The author describes his archeological excavation of a seventeenth-century English settlement in Virginia and his discovery of evidence of the early colonial way of life.
Following the huge success of his Love Lives of the Great Composers (1995), Basil Howitt has written a second book of revelations even more lurid than the first. How about Debussy, who treated two of his women so badly that they took out their revolvers and fired on themselves? Or that "naughty old man" Elgar, who began a serious romance at age 74 with a separated Jewish violinist 40 years his junior? Or Percy Grainger, the peroxide blonde, heavily into S & M, whose pretty mother was so deranged by rumors of incest that she leapt 14 storeys to her death? Or Mahler, whose much younger wife, Alma, became so frustrated that she lived only for the times when her lover would be "lying completely naked" against her body? Or Saint-Saëns, who seemed equally happy using female whores or indulging in orgies with Arab boys and fellaheen? Or Verdi, who in his 60s threatened to "blow his brains out" if his wife wrecked his affair with a young singer?
In the midst of the Great Depression, the Federal Writer's Project assigned field workers to interview ex-slaves. More than 2,000 former slaves contributed their personal accounts and opinions, and their oral histories were deposited in the Library of Congress.
The former slaves describe the clothes they wore, the food they ate, the houses they lived in, the type of work they did, and the treatment they received. They tell their impressions of Yankee soldiers, the Klan, their masters, and their new-found freedom.
Because the interviews were conducted during the Great Depression, some of the narratives provide insights that are at times surprising. These interviews have preserved a valuable source of information about the institution of slavery in the United States and the effect it had on the people involved.
"One day Grandpappy sassed Miss Polly White, and she told him that if he didn't behave hisself that she would put him in her pocket. Grandpappy was a big man, and I ask him how Miss Polly could do that. He said she meant that she would sell him, then put the money in her pocket. He never did sass Miss Polly no more."--Sarah Debro
These eloquent words come from former slaves themselves--an important but long-neglected source of information about the institution of slavery in the United States. Who could better describe what slavery was like than the people who experienced it? And describe it they did, in thousands of remarkable interviews sponsored by the Federal Writers Project during the 1930's
Over 2,000 slave narratives that are now housed in the Library of Congress. More than 170 interviews were conducted in North Carolina. Belinda Hurmence pored over each of the North Carolina narratives, compiling and editing 21 of the first-person accounts for this collection.
These narratives, though artless in many ways, speak compellingly of the joys and sorrows, the hopes and dreams, of the countless people who endured human bondage in the land of the free.
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