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K–12 teaching and learning · from the UNC School of Education

Excerpt from Fannie Dorum slave narrative

Fannie Dorum was born into slavery in Franlin, North Carolina. In this brief excerpt, she describes the work she did as a slave.

From Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938. Arkansas Narratives, Volume II, Part 2

Original source available from Library of Congress.

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  • Selected excerpts from Harriet Jacobs slave narrative: Harriet Jacobs was born in Edenton, North Carolina, in 1813. As a young woman she ran away from her master, hiding out in a crawl space above a storeroom in her grandmother’s house for seven years. In 1842, she escaped to the North and lived as a fugitive while she worked to reunite herself with her two children. In these excerpts from her memoir, she describes her childhood, her years in the crawl space, her escape to the North, and her experiences as a free woman.

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A slave better pick a hundred pounds of cotton in a day. You better pick a hundred. I couldn’t pick a hundred. I never was much on picking cotton.

I weeded corn, planted corn and cotton, cut up wheat, pulled fodder, and did all such work. I plowed before the War about two years ago. I used to have to take the horses and go hide when the soldiers would go through. I was about nineteen years old when Lee surrendered. That would make me somewheres about ninety-four years old. The boys figgered it all out when they had the old age contest ‘round here. They added up the times I worked and put everything together.