Talk:The Slave Community

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[edit] New article

Just transferred this article from my sandbox to this namespace, been working on it for about a week. Dmoon1 08:38, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I buy the notion that this was one of the first books (historical biographies) told from the point of view of a slave, if it was published in the 1970s. Am I misunderstanding the claim? Sherurcij ^{(Speaker for the Dead)} 03:08, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think you are. It was one of the first history books that offers an interpretation of the history of slavery using mostly sources written by slaves. There were numerous autobiographies written in the 19th century by runaway slaves, and these are what The Slave Community is based on. The fugitive slave narratives are not considered histories. Up until the 1970s, history was interpreted using mostly sources written by white slaveowners. The result was an unbalanced interpretation of history that only favored the voices and opinions of those who owned slaves, not the slaves themselves. Dmoon1 03:14, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay, it's a little clearer now - I'm still curious what the "white slaveowner counterparts" to Frederick Douglass and such were...purely from a "common sense" POV, it seems like the average person today can think of 3-4 slvaery books written by slaves/ex-slaves, but I doubt any of them could name one written by a plantation owner. What's the "source" (unrelated to this publishers' claims) that books before the 70s used "white" slaveowner narratives? Sherurcij ^{(Speaker for the Dead)} 09:38, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, these aren't the publisher's claims, it historiographic fact (read the section on the historiographical background). The most influential studies of slavery prior to the 1970s were based on white sources, i.e., plantation records; letters, diaries, and journals written by slaveowners; and southern periodicals such as DeBow's Review. Dmoon1 14:59, 16 August 2007 (UTC)