University of Virginia Library

SLAVERY PERIOD

Over the past 30 years historians have coaxed sensitive and compelling histories of African-American slave life from materials authored by those other than slaves themselves. From plantation journals, estate accounts, diaries and slave lists, scholars have reconstructed black family life, religious culture, work patterns, and social structure. The collections listed below reflect the importance of non-slave sources in the writing of slave history.

Special Collections holds much more material on African-American life during slavery than can be listed here, including a number of accounts generated by former slaves. The library's rare book holdings include more than 20 autobiographical works by former slaves from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; among them The address of Abraham Johnstone (1797), Memoir of Old Elizabeth, a colored women (1866), and A narrative of the most remarkable particulars in the life of James Albert Ukawsaw, an African prince (1770). Moreover, though not always noted below, letters from slaves manumitted to Liberia emerge in the collection at several points. They can be located using the subject file of the Special Collections card catalog. See, for example, the letter dated 2 August 1857 in the Malone Ellis papers. The library also holds an important collection of broadsides, pamphlets, circulars, and other printed materials that allow insight into African-American life during slavery. See, for example, The Road and Patrol Laws of Georgia (1863), Religious Instruction of the Negro (1861), and An Account of the late intended insurrection among a portion of the blacks of this city (Charleston 1822).