“Dar’s nuttin’ lak de ol’-time ways”

 

Many people are familiar with the Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers Project of the 1930s.

While some historians reject them for what has been called gross inaccuracies due in large part to the many positive memories of the institution (the negative accounts are always used), they have become the standard source for firsthand information on the institution from the people themselves. These accounts are part of the fabric of the Southern history and serve as a window in the lives of antebellum black Americans.

But most people, historians included, fail to consider the importance of antebellum and post-bellum literature in the assessment of black American culture. William Faulkner received great acclaim for his use of dialect in tales about life in Mississippi, but because his stories are fiction, they fail to attract the historical profession as a useful tool in understanding Southern culture, race relations, or Southern life, particularly those that display a complexity, more accurately a positivity, about Southern relationships and the Southern tradition.

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