this morning, the issue of slavery and personality. Of the voluminous amount of attention devoted to the institution of slavery during the 1960s, no single essay has generated greater controversy than Stanley Elkins provocative sample thesis. The question of slavery and personality that Elkins raised is one that it has been almost necessary for every student of slavery to at least come to grips with, particularly because Elkins provided no empirical support for his thesis, as might anticipated, the work has been vigorously challenged on theoretical and methodological grounds, and the attention devoted to the thesis shows little sign of abating more than a decade after its original publication. One of Elkins stated objectives in slavery was to shift the context of the debate about the peculiar institution to raise different questions, to develop a new framework for its analysis. Norman Yetman: Ironically, however, the central question raised in slavery, the provocative sample thesis, has itself become characterized by a coerciveness comparable to that Elkin and sought to dispel. Most who have reacted to the idea of Sambo have retained Elkins conceptual framework and categories. That is the idea of quote unquote "Sambo identification, infantilization, internalization". All of these catchwords that he included within this, as well as the assumptions that he utilized. Above all, most critics have become locked into the debate over whether Sambo existed, not the more general. And to me, the most important question of how the system psychologically affected its participants, both blacks and white. Most criticism has obscured the import of the question's Elkins raised concerning the relation between social structure and personality functioning. Moreover, there has been little effort to go beyond the explicit categories of Elkins argument to consider the implications of more general questions of modal personality among historical populations. Norman Yetman: One of the most suggestive aspects of Elkins work was his implicit model of power independency. According to Elkins, quote unquote "Sambo". As I will indicate in a few moments, I do not like to even use that term because it is so imprecise and so misleading, so ideologically value-laden, but at least he's arguing that that personality was the dominant, what I interpret to mean the statistically, the most frequent or modal personality type, but was not universal. He did not argue that the effects of the American slave system would be uniformly felt, that all slaves would be Sambos or that the Sambo personality would be randomly distributed among the slave population. Norman Yetman: Among the slave population. Rather, he hypothesized that the effects of the system would be differentially felt among certain categories of slaves. Sambo, he argued, would be most frequently found among those most vulnerable to the direct effect of the master's power and sanctions. In Elkins model, therefore, Sambo, what he calls, "The typical plantation slave," was primarily a product of the agricultural plantation. Norman Yetman: The field hand on a large plantation and the urban slave who arranged his own employment would represent polar ideal types. The traits attributed to Sambo would be most likely characteristic, according to Elkins, of the former. And will be relatively less pronounced in those slaves, whose experiences in terms of the diversity and complexity of alternative roles available to them, were shielded from the "full impact" of the "closed system." Now, he says it was possible for a significant number of slaves, in varying degrees, to escape the full impact of the system and its coercions upon personality. Norman Yetman: The house servant, the urban mechanic, the slave who arranged his own employment and paid his master a stipulated sum each week, where all figuratively members of the Underground. The complex social differentiation within slave society is a phenomenon noted by writers from Frederick Douglass to Fogel and Angermann. Norman Yetman: But the dynamics of the social diversity, based primarily upon occupational differences and its consequences, have not yet been adequately analyzed. A notable exception is Gerald Mullin's highly imaginative analysis of slavery in 18th century Virginia, which strongly suggests that occupation was a crucial variable influencing slaves' psychological adjustment. Mullin does not merely know that slaves heroically resisted the slave system, rather, he argues that there were different styles of rebelliousness. The different task related categories of slaves responded to or resisted slavery in different ways. Similar comparisons of different styles of adaptation among former slaves whose testimonies are included in the slave narrative collection, have yet to be more widely undertaken. Norman Yetman: What I propose is that given this general hypothesis concerning the differential effects of social location within the slave society, that the issues of slavery and personality be recast. And that the extremely unfortunate term, Sambo, and its entire psychological baggage: submissiveness, child-likeness, infantilization, dependence, et cetera, be discarded. Instead, it seems to me, we should focus upon the issue of what effects, if any, differences in social location within the slave social structure had upon personality and behavior. Let's instead of seeking to discover a single pervasive personality type, we investigate the broader question of the relation of psychological function in the social structure of whether differences in social status within the slave social structure are correlated with different psychological and behavioral responses. Moreover, to demonstrate that a creative and vibrant underline existed within the community, a conclusion that Stuckey Levine, Rawick and Blassingame demonstrated is not to dismiss the question of slavery and personality. Norman Yetman: It merely serves to raise further questions about the social dynamics of that under life. The model that I propose, which emerged from analysis and critique of Elkins formulation, emphasizes the proposition that psychological traits were distributed in the slave population in relationship to an individual status position within the structure of the slave plantation. Personality structure is therefore treated as a dependent variable, a function of the individual status positions. This model itself, however, need not be restricted to the specific social system of slavery, but is potentially applicable to other closed institutional systems. It may well be that the theoretical implications concerning the psychological functioning of individuals in closed systems will ultimately transcend the specific issue of slavery in America and contribute to a broader understanding of the consequences of individual and group powerlessness. Norman Yetman: Within the logic of the model I am proposing, the question is not whether a particular kind of personality type, Sambo or Nat Turner or whatever it may be, existed or did not exist. Instead, it is whether or not being located in different positions in a system of slavery exacted differences in the incidence of character traits. In other words, rather than asking whether slaves were affected by the peculiar institution, the question becomes which categories of slaves were affected and how? Norman Yetman: Since this seminar concerns the uses of the slave narratives, I shall not venture further to consider the equally important question of the effects of the peculiar institution on whites, except to suggest that it is an equally intriguing and important problem. This model that I'm talking about admits the existence of a range of personality types among the slave population. But it does not, as both Blassingame and Rawick maintain, admit that they were randomly distributed. Blassingame argues that the talk of the slave personality is impossible, and I'm quoting from Blassingame here. Norman Yetman: He says, "There was great variety in slave behavior. Some slaves were always docile. Others were docile most of the time and rebellious at other times. Likewise, some resisted bondage throughout their lives in various ways while others, generally the docile, might be rebellious only once. In other words, the slave was no different in most ways from most men. The same range of personality types existed in the quarters as in the mansion." A basic objective research on this issue, it seems to me, should be to determine not whether there was a diversity of personality types among American slaves, a fact that I believe is self evident, but whether there were systematic patterns or a systematic pattern into distribution of these personality types. Norman Yetman: Now, an underlying assumption of my argument is that the question of slave personality structures can be most fruitfully and definitively assessed if it is conceived as a problem of modal personality. Having argued that the frequency of trait distribution is a function of a role in a slave system, it is apparent this approach is statistical. A systematic empirical test of the model, thus necessitates, psychological studies of individuals variously located within the slave population. That is, it requires the systematic comparison of subgroups within the slave society. Norman Yetman: At first glance, it would appear that this approach, utilizing the psychological data of individuals from society, would be impossible. Discussing the importance of national character in historical research, Walter Metzger has argued that such an approach is unfeasible. He says, "It would involve projective tests, intensive interviews, psychological psychoanalytic, excavations clinical techniques, which even if they work, can be applied only to the living." Historians, by and large, must study character from afar. However, personal documents, defined by Allport as, "Any self-revealing record that intentionally or unintentionally yields information regarding the structure dynamics and functioning of the author's mental life," have been widely used in historical research, often for their psychological insights. Norman Yetman: From this definition, it is apparent that a wide variety of materials, diaries, letters, autobiographies, et cetera, provide a potential source of information concerning the psychological attributes of historical populations. The voluminous number of existing slave narratives, autobiographies, and interviews provide an invaluable and virtually unexploited source of data pertinent to the systematic analysis of the slave society and slave personality structure. As Rawick has argued in his case for the slave narratives, "The slave narratives are the richest source we have ever had for description of slave personality." I would add, in conclusion, that they are probably the richest source available for the psychological study of any non-elite historical population. Thank you. Speaker 2: I think that we have questions if you're willing to answer any of them. [inaudible] What were the five Indian tribes? And could you give us more information about Indians who owned slaves? Norman Yetman: The five tribes are the Five Civilized Tribes, Choctaw Chickasaw, Creek, Cherokee, Seminole. And my research into this has not yet been extensive. I have examined a voluminous number of records in the National Archives as well as materials in Oklahoma, but I have not yet really gotten into the meat of the subject itself. Norman Yetman: Slave holding existed among the Five Civilized Tribes extensively. Now, again, there's one of those terms that I criticize others for using. Which is inherently quantitative, but it doesn't really reveal anything. The statistics that I have were that, before removal in 1837, it... For instance, in Tennessee, the slave population within the Cherokee tribe in the state of Tennessee was approximately 10% of the total number of Cherokees. In other States, it was somewhat less. I don't recall the specific data for the holdings in the other tribes. Norman Yetman: And, as a matter of fact, Kenneth Porter, the historian who's probably done more work on Indian-Black relations than any other, he thinks that it's problematic whether slavery ever really existed among the Seminoles. And at least it was a far different kind of phenomenon among the Seminoles than it was among the Cherokee. Because among the Seminoles, there may have been legal title by Seminole masters to their slaves, but in Florida, they were in such a frontier situation. Norman Yetman: And as a matter of fact, this was one of the things that generated many of the Wars was the issue of slavery. But there Blacks lived in their Own separate towns and had a great deal of independence. So that it is really problematic whether you can even speak of slavery in the same way among the Cherokees and the Seminoles and among whites. I think it had a far different meaning, but I have not yet gotten to the place where I can answer that definitively. After removal, the only things the Five Civilized Tribes could take with them, were one gun, one trap, one blanket, one pot, and their slaves. Norman Yetman: So, that was the only thing really that moved. Now, there was substantial... That was the thing that was legally permitted. There were other things that were permitted to move as well. But slaves moved on the Trail of Tears with the Five Civilized Tribes. And of course, this occurred in the period of time in the middle half of the 19th century. When they got to Oklahoma, they re-instituted the power and many of them maintained slave holdings. Now the extent and the size of those slave holdings are problematic. They certainly were not so large as they were in the Antebellum South in general, among whites. Typical holdings, so far as I've been able to determine, were smaller. The largest... I have one account of over a hundred, but mostly they were of two or three slaves. It was a relatively small slave holding units. Norman Yetman: And as I mentioned, just parenthetically, in many instances, those Indians did not speak English. And the only ways in which they could interact with whites was through their slaves. And this process of cultural communication is one that, it seems to me, is extremely exciting. Blacks as cultural communicator in this interaction between these two groups. Now that's not to say that this was a common occurrence. Because my impression is that most of the people who held slaves among the Five Civilized Tribes were mixed bloods. In other words, those individuals who both racially and culturally become assimilated to the dominant group values. As a matter of fact, as I think I mentioned, this may actually be an index of acculturation to the dominant cultural values. Norman Yetman: But at any rate, slavery did exist. It was a very divisive issue among the tribes and especially between the mixed bloods and full bloods. Because the factionalism of the Five Civilized Tribes, the phenomena still going on today, is basically along those lines, and it was at that time. The full bloods were those who maintained Indian names and very rarely, incidentally, do you find Indians holding slaves who maintained in the census records had their Indian names. The ones that held slaves basically had white names. The best example of one that comes to my mind immediately, of course, is John Ross and the head of the Cherokees. Very interestingly- Jordan: [inaudible]. Norman Yetman: Hmm? Jordan: He went to Edinburgh. Norman Yetman: Yeah, yeah. Right, right. And he... A very knowledgeable, articulate individual, very Indian in many ways, very much committed to the Cherokees. And very interestingly, what happened in much of Oklahoma, and again, these things are very impressive. Norman Yetman: What happened in much of Oklahoma was that when fighting broke out, the tribes were... Virtually all of them split over which side they should fight on. And some of them migrated immediately to Texas. But the vast majority, especially among the Cherokees, which I'm most familiar, migrated to Kansas. They were the ones who supported the North, even many of them with slaves. And as a matter of fact, I had gone through the records of the Dawes Commission in the National Archives. And up until today in Kansas City, there is a group called something like The Cherokee Freedmens Association that is challenging under the [inaudible] for their portion of the allotments that were given under the Dawes Act of 1887. Norman Yetman: So in other words, they're maintaining that they were illegally excluded because the treaty ending the civil war between the Indian nations, which was not part of the United States. It was a separate plan, had to have a separate nation. The treaty between the Indian nations and the federal government specified that the slaves were to be taken in as full citizens. So in 1887, when the Allotment Act was passed, these slaves were to have been given full citizenship rights and the goods and benefits derived from this. Norman Yetman: However, many slaves, when freedom came, were in Kansas, many went in Texas, and many of them stayed there immediately thereafter. They did not come back to Oklahoma. And because they were not in Oklahoma when the Allotment Act was passed, there were challenges to the legality of their being included. And consequently, a voluminous number of records of people who were, even to this day, challenging that phenom. What I hope to come out of this project, is an analysis of both the cultural and social structure dynamics of this. Norman Yetman: Again, to compare in a general sense, Indian slave holding with white slave holding. But then also to compare slave holding Indian tribes among themselves. Because as I suggested, I think that there are differences. For instance, the records that I get are the Choctaws, who were the absolute worst owners, their tyrants. There appears to be a far greater degree of flexibility, especially among the Seminoles. But among the Creeks and the Cherokees... Jordan, if you might be able to comment on that. Jordan: I just have that here I being very impressionistic out of the new Mississippi stuff I have. There were a lot of bands of Choctaw that stayed in Mississippi. A lot of them were slave owners and a lot of these people talk about having [inaudible]. And that has always been my impression. There's also an oral history of that elsewhere. I've talked to people who were in Houma, Louisiana or who were abandoned Choctaws or who were slaves in all this and who are obviously people of mixed African and Indian ancestry. And it's very clear that the tradition is a very... Like talking, those people talk of a very rough tradition. And that's my impression just from these few... And this is not from Oklahoma, but these are from these bands- Norman Yetman: They're still there. Jordan: Of Choctaw who stayed in Mississippi. Or there's one contact that I've had with a couple of families around Houma, Louisiana yeah. That's an impression, but I think it's probably worth following. Norman Yetman: Yeah. The reason I brought this up was not necessarily to push my own research and my own interests. But I would never have known about this phenomena, had it not been for the slave narrative collection. And this was a thing, and as a matter of fact, Jordan, you mentioned it in your book as the subject of someone [inaudible]. Jordan: But Porter mentions the fact that among the Seminoles that a black ex-slave is a war chief at one particular point. Norman Yetman: Yeah. Part of my evidence for this idea to act as cultural communicator is derived from the records of the War Depatment and the court records in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. And there was one cat named, I can't think of his name. He was probably the most colorful individual in the entire front of your character, as far as Fort Gibson was concerned. And his name won't come. The Very Wildcat. No, that's his nickname. His nickname was Wildcat. But he was a black who was a Seminole, and he was a scout, and he was probably the most prominent person in all of the information at that time, because he acted essentially as a liaison between the military. He acted as a scout for the military. And he also acted as a go-between for the Seminoles. Norman Yetman: Now there are a number of individuals that are very similar to this. I have another reference, and again, if I show you it enough, you'll totally get the systematic quantitative swim. I had another reference from a traveler's account of an individual who was going through what was in Indian territory on horseback. And suddenly, in the middle of nowhere, came upon Indian cattle. And there was one black female slave there. And he went in and tried to begin a conversation and the Indians could speak no English. So consequently, the slave acted as translator. And in that situation, it seems to me, the individual has a great deal more power and to want more flexibility would be the case. So I have... All I'm suggesting is that phenomenon is intriguing and is one that ought to be much more [inaudible] about. Speaker 3: I wanted to ask you a question about the possibilities or the limitations of a psychological approach to the slave narratives. I don't know how to phrase the question. I'm all for scholars, [inaudible] ordering an inventory in the Black experience. And what I want to ask you is whether or not you consider their point beyond which is scholar, who does not have, or cannot achieve an identity or an infinity with the experience that he's analyzing can go? That is to say, if you're going to approach the slave narratives from a psychological point of view, it seems to me that you're going to really get into the mindset of an oppressed people. And you're going to have to talk, at least in certain terms, about the psychology of oppression and for a person who has never had the experience of oppression, I'm wondering how valid an attempt or effort can be made at that kind of analysis. Norman Yetman: Okay. What your doing is accepting the validity of the model that I placed on the board this morning. And that is that there is a continuum of oppression, as it were. And okay. Speaker 3: Okay. Norman Yetman: In other words, you're saying, if we conceive of that as a continuum of oppression... I maintain it as a continuum. And that, while my skin color may not enable me to have the sense of identity or the nuance for getting into that. It seems to me that neither is the oppression that exists today, slavery. On a continuum, there may be qualitative similarities, but this is not slavery. And that, whereas the Black experience for a Black is different. Certainly, I can not put myself in your shoes and understand the nuances and the dynamics of that in its totality. But I feel it also, whereas you may have a headstart, nevertheless, we aren't living in slavery now. Speaker 3: Well, that's a relative- Norman Yetman: Okay. And that gets back to the ambivalence. This is this part of the ambivalence I was talking about this morning and the issue of that continuum. You asked a very hard question. Speaker 3: Yeah. Norman Yetman: Especially when you're dealing with this kind of issue. Speaker 3: Yeah. Norman Yetman: And I think my response to you this morning was it was these... Now, there are certain aspects, quantitative analyses of Black occupation and things like that. But I don't think that there's much difference. When you're getting this very, very interpretive aspect of the experience and personality. I would agree to a certain extent that I may have a more difficult time than you getting into it. Where I'm at, I may approach it from a different side. I don't however think that totally eliminates me from analyzing it. Speaker 3: Okay. Well, I was just interested in knowing whether or not in fact, once one makes the transition from a phenomenological approach to a given situation, to an experiential approach, which it seems to me a psychological study or analysis would demand. Whether or not there are a certain criteria by which one might feel constrained to either qualify or disqualify oneself. Norman Yetman: I think it's a major problem. But I don't think it should preclude me from attempting to do that. I think it's a problem for any ethnographic study any person makes. And anthropologists recognize this, or at least they should, if they don't. But that isn't... What you're really talking about is the nature of bias. And, it seems to me that bias is a relative thing too because the perception that you have is different from the one I have. They may be different, but yours may not necessarily be more quote unquote correct and really different. Speaker 3: But there is always a possibility at least that mine, given expertise as well as identity, hopefully, would be more authentic, or that at least the policy of verisimilitude might be a virtue of mine. Whereas, because of the fact that yours necessarily will have to be an approximation or an appropriation of an experience. Norman Yetman: But you see you're- Speaker 3: It won't necessarily share that same virtue. Norman Yetman: But you're filtering your perception of the nature of that slavery experience through your experience in the 1960s, in the present. Just as I am filtering that through my experience in white America in the present. You're filtering it through your experience in black America in the present. Those are two different ways and it seems to me they may introduce equally different kinds of biases. Norman Yetman: I think my own feeling is that the basic difference is in sensitizing individuals to issues, making them much more aware of aspects than a person who is totally outside that experience would be. In other words, in initially raising, generating interest, how do we come to undertake research? I maintain that no one really undertakes research for purely objective, scholarly reasons. There are some background, historical, social factors in each person's makeup that leads them to investigate certain kinds of questions. In that sense, that experience, your experience, it seems to me, is invaluable in that regard. Now go ahead. Speaker 3: Yeah, I appreciate that answer. I guess, one case in point is- Norman Yetman: Let me make one more statement. What I'm suggesting, is that this kind of research can be done. I'm not suggesting that I, alone do it, or that whites alone do it. I'm suggesting that this is a kind of thing that can be undertaken by anyone whose interested in that subject. And I'm not necessarily arguing that you lock yourselves into the kind of questions that I asked. I'm merely saying that I think there are a number of questions, really, that we can still continue to answer about that issue. Without getting all bogged down in the ideology of Elkins and that. I want to divorce myself from that aspect of it. Speaker 3: I appreciate that. Norman Yetman: I'm sorry. I interrupted you. Speaker 3: Well, I don't think that it's a very good example of what I was going to say. That's the point of contention that I guess I was going to pick with Professor Roberts about his spoken. Well, I find your thesis to be very productive. In fact, since we're in the process about the business of creating a culture from sundown to sun-up. Obviously that's limited the implication being that they weren't allowed to except creating one from sun-up to sundown, but they necessarily were- Jordan: That's enough. That's a very unfortunate, not what was intended. That's a very unfortunate implication [inaudible]. Norman Yetman: Yeah. Excuse me. I think also George, one of the criticism that I made of you in here, was partly derived from the same kind of perception. In other words, work relations were really not that significant. So significant in terms of the total dynamics, as was the off-hours interaction. Excuse me. Speaker 3: Well because [inaudible] argues for one that in fact, human beings, sentient human beings, are about the business of creating a culture as long as they are conscious, but I think that really the implication probably derives from a rather simplistic reading of the title and anyone who really read your book with any kind of sympathy would not come away with the impression that- Jordan: I regretted the title many times because of that. Speaker 3: But now if we get into chapter one, you discussed Douglass and you talked about the real dangers of the commitment to a state or that whole adventure, and although you do mention that the practical difficulties of that kind of undertaking, you quote Douglass as having experienced this real deep, profound loneliness when he finally does escape. You suggest that in fact this was a dissuader on the part of slavery with this kind of loneliness, alienation and isolation that he was going to experience and the hostile environment and different environment once you did reach the quote unquote promise land. Speaker 3: Now you do give audible mentioned to the pragmatic difficulty of the situation because it seems to me that you went through such lengths in talking about this problem. The problem of loneliness, once the escape had been achieved. You seem to almost argue by implication, that this was really the most persuasive encounter. And that in fact, the condition of loneliness was perhaps the harsher condition that the slaves might have to confront. Whether he might've imagined it to be a harsher condition to confront than the cruelty and brutality of the institution itself. Speaker 3: Now again, that's an implication, but I think it's an implication that derives from the emphasis in the first chapter. You really do go off into a philosophical or psychological discussion about this whole product of loneliness, and you don't go nearly as much time into the nitty gritty, pragmatic difficulty of the escape. Jordan: I don't want to [inaudible] the question. What I really want to do is [inaudible]. I was going to deal with that anyhow. Really, because it's a very real question. There were a number of real questions because I don't necessarily want to talk about the book but in part I do want to say some things. Let me make a quick comment. Quick comment is that I find one of the most amazing experiences that I've ever had in my life is to find out what's in that book when people tell me what's in that book. Jordan: I don't mean that satirically, I mean, for me, very moving feeling. That is to say there are things that I don't know that are in that book for good, for real, okay? I don't know that they're in that book. That wasn't what I was thinking. For example, the point you just raised, that wasn't what I was thinking about when I was writing that. That wasn't what I was thinking about. I understand why you say, okay, because I can envision how much space is spent here, and there's a long quote from Douglass, and then there's a short paragraph. That's what you just said, and I remembered that. Jordan: I think that you do get into this question of the phenomenological, and you do get into the question of what happens when somebody writes a book, and I'll quote from the Chinese gentleman who said, "Let 100 flowers bloom." That is to say, that it seems to me that what is really required really is necessary, is that after you come through all of the most painful quantitative and empirically the fixed comments is still filtering whatever it is you write through who you are. Your reality, your experience, and that's why I really don't believe in definitive books, okay? Jordan: I really don't know what the definitive work of the slave narratives would be. I don't know what the definitive work on slavery would be at this particular point. And I think because there's two things that happen. This is what happens when I write, and there have been millions of things that happen when people read it, and that's not necessarily the same thing, nor should it be the same thing. Jordan: So the implication of your question, I have absolutely no problem with it at that particular point. At the same time, you do what you can do and you do it as well as you can do it, and people read it and find out. It doesn't lead me in the other direction of saying that I suppose the only thing I ever write about is how I grew up in Brooklyn or something, which is where I grew up, or something like that. But let me hold the rest, there's a lot more [inaudible]. Speaker 4: This question is [inaudible], but you said something earlier, its troubling me a bit, its been troubling me all weekend. Different sessions. It seems to me that not enough distinction is being made between various slave responses and [inaudible]. You said earlier that, I think it might have been one of your read thesis, that we often anticipate [inaudible] and develop slave narratives compared to unfortunately slave narratives [inaudible] general writers project was questionable. Norman Yetman: I didn't mean to imply at the authenticity was. I said that there are samples of different universes. Put it that way. Speaker 4: I think basically, the samples of different universes are based on ones having folk materials and the other one lacking folk materials. Am I right? Norman Yetman: It's not folk materials per se. It's just that you have different individuals and different kinds of individuals, who were presenting their accounts in the one hand. Speaker 4: What seems to me to be the question is the differences between or the [inaudible] mentioned later on and the written position. I mean certain oral responses are redundant, repetitive, and they're spontaneous and that same kind of [inaudible] certainly doesn't go on with the writing. So it seems to me that to compare them would be a bit [inaudible] as you said a moment ago. I mean, you're really weighing two different [inaudible]. Speaker 4: I think that's what needs to be driven home a little more clear. That's why I'm not comfortable with saying the interviews conducted in the 20th century, by way of certain technical devices, by way of interviewing [inaudible]. I'm not comfortable with naming those things slave narratives. And I'm not sure [inaudible] about terms, but I think slave narratives defines a very clear division, based on certain linguistic considerations in the 19th century. Certain qualities or characteristics of life style, people have theories, which would make it a different thing for a slave knowing this is. Norman Yetman: Well, I prefer to use the term personal history in a general sense. I think it's more inclusive. I don't want to quibble over whether or not the VPA materials are slave narratives or not. I mean, again, I must say, I don't know the antebellum narratives as well as I know the slave narrative question. But weren't many of the antebellum narratives interviews, in essence interviews. They state specifically that the individuals wrote down exactly what the person told them. Speaker 4: Well, I don't know if you would call them interviews really. Professor Garrison, the other night interviewed, well cognitive, three different types, and one of them and from the antebellum period was the dictated slave narrative. I'm not sure that's the same thing as a man or a woman drawing up a list of questions, and going out and asking people to respond to them. Just let me say this briefly- Norman Yetman: I see what you mean, okay. Speaker 4: My exposure to, well the slave narrative, the slave response generally is extremely limited. So I'm just asking. But I was looking through a volume called Drums and Shadows. I don't know, I think that was a part of [crosstalk]. And one of the things that I was looking for specifically was references to what may have led back to an African paradigm in the [inaudible], and I kept looking for questions, or for responses that would suggest a paradigm or something that might lead to traces in the past. Speaker 4: The questions were so weird and [inaudible]. It seems to me that the questions were already intent on coming to, or verifying conclusions that they had made at some point in the past about what the experience of slavery had been and that what they were interested in doing was not necessarily finding out new things or different things, but to get confirmation on the old things. So all the questions have to be about superstitions. What do you think about flying? And what do you think about [inaudible] and so on. I thought that was very [crosstalk] at the time. Norman Yetman: I think that was the main objective of that. See, but you're going to that document with specific objectives in mind and you're saying, "Gee, I wish that they'd asked different questions." Aren't you really criticizing those who wrote Drums and Shadows who conducted the research for it, for not asking the kinds of questions that you are interested in. Speaker 4: What I'm saying is I think is that possible answers that you can get from an oral response might indicate that one can prove just about anything [inaudible], and one can come to infinite conclusions [inaudible]. And, that is not exactly the same thing that can happen with the written response. With the written word, which [inaudible] doesn't change- Norman Yetman: Tell me how. I mean, I'm not arguing. I'm interested in knowing how this can be. What is the difference between the fact that these individuals, A, some of them allegedly just dictated what they were going to say to a writer. Others may have actually written them down. Well, I really don't see the difference. Speaker 4: Between? Norman Yetman: Between that kind of situation and what your criticism is of the fact that these people were interviewed. If you're saying that the interviews were undertaken in a way that precluded certain kinds of questions from being posed, or they really did not adequately ask certain kinds of things. Then that's a criticism of the interview process, but I'm just curious as to what the difference is between those two. Speaker 3: I think it has to do with selection. And then I think in one instance you have self-selection, that is to say on the part of the narrator, you have him selecting in the act of relating what it is that he wants to narrate about his experience. The information that he is going to vow to state to [inaudible]. On the other hand, you have an interviewer who has done the selecting, but by virtue of having compiled this poll questions that they're going to put to the interviewers. So I think that that is a very significant difference. Who does the selecting? Because it seems to me that the process of selection shapes a certain kind of experience. Norman Yetman: Well, who does do the selection for the antebellum narratives? Given the context in which they were written, they weren't merely written as a rich man finally writes his autobiography. They were written for certain kinds of purposes. And it seems to me that influenced the kind of selection of what the individual would put down. So there were certain external influences. The autobiography was not written totally devoid of external influences. It may not have had direct questions, but there were certain kinds of issues that seems to me, the person was directing himself toward. Speaker 4: This ain't the opportunity to be more intimate or to be more private [crosstalk]. Norman Yetman: Again, as I say, I'm not as familiar with the range of antebellum narratives as I am the latter ones, but I would think it would be necessary to examine all the background factors that were involved in the production of this, specifically the motivations, to whom it was told or written, in what manner or the context. All of these factors before you can come up with this clear cut distinction you seem to be between these two that you seem to make. Speaker 4: See, the reason why I'm [inaudible] is that you said very specifically earlier that such things as people's responses to church services, for example, were missing in the antebellum narrative. Did you say that? Norman Yetman: Yeah. Speaker 4: And I'm just saying that it may be that talking about the religious service was not a part of the tradition of slave narrative. Really, that's the tradition that I'm trying to apply about. Norman Yetman: Oh, okay. Speaker 4: So that's why I'm trying to make this point that you have to make those kinds of distinctions between traditions before you have to conclude it. [crosstalk]. And measuring and weighing [inaudible]. Norman Yetman: Okay. What you're saying then is that the tradition of the genre of what comprised a narrative limited or precluded the inclusion of certain kinds of materials. Speaker 4: That's exactly what- Norman Yetman: Okay, fine. But it seems to me, you see, for understanding the dynamics of the slave community, it seems to me that therefore is a defect of that, and it's a function of that tradition. [crosstalk] shaking your head. Speaker 4: I'm not saying that one should get the interviews and not use them, but I'm saying that a more comprehensive picture is perhaps made up of both. Norman Yetman: Okay. Well, I think I stated one point as well that I'm not advocating the exclusion of the antebellum narratives.