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Actual statements from former slaves. Why do you think academia, journalists, museums, and woke trolls always ignore, censor, and omit the rest of the story?

1. Aunt Adeline (born ~1848, Tennessee; Arkansas Narratives): “My master’s folks always treated me well. I had good clothes. … I can remember the days of slavery as happy ones. We always had an abundance of food.”

2. Nat Plummer (Jackson County, Mississippi): “Yassum, I was a slave. Dem was de good old days—I had a good master. His name was J. L. Plummer. … My old master was good to me, and when he died, his wife’s brother came to live wid us, and he was my young master. He was good, too. … I loves to talk over de good ole’ days—we didn’t need no relief den.”

3. Isaac Green (Texas Narratives volume): “Yo’ actual treatment depended on de kind o’ marster you had. A heap o’ folks done a heap better in slavery dan dey do now.”

4. Wheeler Gresham (Texas Narratives): “I’m glad I knowed slavery, I had a better livin’ in des days den I eber had since.”

5. David Goodman Gullins (Georgia/Texas area): “My owners were very good to their slaves. … Marster Mappin was far above the average slave owner, he was good to his slaves, fed them well, and was a very humane gentleman. … Those were good old days. Everybody had plenty of everything.” (On Yankees: “The Yankee soldiers visited our territory, killing everything in sight. They were actually most starved to death.”)

6. Jane Smith Hill Harmon (Texas Narratives):“We wuz well took keer of by our Marster and his first wife, she wuz jes’ as good ter us as she could be. … Us had good times togeteder, all us little niggers an’ de little white chilluns.”

7. Tom Hawkins (Texas Narratives):“Dey was moughty good to us. Miss Annie done her own overseein’.” (On Yankees: “Dem yankees come thoo’ soon atter dat and said us was free. … Dey stole all her good hosses, and her chickens and dey broke in de smokehouse and tuk her meat. … when dey foul’ her gold, she just broke down and cried and cried.”)

8. Charlie Robinson (South Carolina Narratives): “He [master] was a good master, bestest in de land. … De Yankees dat I ‘members was not gentlefolks. They stole everything they could take.”

9. R.B. Anderson (Arkansas Narratives): “Dr. Wright was awful good to his slaves.”

10. Katie Arbery (Arkansas Narratives): “They treated us so nice that when they said freedom come, I thought I was always free.”

These excerpts are taken straight from the transcribed interviews (with original dialect preserved where it appears in the records). Of course former slaves in the collection also described hardships, but many individuals specifically recalled kind treatment, plenty to eat, good clothing, happy times with white children, and—in several cases—resentment toward Yankee soldiers for stealing food, livestock, valuables, or disrupting their lives.

The full narratives are publicly available through the Library of Congress for verification. From the WPA Slave Narratives—the U.S. government’s Federal Writers’ Project interviews with former slaves, conducted in the 1930s and archived by the Library of Congress in Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938.

Actual statements from former slaves. Why do you think academia, journalists, museums, and woke trolls always ignore, censor, and omit the rest of the story?