Slave narrative: History and Key Facts

The slave narrative is a type of literary genre involving the (written) autobiographical accounts of enslaved persons, particularly black Africans enslaved in the Americas, though many other examples exist. Over six thousand such narratives are estimated to exist; about 150 narratives were published as separate books or pamphlets. In the United States during the Great Depression (1930s), more than 2,300 additional oral histories on life during slavery were collected by writers sponsored and published by the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program. Most of the 26 audio-recorded interviews are held by the Library of Congress.

Some of the earliest memoirs of captivity known in the English-speaking world were written by European colonists and later Americans, captured and sometimes enslaved in North Africa by local Arab Muslims, usually Barbary pirates. These were part of a broad category of "captivity narratives". Beginning in the 17th century, these included accounts by European colonists and later American settlers in North America who were captured and held by American Indian tribes. Several well-known captivity narratives were published before the American Revolution, and they often followed forms established with the narratives of captivity in North Africa. North African accounts did not continue to appear after the Napoleonic Era; accounts from North Americans, captured by western Indian tribes migrating west continued until the end of the 19th century.

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