Rhonda Rogers VanDyke

October 3, 2020February 3, 2023

Episode 3: Recovering History

Season One | Episode 3

Episode Three: Recovering History
Hosted by Dan Gediman. With Vanessa Holden, Ricky Jones, Patrick Lewis, Shirley Harmon, Elizabeth Stites, Chenoweth Stites Allen, Lisa Bowlds-Williams, Kate Stites, Russ Bowlds, and Brigitt Johnson, and featuring Louis Robert Thompson, Jacqui Blue, Keith McGill, Mark Forman, and Alec Volz.

Due to prohibitions against enslaved people learning to read and write, there are only a few written records left behind by formerly enslaved Kentuckians. But thankfully, over 100 people were interviewed during the 1930s about their experiences while enslaved. These narratives, combined with letters and diaries kept by white enslavers, help us better understand the true nature of slavery in Kentucky. Episode Transcript

Dr. Vanessa M. Holden

Vanessa M. Holden is an assistant professor of History and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky.

Vanessa M. Holden is an assistant professor of History and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Holden’s current book project, tentatively titled, Surviving Southampton: Gender, Community, Resistance and Survival During the Southampton Rebellion of 1831(University of Illinois Press), explores the contributions that African American women and children, free and enslaved, made to the Southampton Rebellion of 1831, also called Nat Turner’s Rebellion.

Dr. Holden’s work and writing has been published in Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, Perspectives on History, Process: A Blog for American History, and The Rumpus. She also blogs for Black Perspectives and The Junto: A Group Blog on Early American History.

In addition to her work on enslaved women and slave rebellion, Dr. Holden also co-organizes the Queering Slavery Working Group (#QSWG) with Jessica Marie Johnson (Johns Hopkins University). Her second project, Forming Intimacies: Queer Kinship and Resistance in the Antebellum American Atlantic, will focus on same gender loving individuals and American slavery.

Dr. Holden also serves as a faculty adviser or consultant on a number of public history and digital humanities projects including: Freedom on the Move (a digital archive of runaway slave adds); Black Horsemen of the Kentucky Turf (an exhibit chronicling the intersecting histories of African Americans and the horse industry in Kentucky), and a grant project aimed at bringing a driving tour and museum to Southampton County, Virginia, that interprets the Southampton Rebellion.

Find her on Twitter @drvholden.

Dr. Ricky L. Jones

Dr. Ricky L. Jones is Professor and Chair of the University of Louisville’s Department of Pan-African Studies.

Dr. Ricky L. Jones is Professor and Chair of the University of Louisville’s Department of Pan-African Studies. A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Jones was educated as an undergraduate at the U.S. Naval Academy, Morehouse College (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s alma mater). He was only the second African-American to receive a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Kentucky where he specialized in Political Philosophy and Comparative Politics. His books include: two editions of “Black Haze: Violence, Sacrifice, and Manhood in Black Greek-Letter Fraternities” and “What’s Wrong with Obamamania?: Black America, Black Leadership, and the Death of Political Imagination.”

He is currently co-authoring a new book with attorney and award-winning cartoonist Marc Murphy titled, “Kaepernick, Confederates, and Con-Artists.” He has written hundreds of scholarly and magazine articles, book chapters and opinion columns.

Dr. Jones has served as a local, national, and international social and political analyst across various media including appearances on HBO, CNN, Fox News, ESPN, the Travel Channel, a variety of NPR and PBS programs, the BBC, E! Entertainment, the Katie (Couric) Show, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation, and many others. He is the host of the “Erasing History’ Podcast and the “Ricky Jones Show” from iHeart Media. The “Ricky Jones Show” was named Best of Louisville’s 2017 “Best Radio Show.”

He is a contributing opinion columnist for the Courier-Journal and USA Today Network for which he was named 2018 “best editorial/opinion columnist” by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Among many other honors, Jones has been named one of Louisville’s 25 Future Leaders by Louisville Magazine and was also recognized as one of DIVERSE Issues in Higher Education’s “25 to Watch in Academia.” He is a life-member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.

Visit him at: www.rickyljones.com

Follow on Twitter: @DrRickyLJones

Dr. Patrick Lewis

Patrick Lewis is Scholar in Residence at the Filson Historical Society and is co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Ohio Valley History.

Patrick Lewis is Scholar in Residence at the Filson Historical Society and is co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Ohio Valley History. A Trigg County, Kentucky, native, Lewis graduated from Transylvania University and holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Kentucky. He has worked for the National Park Service and the Kentucky Historical Society, and has won digital history grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Lewis is author of For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War (2015). He tweets about public history at @KyPLewis.

Episode Bibliography

Learn more about slavery and its lasting effects in America by exploring the source materials referenced in The Reckoning. Our bibliography contains many items that are available to read or download for free. If you choose to purchase any of the books through the links provided, as an Amazon Associate, our non-profit organization Reckoning, Inc. earns commissions from qualifying purchases.

Bruner, Peter. (paid link) A Slave’s Adventures Toward Freedom: Not Fiction, but the True Story of a Struggle. Oxford, Ohio: 1918. Read for free.

Bullitt, Thomas W. (paid link) My Life at Oxmoor; Life on a Farm in Kentucky Before the War. Louisville: Filson, 1911. Read Free at Internet Archive

Fedric, Francis. (paid link) Slave Life in Virginia and Kentucky; by Francis Fedric, an Escaped Slave. London: Wertheim, Macintosh and Hunt, 1863. Read Free at DocSouth

Jones, Ricky L. (paid link) Black Haze: Violence, Sacrifice, and Manhood in Black Greek-Letter Fraternities. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015.

Marrs, Elijah P. (paid link) Life and History of the Rev. Elijah P. Marrs, First Pastor of Beargrass Baptist Church, and Author. Louisville, Kentucky: The Bradley and Gilbert Company, 1885. Read for free

Lewis, Patrick. (paid link) For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War. University Press of Kentucky, Mar 9, 2015

Smith, Harry. (paid link) Fifty Years of Slavery in the United States of America. Grand Rapids, Michigan: West Michigan Print. Co., 1891.
Read for free.

Yetman, Norman R. “The Background of the Slave Narrative Collection.” American Quarterly 19, no. 3 (1967): 534–53. Read for free at DOI.org

Yagyu, Tomoku. 2006. “Slave Traders and Planters In the Expanding South: Entrepreneurial Strategies, Business Networks, and Western Migration In the Atlantic World, 1787-1859”. https://doi.org/10.17615/vatj-2e80 Read free at UNC

Young, Amy L. and Young, J. Blaine Hundson. “Slave Life at Oxmoor”, Filson Club History Quarterly, Summer 2000, Vol. 74, NO. 3. Read Free at Filson

How to Subscribe to The Reckoning Podcast

You can subscribe to our podcast by following these links to Apple Podcasts (for iPhones or iPads), Google Podcasts (for Android phones and tablets), and Spotify. For any other podcasting services (Stitcher, Amazon Music, etc.), search for The Reckoning: Facing the Legacy of Slavery in America or paste this RSS feed in the app: https://feed.podbean.com/reckoningradio/feed.xml. You can also listen to all episodes of the series on the Podcast page of our website, as well as on our YouTube channel.

October 1, 2020February 3, 2023

Episode 2: Sold Down The River

Season One | Episode 2

Episode Two: Sold Down the River

Hosted by Dan Gediman. With Vanessa Holden, Joshua Rothman, Sharon Murphy, Patrick Lewis, Kevin Outterson, Bodley Stites, and featuring Mark Forman, Susan Linville, and Alec Volz.

Kentucky was an important hub of America’s internal slave trade, with fortunes made by slave traders and those who invested in enslaved people as commodities. We hear from members of a white family that descend from a Louisville slave trader and learn how integral slavery was to their wealth and to the economy of the state of Kentucky. Episode Transcript

Dr. Vanessa M. Holden

Vanessa M. Holden is an assistant professor of History and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky.

Dr. Joshua D. Rothman

Joshua D. Rothman is a Professor and Chair of the Department of History at the University of Alabama.

Joshua D. Rothman received his Ph.D. at the University of Virginia, and he is Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at the University of Alabama, where he specializes in the histories of slavery, the South, and nineteenth-century America. He is the author of several books, and is currently completing a manuscript tentatively titled “The Ledger and the Chain: A Biography of the Domestic Slave Trade”.

http://history.ua.edu/people/joshua-d-rothman/

Dr. Sharon A. Murphy

Sharon Ann Murphy is a professor of history at Providence College in Providence, RI, and the author of Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America.

Sharon Ann Murphy is a professor of history at Providence College in Providence, RI. She is the author of Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America (2010, Johns Hopkins University Press), winner of the 2012 Hagley Prize for the best book in business history, and Other People’s Money: How Banking Worked in the Early American Republic (2017, Johns Hopkins University Press).

Her latest projects are an investigation of the public perception of banks around the Panic of 1819, and an examination of the relationship between banking and slavery in the United States during the nineteenth century.

https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/investing-life

https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/other-peoples-money

Dr. Patrick Lewis

Patrick Lewis is Scholar in Residence at the Filson Historical Society and is co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Ohio Valley History.

Kevin Outterson, J.D., LL.M.

Professor Outterson teaches health care law at Boston University, where he co-directs the Health Law Program.

Professor Outterson teaches health care law at Boston University, where he co-directs the Health Law Program. He serves as the Executive Director and Principal Investigator for CARB-X, a $500M international public-private partnership to accelerate global antibacterial innovation. Key partners in CARB-X include the US Government (BARDA & NIAID), the Wellcome Trust, the UK Government (GAMRIF, DHSC), the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Professor Outterson’s research work focuses on the law and economics of antimicrobial resistance (available at Google Scholar). He served as a senior author on many key research reports on antibiotic innovation, including Chatham House, ERG, DRIVE-AB, and the Lancet Commission. Professor Outterson was given the 2015 Leadership Award by the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics for his research and advocacy work. He has testified before Congress, Parliamentary working groups, WHO, and several state legislatures. Since August 2016, he leads CARB-X, the world’s largest and most innovative antibiotic accelerator. www.carb-x.org

Professor and N. Neal Pike Scholar in Health and Disability Law,
Boston University
Executive Director & Principal Investigator, CARB-X

Episode Bibliography

Andrews, Susan C., and James P. Fenton. “Archaeology and the Invisible Man: The Role of Slavery in the Production of Wealth and Social Class in the Bluegrass Region of Kentucky, 1820 to 1870.” World Archaeology 33, no. 1 (2001): 115-36. Accessed May 12, 2020. Read Free at JSTOR

Brown, Patricia L. “In a Barn, a Piece of Slavery’s Hidden Past.” The New York Times, May 6, 2003.

Browning, Orville H. (paid link) The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning. Chicago: Blakely Printing Company, 1927. Read Free at Internet Archive

Clark, Thomas D. (paid link) Kentucky: Land of Contrasts. New York: Harper and Row, 1968.

Clark, Thomas D. “The Slave trade between Kentucky and the Cotton Kingdom,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 21, issue 3 (Dec., 1934), pp.331-342. Read free at JSTOR. DOI: 10.2307/1897378

Coleman, J. Winston. (paid link) “Lexington’s Slave Dealers and Their Southern Trade.” The Filson Club History Quarterly 12, no. 1 (1938).

Deyle, Steven. (paid link) Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. For an in-depth examination of local sales see chapter five.

Fitzpatrick, Benjamin. “Negroes for Sale: The Slave Trade in Antebellum Kentucky.” PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 2010. Read Free at CurateND

Ireland, Robert M. (paid link) The County Courts in Antebellum Kentucky. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015.

Lewis, Patrick. (paid link) For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War. University Press of Kentucky, Mar 9, 2015

Murphy, Sharon A. “Banking on Slavery in the Antebellum South”. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Economic History Workshop, May 1, 2017.

Murphy, Sharon A. (paid link) Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2010.

Rothman, Joshua D. (paid link) Flush Times and Fever Dreams: A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in the Age of Jackson. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012.

Rothman, Joshua D. (paid link) Reforming America, 1815-1860 (Norton Documents Reader). New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.

Russell, Thomas D. “Articles Sell Best Singly: The Disruption of Slave Families at Court Sales.” Utah Law Review, Vol. 1996, p. 1161-1209, 1996. Available free at SSRN.com

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. (paid link) Uncle Tom’s Cabin. London: Cassell, 1852. Read for free at GoogleBooks

Woolfolk, George R. “Taxes and Slavery in the Ante Bellum South.” The Journal of Southern History 26, no. 2 (1960): 180-200. Accessed May 12, 2020. doi:10.2307/2955182. Read for free at Jstor

How to Subscribe to The Reckoning Podcast

September 30, 2020February 3, 2023

Episode 1: Hidden History

Season One | Episode 1

Episode One: Hidden History
Hosted by Dan Gediman. With Patrick Lewis, Vanessa Holden, Ricky Jones, Sadiqa Reynolds, Chanelle Helm, Sharon Murphy, Russ Bowlds, Brigitt Johnson, Loretta Williams, and Lisa Bowlds-Williams, and featuring Alec Volz, Susan Linville, and Mark Forman.

The history of slavery is often taught as a bitter chapter of America’s past that has been rectified. But in Kentucky that history has been rarely acknowledged, and is poorly documented. This has made it particularly difficult for African American families to learn anything about their enslaved ancestors. We’ll meet one Black family just beginning to learn about their family’s connections to a plantation in Louisville. Episode Transcript

Dr. Vanessa M. Holden

Vanessa M. Holden is an assistant professor of History and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky.

Dr. Ricky L. Jones

Dr. Ricky L. Jones is Professor and Chair of the University of Louisville’s Department of Pan-African Studies.

He is a contributing opinion columnist for the Courier-Journal and USA Today Network for which he was named 2018 “best editorial/opinion columnist” by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Visit him at: www.rickyljones.com

Follow on Twitter: @DrRickyLJones

Sadiqa N. Reynolds, esq.

Sadiqa Reynolds is the President and CEO of Louisville Urban League, the first woman to hold this title in the affiliate’s 95-year history.

Sadiqa Reynolds is the President and CEO of Louisville Urban League. Her appointment made her the first woman to hold this title in the affiliate’s 95-year history. She has previously served as Chief for Community Building in the Office of the Mayor where she oversaw approximately 1500 employees. Sadiqa serves on several boards including Fund for the Arts, the Louisville Chamber, WAVE3 Editorial Board, WDRD Advisory Board and is a Director for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

She has served as District Judge for the 30th Judicial Court. She was also the first African American woman to clerk for the Kentucky Supreme Court when she served as Chief Law Clerk for the late Chief Justice Robert F. Stephens. Her life as a public servant also includes being the first African American to serve as Inspector General for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Services.

Prior to entering the public sector, Sadiqa owned and managed her private legal practice. Her practice included criminal litigation, employment law, death penalty litigation and serving as Guardian Ad Litem representing abused, neglected and dependent children as well as arguing successfully before the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. She has also been recognized by the Louisville Bar Association for providing pro bono hours in which she represented domestic violence victims and other disadvantaged citizens.

Sadiqa earned her BA in Psychology from the University of Louisville and her law degree from the University of Kentucky. She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and Bates Memorial Baptist Church.

She is an advocate for mental health awareness and received the 2017 Community Leader of the Year Award from the National Alliance on Mental Illness because of her work to reduce the stigma around mental health. She is also a proponent for Restorative Justice and participated in the face it campaign to end child abuse.

Under her leadership, the Louisville Urban League is committed to jobs, justice, education, health and housing. She has been featured on CNN’s Headline News for the Louisville Urban League’s work on the State of Black Louisville and been a guest on FOX News as well as the national Funky Politics podcast.

Sadiqa is a much sought-after speaker who has been recognized as a Business First Enterprising Woman to Watch and a Woman of Influence. She has been honored with a Tower Award, a Torch of Wisdom and named a Daughter of Greatness by the Muhammad Ali Center. She’s received the Fannie Lou Hamer award, for her commitment to justice and in 2016 was recognized as BizWomen’s Business Journal top 100 women to watch nationally. She was also recognized for her housing advocacy work by the Mortgage Banker’s Association and in 2017 was recognized as Louisville’s Communicator of the Year. Just this year she was honored to be named a recipient of the Gertrude E. Rush Award by the National Bar Association.

She has been featured on public radio, television and numerous print media outlets including the NY Times. She has two beautiful daughters Sydney, 8th grade and Wynter, 6th grade, both being educated in public schools. Sadiqa has received two honorary Doctorates, one from Spalding University and the other from Simmons College of Kentucky. Sadiqa Reynolds was the 2017 Louisville Magazine Person of Year and a 2018 National Urban League Woman of Power.

Chanelle Helm

Chanelle Helm is the core lead organizer with Black Lives Matter Louisville.

Dr. Sharon A. Murphy

Sharon Ann Murphy is a professor of history at Providence College in Providence, RI, and the author of Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America.

https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/investing-life

https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/other-peoples-money

Episode Bibliography

Bullitt, Thomas W. (paid link) My Life at Oxmoor; Life on a Farm in Kentucky Before the War. Louisville: Filson, 1911. Read Free at Internet Archive

Coleman, J Winston. (paid link) Slavery Times in Kentucky. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1940.

Jones, Ricky L. (paid link) Black Haze: Violence, Sacrifice, and Manhood in Black Greek-Letter Fraternities. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015.

Klotter, James C., Friend, Craig Thompson. (paid link) A New History of Kentucky. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2018.

Klotter, Freda C. and Klotter, James C. (paid link) A Concise History of Kentucky. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2008.

Lewis, Patrick. (paid link) For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War. University Press of Kentucky, Mar 9, 2015

McDougle, Ivan E. (paid link) Slavery in Kentucky, 1792-1865. Lancaster, Pennsylvania: Press of the New Era Printing Company, 1918. Digitized by Google Books, 2006. Read Free at Google Books

Murphy, Sharon A. “Banking on Slavery in the Antebellum South”. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Economic History Workshop, May 1, 2017.

Murphy, Sharon A. (paid link) Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2010.

Young, Amy L. and Young, J. Blaine Hundson. “Slave Life at Oxmoor”, Filson Club History Quarterly, Summer 2000, Vol. 74, NO. 3. Read Free at Filson

How to Subscribe to The Reckoning Podcast

September 29, 2020October 2, 2020

Matthew Hume

In this excerpt, the interviewer describes Matthew Hume’s experience with religion when he was enslaved in the third person.

See full document • Visit the Library of Congress to see the original document

Excerpt:

…The mistress on a neighboring plantation was a devout Catholic and had all the children come each Sunday afternoon to study the catechism and repeat the Lord’s Prayer. She was not very successful in training them in the Catholic faith as when they grew up most of them were either Baptists or Methodists. Mr. Hume said she did a lot of good in leading them to Christ but he did not learn much of the catechism as he only attended for the treat. After the service, they always had candy or a cup of sugar…

Interviewee Formerly enslaved person	Birth Year (Age)	Interviewer WPA Volunteer	Enslaver’s Name
Matthew Hume	Unknown (Unknown)	Grace Monroe	Daniel Payne

Interview Location	Residence State	Birth Location
Jefferson County, IN	IN	KY

Themes & Keywords	Additional Tags:
Religion	Trimble County, Third Person, Witnessed Extreme Cruelty

Hume_M_2

September 29, 2020September 29, 2020

Charles Green

Charles Green lived in enslavement in Kentucky before and during the Civil War. In this excerpt, he describes the fear the enslavers put into the enslaved about the raiding Union (Yankee) soldiers, and how Confederate Soldiers (led by John Morgan) were not to be feared. However, he also mentions how his half brother and father joined the Union cause.

See ful l document • Visit the Library of Congress to see the original document

Excerpt:

When old John Morgan came through raiding, he took meat and horses from our place, and just left the smokehouse empty. Father and my half-brother, George Spencer Green, joined up with the 112th Kentucky boys, and was with General Sherman marching to the sea. Father, he died, but Spence came home after the war and settled in the lower part of Mason County.

…We thought the Yankee soldiers were coming to carry us off, and they told us to hide if we saw them. I remember one night; ‘twas mostly dark; I saw some Yankee soldiers, and I was scared to death. They yelled at me, and I took to my heels; then they shot in the air and I ran all the faster getting back to the house. But when Old [Confederate General] John Morgan came along a-raiding and carrying off the meat and good horses, we weren’t afraid.

Interviewee Formerly enslaved person	Birth Year (Age)	Interviewer WPA Volunteer	Enslaver’s Name
Charles Green	1859 (78)	Not Named	Wallingsford

Interview Location	Residence State	Birth Location
Clark County, OH	Ohio	Mason County, KY

Themes & Keywords	Additional Tags:
Family, Emancipation, Civil War,	First Person, Union Troops,

Green_C_1

September 29, 2020September 29, 2020

Charlie Richmond

This Third Person recollection of an interview with the formerly enslaved Charlie Richmond describes how the dialect of the formerly enslaved populations remained prominent in the South among both Black and White families due to the fact that so many of them lived together during times of enslavement.

See full document • Visit the Library of Congress to see the original document

Source Description:

The n—-o dialect of this county is a combination of the dialect white folk use plus that of the n—o of the South. The colored population is continually moving back and forth from Alabama, Georgia, and North and South Carolinas. They visit a lot. Colored teachers so far have all been from Ohio. Most visiting colored preachers come from Alabama and the Carolinas. The negroes leave out their R’s use an’t han’t gwin, su’ for sir, yea for yes, dah for there and such expressions as, “I’s Ye?”

The wealthiest families o’ white folk still retain colored servants. In Prestonsburg, Kentucky one may see on the streets neat looking colored gals leading or wheeling young white children along. Folks say this is why so many southerners leave out their R’s and hold on to the old superstitions, they’ve had a colored mama for a nurse-maid.

Interviewee Formerly enslaved person	Birth Year (Age)	Interviewer WPA Volunteer	Enslaver’s Name
Charlie Richmond	Unknown	John I. Sturgill	Judge Richmond

Interview Location	Residence State	Birth Location
Floyd County, KY	Kentucky	Unknown

Themes & Keywords	Additional Tags:
Family, class, dialect	Third Person, dialect

Richmond_C_1

September 29, 2020November 10, 2022

Charles Anderson

Charles Anderson lived in enslavement in Kentucky before and during the Civil War. In this excerpt, he describes becoming a free man, his hesitancy to leave the plantation, the act of voting, and his realization that racial problems continued to exist in our country long after Reconstruction.

See full document • Visit the Library of Congress to see the original document

Excerpt:

I don’t know when freedom came on. I never did know. We was five or six years breaking up. Master Stone never forced any of us to leave. He give some of them a horse when they left. I cried a year to go back. It was a dear place to me and the memories linger with me every day.

There was no secret society or order of Ku Klux in reach of us as I ever heard.

I voted Republican ticket. We would go to Jackson to vote. There would be a crowd. The last I voted was for Theodore Roosevelt. I voted here in Helena for years. I was on the petit jury for several years here in Helena.

I farmed in your state some (Arkansas). I farmed all my young life. I been in Arkansas sixty years. I come here February 1879 with distant relatives. They come south. When I come to Helena there was but one set of mechanics. I started to work. I learned to paint and hang wallpaper. I’ve worked in nearly every house in Helena.

The present times are gloomy. I tried to prepare for old age. I had a apartment house and lost it. I owned a home and lost it. They foreclosed me out.

The present generation is not doing as well as I have.

Interviewee Formerly enslaved person	Birth Year (Age)	Interviewer WPA Volunteer	Enslaver’s Name
Charles Anderson	Unknown (77 or 78)	Irene Robertson	Isaac and Davis Stone

Interview Location	Residence State	Birth Location
Helena, AR	Arkansas	Nelson County, Kentucky

Themes & Keywords	Additional Tags:
Emancipation, Voting, Citizenship, 15th Amendment	First Person, Witnessed Extreme Cruelty, Slaver Father

Anderson_C_2

September 29, 2020November 10, 2022

Charles Anderson

Charles Anderson lived in enslavement Kentucky before and during the Civil War. In this excerpt, he describes witnessing a woman being auctioned off to enslavers who wanted females who could conceive and raise children to be enslaved in the future.

See full document • Visit the Library of Congress to see the original document

Excerpt:

I seen a woman sold. They had on her a short dress, no sleeves, so they could see her muscles, I reckon. They would buy them and put them with good healthy men to raise young slaves. I heard that. I was very small when I seen that young woman sold and years later I heard that was what was done.

Interviewee Formerly enslaved person	Birth Year (Age)	Interviewer WPA Volunteer	Enslaver’s Name
Charles Anderson	Unknown (77 or 78)	Irene Robertson	Isaac and Davis Stone

Interview Location	Residence State	Birth Location
Helena, AR	Arkansas	Nelson County, Kentucky

Themes & Keywords	Additional Tags:
Gender/Gender Roles, Intersectionality	First Person, Witnessed Extreme Cruelty, Slaver Father

Anderson_C_1

September 29, 2020October 2, 2020

Ann Gudgel

Ann Gudgel lived in enslavement during the Civil War. In this excerpt, she describes how enslaved persons were vaccinated against smallpox (the process involved infecting a patient with the pus of a smallpox victim).

See full document • Visit the Library of Congress to see the original document

Excerpt:

One day they vaccinated all the slaves but mine never took at all. I never told anybody, but I just sat right down by the fireplace and rubbed wood ashes and juice that spewed out of the wood real hard over the scratch. All the others were really sick and had the most awful arms, but mine never did even hurt.

Interviewee Formerly enslaved person	Birth Year (Age)	Interviewer WPA Volunteer	Enslaver’s Name
Ann Gudgel	Unknown	Mildred Roberts	Ball

Interview Location	Residence State	Birth Location
Anderson County, KY	Kentucky	Unknown

Themes & Keywords	Additional Tags:
Violence	First person, dialect, witnessed extreme cruelty

Gudgel_A_2

September 29, 2020September 29, 2020

Ann Gudgel

Ann Gudgel lived in enslavement during the Civil War. In this excerpt, she describes her life as an enslaved person, including the troublesome fact that she and her family chose to remain with their enslavers after Emancipation.

*Historically-used terms that are offensive, marginalizing and/or disparaging have been removed from the transcripts and replaced with [redacted]. See more information.

See full document• Visit the Library of Congress to see the original document

Excerpt:

I don’t know how old I am, but I was a little girl when that man Lincoln freed us [redacted]. My mammy never told us our age, but I know I am plenty old, cause I feel like it.

When I was a little girl all of us were owned by Master Ball. When Lincoln freed us [redacted], we went on and lived with Master Ball till us children were about grown up. None of us was ever sold, cause we belonged to the Balls for always back as far as we could think.

Mammy worked up at the big house, but us children had to stay at the cabin. But I didn’t very much care, because ole Miss had a little child just about my age, and we played together.

The only time ole Miss ever beat me was when I caused Miss Nancy to get ate up with the bees. I told her ‘Miss Nancy, the bees are asleep, let’s steal the honey.’ Soon as she touched it, they flew all over us, and it took Mammy about a day to get the stingers out of our heads. Ole Miss just naturally beat me up about that.

Interviewee Formerly enslaved person	Birth Year (Age)	Interviewer WPA Volunteer	Enslaver’s Name
Ann Gudgel	Unknown	Mildred Roberts	Ball

Interview Location	Residence State	Birth Location
Anderson County, KY	Kentucky	Unknown

Themes & Keywords	Additional Tags:
Emancipation, family	First person, dialect

Gudgel_A_1

Author: Rhonda Rogers VanDyke

Episode 3: Recovering History

Season One | Episode 3

Guests

Dr. Vanessa M. Holden

Dr. Ricky L. Jones

Dr. Patrick Lewis

Episode Bibliography

How to Subscribe to The Reckoning Podcast

Episode 2: Sold Down The River

Season One | Episode 2

Episode Two: Sold Down the River

Guests

Dr. Vanessa M. Holden

Dr. Joshua D. Rothman

Dr. Sharon A. Murphy

Dr. Patrick Lewis

Kevin Outterson, J.D., LL.M.

Episode Bibliography

How to Subscribe to The Reckoning Podcast

Episode 1: Hidden History

Season One | Episode 1

Guests

Dr. Vanessa M. Holden

Dr. Ricky L. Jones

Sadiqa N. Reynolds, esq.

Chanelle Helm

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Charles Anderson

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Ann Gudgel

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