Homeless And Penniless

In the late 1930s, the Work Projects Administration, a resulting program from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal project, began interviewing former slaves living in Indiana. These interviews attempt to “preserve the personal experience stories of formal slaves” and convey them to the general public (Baker, 4). Adhering to an issued set of suggestions and inquisitions, the interviews share stylistic and written features, yet many stories still portray various insights to what life had in store for an enslaved individual. The Chairperson and Professor of English at Indiana State University, Robert L. Baker acted as the editor of Homeless, Friendless, and Penniless and brought to life the informative and astute stories of the once enslaved inhabitants of Indiana. This collection of slave narratives told through the pages of Homeless, Friendless, and Penniless attempts to convey the varying aspects of slavery, from the excruciating pain of being whipped to the close affection that some slaves held for their owners. Reoccurring topics, such as plantation life, slave treatment, escape, the Civil War, religion, and education, present themselves throughout the slaves’ historical accounts. In reference to life on a plantation, the informants expressed extremely contrasting opinions and recounts of their experiences. For example, Mittie Blakely recalls that “her older brothers and sisters…were whipped often and hard,” while on the other hand, John Cooper remembers his “master was kind to his workers and wanted them to be free” (70, 112). Capturing opposite ends of the lives of slaves, the interviews of Homeless, Friendless, and Penniless often seem as if no common theme surrounding everyday life arouses; however, the treatment of many slaves depended on the character of their owners. In addition, the proprietors of slaves often dictated whether or not a slave could receive an education. …show more content…
Throughout Homeless, Friendless, and Penniless, multitudes of slaves reveal that they had acquired little to no education due to the fact that their owners did not want them to gain knowledge. Looking back on her time in enslavement, Rosa Barber shares that “traditional rhymes and tales were forbidden if they were thought to…enlighten or uplift the spirits of the slaves” and even “any toys considered educational (were) forbidden” (65). An abundance of slaves disclose their disappointment and regret of not having the opportunity to obtain a formal education. The narratives located in Homeless, Friendless, and Penniless also give insight to the religious and spiritual side of life as a slave. Serving many times as a beacon of hope and light in the dark period of slavery, religion often acted as a way to escape the horrors and routine life that many individuals became accustomed to. Samuel Bell declares that “religion is worth the greatest fortune” and exemplifies the common slave opinion that spirituality kept them alive and trudging forward in the hardest moments of their existences (69). Multitudes of former slaves remember the common practice of holding “camp meetings,” where “they was preachin’ and singin’ and folks got religion right” (120). Slaves would travel far distances to partake in these religious meetings and to have the opportunity to praise the Lord as a group. Acting as a source of optimism and provider of sanctity, religion played a large role in a copious amount of slaves’ lives. Overall, Homeless, Friendless, and Penniless aims to capture the experiences of slaves and grant the reader an insight to what life held for an enslaved American. Comprehensively, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Homeless, Friendless, and Penniless; however, the validity of the information present in the interviews does come into question. Almost all of the individuals interviewed in this collection of narratives experienced enslavement when they were quite young, sometimes four or five years old. How well can they actually vividly remember the earliest happenings of their lives and try and convey their memories properly when they are now elderly, sometimes over a hundred years of age? Recollections tend to morph over time, and no one, not even the storyteller themselves, can perfectly recall memories from perhaps seventy or more years ago. Even though most of the content included in the historical stories of Homeless, Friendless, and Penniless may very well have proved true, most narratives also are subject to discrepancies, big