MFA Critical Work from Slave Narratives: Mississippi

In my new series posting my critical work from my MFA program, today we are exploring the use of dialect in a very special project from the Works Project Administration where they traveled around the country and spoke with the last people to be enslaved before the Civil War. In these pages we see their stories as reflected by the people who recorded them. This was vital to my research for my thesis project.

The Slave Narratives of Mississippi (1936-1938) were created to catalog the memories of the last surviving people born before the end of the civil war. In these type-written pages, writers from the Works Progress Administration painstakingly typed out the stories of these people’s lives. As a literary device, their work in writing down exactly what was said and how it was spoken brings the voices of these ancestors to life in a powerful way. Not only does the project record their lives before, during, and after the Civil War, but it also records how they spoke. After a few pages, the dialectical style begins to bring the voices to life. This is essential history but also important record keeping. 

This project to document the memories of the last remaining slaves born before the war; rather than convert their southern dialect and patois into standard English, the transcriptionist takes great pain to record not only their experiences of the peculiar institution but also the distinct way that they spoke. Often, the transcriptionist adds translation notes at the bottom of the page. It is difficult to read at first (even for someone from the South), but after a few pages, the rhythm and pronunciation begin to make more sense. Master is “Marster” vowels, and dropped consonants are common.  However, others will use the word, “Marse” which is a shortening of Master. It depends on the person. 

Much of the dialect in these pages stems from the descendants of the original African slaves and how they learned English as a second language entirely by immersion with no real education on its proper speech. Because most slaves were not educated and did not go to school, they speak in an incredibly natural way. They speak English as it is heard and as their parents and grandparents heard it from the white people for whom they worked. Dropped consonants are the most common habit of speech. Small prepositions and adverbs also go missing. “The” becomes “de” in many instances of the various people that were interviewed. 

Some of the dialect is still familiar to us in the form of African-American Vernacular English or AAVE. Ex-slave Anna Baker of Aberdeen, Mississippi speaks as if you had just pulled her off the street in Atlanta today, “Lemme see how old I is.” (pg. 11) or “I’se always lived right here in Hinds County. I’s seen Jackson grow from de groun’ up” (pg 18) the latter quote being from John Cameron of Jackson. But then some of the accounts of ex-slaves take on a more 19th century or stereotypical form of speech like Gabe Emmanual from Port Gibson, Mississippi, “One day I was out in de quarters when he brung back old man Joe from runnin’ away. Old Joe was always a-runnin away an’ dat man Duncan put his houn’ dogs on ‘im an’ brung ‘im back. Dis time I’s speakin’ Marster Duncan put his han’ on old Joe’s shoulder an’ look him in de eye sorrowful-lak. Joe, he say, I’s show pow-ful tired o’ huntin’ you.” (pg. 45) 

The whole effect is one of texture, and the dialects vary by location and sometimes by age. This unique dialect of English is not monolithic, and that even extends to the AAVE of today, which is a descendant of these enslaved dialects. Much like how you can tell if a black person grew up in LA, Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, or Atlanta, these quotes also vary. In Eastern Mississippi, you can even hear a slight french influence due to proximity to Louisiana. For example, Dora Franks from Aberdeen, Mississippi, uses a unique word in the following quote, “I was born here in Choctaw County, but I never knowed zackly how old I was, ’cause non o’ my folks could read an’ write.” (pg. 49). Words like “children” change entirely to “chile” or “chillun.” Often, the words are changed so much and the accent so thick that the transcriptionist is forced to give the reader a translation in the margin rather than leaving the reader to guess what word was meant. For example, Nettie Henry uses the word, “gragurate” instead of “graduate” when speaking of a girls boarding school that was near where her family was owned in town. 

Place names can also vary, for example, Dora Franks refers to Virginia as, “Virginny” and Nettie Henry from Meridian, Mississippi refers to her town as, “Mer-ree-dian.” “Virginny” is common throughout other narratives. Many of the other places names were either not changed or were simply written correctly for posterity. It is important to note that this dialect is different than simply English in a southern accent. The way a white person of the same period would have spoken would not have the missing words, dropped consonants, and word combinations of this unique dialect that grew up in the fields and slave quarters of a southern plantation. However, you can hear the distinctive slow, southern twang through the words, especially when reading aloud. 

This directly affects my work as I try to figure out how to create the dialogue of my enslaved characters. There are characters in this book whose English is so thick with dialect and accent that it is almost not understood. Conversely, ex-slaves like Nettie Henry, who grew up in town and worked in a home, use something much closer to standard English. This has led me to look into using a rougher patois for the slaves working outside and perhaps a more refined and better English for the house slaves. This dichotomy between work and proximity to whiteness is an essential linguistic distinction that is quite evident through these pages.