During Shaw’s course, Reinhard asked Shaw to serve as her adviser on a senior research project to find out more about the narrative. The pair put together a winning grant proposal that funded Reinhard’s trip to the Library of Congress last summer to research the Slave Narratives Collection in the Manuscript Division. The collection contains more than 2,000 first-person accounts of slavery collected in the 1930s as part of the Works Projects Administration (WPA).
Reinhard subsequently won another grant to continue her research, and she was selected by the American Historical Association to display her findings in a poster session at its 2018 annual meeting, held in Washington, D.C., in January. While in Washington, she visited the Manuscript Division with Stephanie Shaw.
Here Reinhard discusses her research, her experiences at the Library and the career her project has inspired her to pursue.
Tell us a little about the red-cloth narrative.
It consists of various forms of a story former slaves recalled in WPA interviews about how their relatives were captured by slave traders who used red trinkets such as cloth to entice slaves. In some instances, individuals were invited aboard a ship to trade for these goods. In other cases, the cloth was laid out for someone to follow in almost a Hansel-and-Gretel fashion.
Among the narratives in the WPA collection, one of the most cited is the account of “Granny Judith,” relayed by her grandson Richard Jones:
Some strangers wid pale faces come one
day and drapped a small piece of red flannel down on de ground. All de
black folks grabbed for it. Den a larger piece was drapped a little
further on, and on until de river was reached. . . . Finally, when de
ship was reached, dey drapped large pieces on de plank and up into the
ship ‘dill dey got as many blacks on board as dey wanted. ... [mehr] https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2018/04/inquiring-minds-uncovering-the-many-meanings-of-slave-narratives/
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