I am beyond stoked to report that the University of Georgia Press will publish my graphic history project, "True Facts of This Drastic Period": Louisiana Slavery Narratives in 2027.
Here's how I described the project in my proposal to U of Georgia P:
“True Facts of This Drastic Period” is graphic nonfiction that brings the little-known lives of 21 enslaved Louisianians to light.
The Federal Writers Project slavery narratives conducted in the 1930s are well known, but the FWP narratives from Louisiana were not published with those from other states and are still hard to find (even on the Library of Congress website). Even harder to find are the slavery narratives written by Black teachers taking courses at Prairie View University in the 1930s, which are archived in the Southern University library but have never been published. I believe those papers are especially valuable because the Black interviewers got more authentic answers from their subjects than the white FWP interviewers did. My work draws on the 23 Prairie View papers that focus on Louisianians.
“True Facts of This Drastic Period” offers an illustrated explanation of how the Prairie View project came about and presents all 23 Louisiana narratives verbatim, with my illustrations (black-and-white line drawings) and annotations. It presents information that I was able to find about the formerly enslaved people and the teachers who interviewed them. For example, I present the stories of Nancy Hall, who was enslaved at Magnolia Mound in Baton Rouge, remaining there in debt servitude until the 1890s, and her interviewer, Mattie K. Derrie, a San Antonio schoolteacher who lived near Nancy Hall.
This book will raise general readers’ awareness of the lives of enslaved laborers, deepening their understanding of the legacy of slavery. It may additionally increase academics’ awareness of the existence and value of the slavery narratives written by Black schoolteachers, complementing well known slavery narratives produced by the Federal Writers Project.
The PVU narratives came about thanks to John Brother Cade, who had his students at Southern University write slavery narratives in 1929. Those papers were lost in a fire. Cade spent several years at Prairie View before returning to Southern, apparently bringing his history assignment to the new institution and sharing it with James N. Freeman, who taught “negro history” for Prairie View’s extension school. Cade laid out his motivations for the assignment in an article in Carter G. Woodson’s Journal of Negro History, articulating his desire to counter the influence of white historians such as U.B. Phillips, who portrayed slavery as beneficial to the enslaved.
The distortions within the FWP narratives, largely the result of racial dynamics between white interviewers and Black subjects, have been analyzed extensively. While the PVU narratives are not a form of objective history, their authors likely got more authentic responses from their subjects.
“True Facts of This Drastic Period” will interest adult readers, especially southerners, who understand the importance of the history of slavery and value work that brings individual experiences to light. Readers of Monumental: Oscar Dunn and His Radical Fight in Reconstruction Louisiana will be interested. Other books in the same vein include When I Grow Up: The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers by Ken Krimstein (which similarly resurrects “lost” personal histories) and Elegy for Mary Turner: An Illustrated Account of a Lynching by Rachel Marie-Crane Williams (which similarly illustrates individual lives from a difficult historical period).
