BBetween 1936 and 1938,more than 2,300 AfricanAmericans shared theirmemories of slavery withmembers of the FederalWriters’ Project, a divisionof the Works Progress

Administration (wpa). The result of theseoral history interviews was the SlaveNarrative Collection, an extraordinaryset of autobiographical accounts, nowhoused at the Library of Congress, thatchronicle slave life from the interviewees’eyewitness perspective.

Unchained Memories: Readings fromthe Slave Narratives, a powerful newdocumentary, features readings fromthese narratives by some of today’s mostprominent African-American actors.Accounts of slave auctions, field work,escape attempts and emancipationcome to life through these readings,which are juxtaposed with rich historicalimages and musical interludes to pro-vide context and background. Viewingthis film will enable students to hearand analyze the words of former slaves—and to reflect on the “peculiar institu-tion” of slavery as it existed in the U.S.

Approaching the MaterialThe producers of Unchained Memoriesportray many aspects of slave life. Accordingly, the film does not shy awayfrom accounts of violence or sexualthemes. Teachers may find it useful topreview the film—or to excerpt selectedpassages for classroom viewing—beforeshowing it to students. In addition, thenarratives contain strong language thatmay be considered offensive. Pleasesee page 2 of this guide and page 3 of the inTIME magazine for furtherdiscussion of the narratives’ language.

Before ViewingTo provide context on the scope andhistory of slavery in the U.S., distributethe inTIME magazine produced to accompany the film. Direct students topage 2 and discuss: How many Africanswere taken from their homes andshipped to the Americas between 1450and 1850? From what countries didthese slaves come? What argumentswere made for and against slavery? Asa class, read “What Are the Slave Nar-ratives?” on page 3, including the noteon language. Then turn to pages 4through 7, and have individual studentsread aloud these excerpts from the nar-ratives. What does each narrative revealabout life during slavery?

After ViewingThe total running time of UnchainedMemories is 75 minutes. This film canspark class discussion and critical think-ing on a myriad of topics. Questions toask after students view the film include:

THE POWER OF VOICESWhat is the impact of hearing these first-person accounts? Which narratives didyou find most powerful? Most disturb-ing? Most surprising? Most uplifting?Cite specific details. What similaritiesand contrasts do you see among thenarratives? What questions would youlike to ask the former slaves?

MEMORIES OF DAILY LIFEWhat was life like for enslaved children?What does the film reveal about familylife, work, community and religion dur-ing slavery? What role did music play?

CREATING THE NARRATIVESHow and when were the slave narra-

tives created? The Federal Governmentpaid interviewees to record the stories offormer slaves. Is that a valuable use oftaxpayers’ money? What is the role ofthe government in preserving stories?

THE VALUE OF ORAL HISTORYWhat is oral history? Why are oral histo-ries valuable for understanding the pastand present? (For a worksheet designedto help students conduct their own “wpa-style” oral histories, see page 3.) ■

HBO consents on a quitclaim basis to your making one videotape of Unchained Memories for five years from airdate for educational purposes within the curriculum

only. HBO reserves all rights of every kind. Both the teacher’s guide and any videotape made of the film are intended for the sole use of educators, administrators

and their students and may not be rebroadcast, recablecast or repackaged, nor may they be sublicensed, distributed, given or sold in whole or in part to any other

person or institution. Your use of the teacher’s guide and this film constitutes your agreement to comply with these terms.

◗ Why Study the Slave Narratives?

◗ Create Your OwnOral History

◗ Resources forFurther Exploration andAssignmentIdeas

IN THIS GUIDEIN THIS GUIDE

R E A D I N G S F R O M T H E S L A V E N A R R A T I V E S

R E A D I N G S from the S L AV EN A R R AT I V E S

Premieres on HBOMonday, February 10, 2003, at 8PM/7C

Replays February 14, 16, 20, 22, 24, 26Check local listings for times

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Teacher’s Guide to Accompany HBO’s Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives ◆ Developed by TIME Classroom

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Voices. Voices to connect us tothose who came before. We haveour students listen to the unfor-gettable words FDR spoke on “a

date which will live in infamy”; our Feb-ruaries echo with Martin Luther King Jr.’s“I have a dream.” When we can providethe voices of our past to the keepers ofour future, we enable our students to respond with both their heads and hearts.

The WPA Slave Narratives give us theopportunity to hear and respond to voices long lost. Many of the formerslaves speak as people who were deniedthe right to read and write; both their

INTIME ASKED MARJORIE MONTGOMERY, A VETERAN SOCIAL STUDIES EDUCATOR, TO

share her thoughts on using the slave narratives in the classroom. Montgomery,

a teacher at Day Middle School in Newton, Massachusetts, has incorporated the

slave narratives into her social studies curriculum for several years.

accents and their syntax are hard for ourstudents to understand. But once you unlock their words, you can unlock theirworld. They tell of brutal beatings andrape. They tell of families ripped apart.They repeatedly use the word “nigger.”This is their world and these are theirwords. Times change. Both their livesand our use of that word change. Whatwas appropriate for the former slaves inthe 1930s is no longer appropriate inthe 21st century. Instead of censoringthese words, deal with them. Don’t keepstudents from these words. They knowall these words; they hear them on tele-

vision. Give students a responsible con-text in which to deal with this history.

To prepare students for viewing Unchained Memories, divide the classinto small groups, giving each grouptwo or three short narratives. After read-ing the narratives aloud, ask students toidentify similarities and differences.What are the common themes? Wheredid these slaves live? Were any of theseslaves sold? What was their relation-ship to their masters? How old was thisnarrator when he or she was freed? ■

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IImagine hundreds of interview-ers, white and black, fanningout all over the South at theheight of the Great Depression,

armed with a list of questions, writingdown the testimonies of thousands ofaged African Americans about their rec-ollection of their lives under America’s“peculiar institution,” slavery in theantebellum South, and the wholesplendid project funded by the UnitedStates government! As incredible as itmay sound to us today, this ambitiousundertaking did indeed take place inthe 1930s, preserving the recollectionof ex-slaves in the archive known asthe Slave Narrative Collection of theFederal Writers’ Project …

Why turn to the slave, so very many

PROFESSOR HENRY LOUIS GATES JR., chair of the Afro-American Studies Department atHarvard, is the author of numerous books, including Colored People and ThirteenWays of Looking at a Black Man. The essay below is excerpted from Gates’ forewordto Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives (Bulfinch Press, 2003).

years after the abolition of slavery?There are several reasons, but the mostimportant, as the historian NormanYetman argues, is the emergence ofblack historians in the first threedecades of the twentieth century whowere intent upon refuting the rosy—andoften racist—depictions of slavery prop-agated by scholars who were little morethan apologists for the Confederacy.Chief among these was the Yale histo-rian Ulrich B. Phillips, whose AmericanNegro Slavery (1918) portrayed the slaveas happy and content, his treatment byhis master generous, “civilizing,” andhumane. Even many black peopleaccepted these stereotypical notionsabout the slave experience, urging us to forget about slavery, at best an

embarrassing episode in African-American history. What more effectiveway to counter these claims than tohear from the ex-slaves themselves? …

And nothing will do more to breathelife into these thousands of pages of tes-timony, pregnant with nuance and implication, than hbo’s documentary Unchained Memories. It is as if a sectionof the lost Library of Alexandria had beenrediscovered, filmed and narrated bymany of the greatest actors of our era. ■

“Once you unlocktheir words, you can unlocktheir world.”

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For Further ExplorationBOOKS◗ Berlin, Ira, Marc Favreau and Steven F.Miller, eds. Remembering Slavery: AfricanAmericans Talk About Their PersonalExperiences of Slavery and Freedom(New York: The New Press, 1998).

◗ Blockson, Charles L., with Ron Fry.Black Genealogy: How to Discover YourOwn Family’s Roots and Trace Your An-cestors Back Through an Eventful Past,Even to a Specific African Kingdom(Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1991).

◗ Crew, Spencer with Cynthia Good-man. Unchained Memories: Readingsfrom the Slave Narratives (Boston:Bulfinch Press, 2003).

◗ Douglass, Frederick. My Bondage andMy Freedom (Mineola, NY: Dover Pub-lications, 1969).

◗ Franklin, John Hope and Alfred Moss,Jr. From Slavery to Freedom: A History ofAfrican Americans, 8th edition (NewYork: McGraw-Hill, 2000).

◗ Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life ofa Slave Girl, Written by Herself (Cam-bridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).

◗ Perdue, Charles L. Jr., Thomas E. Bardenand Robert K. Phillips. Weevils in theWheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex-Slaves(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992).

◗ Yetman, Norman, ed. Voices from Slav-ery: 100 Authentic Slave Narratives(Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2000).

FILMS◗ Africans in America: America’s JourneyThrough Slavery (1998). This docu-mentary series is centered on enslavedAfricans’ experiences and the impact ofslavery on American society as a whole.

◗ Amistad (1997). Steven Spielberg’s filmabout the 1839 insurrection aboard theslave ship Amistad.

◗ Beloved (1998). Jonathan Demme’sadaptation of Toni Morrison’s PulitzerPrize-winning novel, in which a formerslave named Sethe (played by OprahWinfrey) is forced to confront her past.

◗ Daughters of the Dust (1991). A fic-tional chronicle, directed by Julie Dash,of two days in the life of the Peazantfamily, descendants of slaves who live onislands near South Carolina and Georgia.

WEBSITES◗ http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html The Library of Congress’ Bornin Slavery Project: Slave Narratives fromthe Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–38.

◗ www.timeclassroom.com/unchainedResources to help students and teachersdelve more deeply into the narratives.

◗ www.hbo.com/unchainedAdditional information about the doc-umentary Unchained Memories: Read-ings from the Slave Narratives.

◗ www.undergroundrailroad.orgUsing the Underground Railroad as alens through which to explore a rangeof freedom issues, this site offers lessonsand reflections on the struggle for free-dom in the past, in the present and for thefuture. (The National Underground Rail-road Freedom Center is due to open indowntown Cincinnati in 2004.)

◗ http://gropius.lib.virginia.edu/slaveryA visual record of the slave trade.

◗ www.antislavery.orgThe world’s oldest international humanrights organization, Antislavery worksagainst modern-day slavery.

Starting Points forWriting and Research1. Extending your knowledge. Selectone narrative quoted in UnchainedMemories. Then visit the “Born inSlavery” website at the address at leftand locate the full text of this narrative.What additional details about this former slave’s life are revealed in theinterview? When and where was theinterview conducted? What can youdeduce about the person who conductedthe interview? Share your findings withmembers of your class.

2. Escaping to freedom. What doesUnchained Memories reveal about therisks and benefits slaves faced whenthey considered escaping from slavery?Imagine you faced the decision thatevery slave did: Would you attempt toescape from bondage? Why or why not?Respond in a first-person essay.

3. Analyzing the narratives’ language.Historian Lawrence Levine has writtenthat the transcripts of the slave narra-tives contain a mix “of sensitivity andstereotype, of empathy and racism.”Choose two (or more) narratives and,working individually or in a smallgroup, look for evidence to support orrefute Levine’s observation. In whatways do these transcripts reflect stereo-types about African Americans? Doyou see evidence of racism? Empathy?Point to specific passages in each text tosupport your answer.

SHARING HISTORY

In addition to Unchained Memories:Readings from the Slave Narratives,HBO, in partnership with TIME FOR

KIDS, the Library of Congress, and the AOLTime Warner Foundation, is launching theSharing History Project. This multi-faceted community, educational andWeb-based effort uses the program as acatalyst for public engagement with his-tory and its impact on contemporary life.Go to www.hbo.com/unchained for moreinformation.

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© 2002 Time Inc. inTIME is a trademark of Time Inc. Published in association with HBO. Printed in the U.S.A.Unchained Memories artwork © Home Box Office, a Division of Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P. All rightsreserved. HBO® is a service mark of Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P.