Richard Cahan on River of Blood: American Slavery From The People Who Lived It (2/7/20)
In the late 1930s, as part of the government employees tracked down 3,000 men and women who had been enslaved before and during the Civil War. The federal workers asked them probing questions about slave life. What did they think about their slaveholders? What songs did they sing? What games did they play? Did they always think about escaping? The result was a remarkable compilation of interviews known as the Slave Narratives. Richard Cahan’s book “River of Blood: American Slavery from the People Who Lived It: Interviews & Photographs of Formerly Enslaved African Americans” highlights those narratives―condensing tens of thousands of pages into short excerpts from about 100 former slaves and pairs their accounts with their photographs, taken by the workers sent to record their stories. Join us for a discussion with Richard Cahan about these important images and the accounts that inform them in this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI.