Slave narratives: A genre study

In this lesson, students will read selected excerpts from slave narratives, determining common characteristics of the genre. Students will then write their own slave narratives as a slave from their region of North Carolina, researching for historical accuracy and incorporating elements of the slave narrative genre to demonstrate understanding.

By Dayna Durbin Gleaves

Provided by UNC Libraries / Documenting the American South

Learn more

• Primary source: 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.
• Primary source: Selected excerpts from Frederick Douglass slave narrative Frederick Douglass was born into slavery on Maryland's Eastern Shore in 1818. He escaped from slavery at age 20 and became an active figure in the abolitionist movement, eventually becoming one of the most important black American figures of the 19th century. In these excerpts from his first autobiography, he describes his experiences as a slave.

Related pages

• Interview with W. L. Bost: Federal Writers Project interview with former slave W. L. Bost. Includes historical commentary. Note: This source contains explicit language or content that requires mature discussion.
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Excerpt from the book by Harriet Jacobs, describing her master's attempts to exploit her sexually and her mistress' response to the situation. Includes historical commentary.
• Interview with Charlie Barbour: Federal Writers Project interview with former slave Charlie Barbour. Includes historical commentary. Note: This source contains explicit language or content that requires mature discussion.

Related topics

• Learn more about history, slave narratives, and slavery.

Legal

In this lesson, students will read selected excerpts from slave narratives, determining common characteristics of the genre. Students will then write their own slave narratives as a slave from their region of North Carolina, researching for historical accuracy and incorporating elements of the slave narrative genre to demonstrate understanding.

Learning outcomes

Students will:

• be introduced to slave narratives, an influential genre in American literature.
• analyze and recognize the characteristics of slave narratives.
• gain a better understanding of slavery in North Carolina.

Teacher planning

Materials needed

• Print or online resources for researching slavery in North Carolina
• A computer with internet access for each student to read narrative excerpts, or printed copies of the narratives for each student
• Slave narrative excerpts:
  • Selected excerpts from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) by Harriet Jacobs
  • Selected excerpts from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) by Frederick Douglass
• Biographies of Douglass and Jacobs from Documenting the American South:
  • Brief biography of Harriet Jacobs
  • Brief biography of Frederick Douglass
• Slave narrative title pages from Documenting the American South:
  • Title page of Harriet Jacobs narrative
  • Title page of Frederick Douglass narrative
• Computer with projector to project the slave narrative title pages

Time required for lesson

4-5 days

Pre-activities

Teachers should read over the slave narrative excerpts, and choose any other relevant excerpts they would like their students to read from the full narratives at Documenting the American South (available below in “Websites.”) Teachers may also want to collaborate with the library media specialist for the research portion of the lesson to identify print and online resources about slavery in North Carolina for students to use.

Note: The slave narrative excerpts have been selected for grade-level appropriateness, but they do discuss topics like violent punishment of slaves, separation of families, and the physical and psychological hardships of slavery. However, they avoid the most shocking themes of the slave narratives, such as extreme violence and sexual abuse. Links to the full-length narratives, available on the Documenting the American South website, are provided below. If students choose to read further in the online slave narratives, teachers may wish to lead an additional discussion on some of the difficult themes they may encounter, such as violence, sexual abuse, and use of racist language, before students read the narratives.

Procedure

1. Introduce the concept of slave narratives to the class. Have any students read slave narratives before? If told they were going to read a slave narrative, what would they expect?
2. Explain that students are going to do some literary detective work. Project the title pages of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) for the class to examine. What can students determine about what’s inside the narratives, just from their title pages?
   • Discussion Questions:
     • Students may notice the phrase “Written By Him/Herself”; why would an author want to make this fact prominent on the title page?
     • Note that both narratives were published in Boston. Why do students think the narratives were published there?
     • Douglass’ narrative was published by the Anti-Slavery Office. For what purpose would this office publish and distribute Douglass’ text?
3. Have students read the brief biographies of Jacobs and Douglass from Documenting the American South:
   • Harriet Jacobs biography
   • Frederick Douglass biography
   Then have students read the excerpts from Douglass’ and Jacobs’ narratives:
   • Selected excerpts from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) by Harriet Jacobs
   • Selected excerpts from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) by Frederick Douglass
   As they read, have them take notes on any common characteristics between the two texts.
4. As a class, discuss features students believe are common to the slave narrative genre. Some responses might be:
   • prefaces or appendices by prominent white people to confirm the reliability and good character of the narrator
   • evidence of the horrors of slavery such as stories of abuse and deprivation
   • a quest for literacy
   • resolving a personal crisis
   • faith, whether religious faith or faith in freedom and self
   • the hypocrisy of religious slave holders
   • a journey from slavery to freedom and from the South to the North.
5. Explain that students will write their own slave narratives as a narrator escaping from slavery in North Carolina. In preparation, students should research slavery in the South, particularly in their region of the state. What sorts of work did slaves in North Carolina perform? Where did they typically live? What was daily life like for a North Carolina slave? Encourage students to include details from their research in their slave narratives. Each slave narrative should also contain at least 3-4 characteristics of the slave narrative genre.
6. Provide time for students to write their narratives, or assign them as homework.

Assessment

Students will write a brief slave narrative, describing the story of a slave from North Carolina. Teachers should evaluate how many characteristics of slave narratives the student has included, as well as the student’s success in integrating research information about slavery in North Carolina.

Extended activities

To extend this lesson, students may read the entire Jacobs and Douglass slave narratives, or may choose to read excerpts from other slave narratives available in the North American Slave Narratives collection from Documenting the American South. Teachers may want to lead an additional discussion on some of the difficult themes in the slave narratives, such as violence, sexual abuse, and racial prejudice, before or while students read the narratives.

For students in upper grades, this unit can be connected with a unit on neo-slave narratives, such as Margaret Walker’s Jubilee, Ernest J. Gaines’ The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, or Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

Websites

• Full text of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) by Harriet Jacobs, from Documenting the American South
• Full text of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) by Frederick Douglass, from Documenting the American South

Supplemental information

• “The Slave Narrative,” a page containing information about the slave narrative genre, from Washington State University
• “Characteristics of the Slave Narrative,” from Washington State University