A book of oral testimonies collected between 1936 and 1938, translated by Elsa Quéré, entitled *Under the Reign of the Whip: An Oral History of Slavery in the United States*. A selection from among 2,300 other interviews, it gives voice to those who experienced slavery as children or teenagers. These individuals, already very old at the time, describe the living conditions of enslaved Black people before abolition in 1863. Their accounts reveal the cruelty, terror, and exploitation perpetrated by white supremacy in the Southern states. In her preface, Françoise Vergès reminds us that the slave system was one of the driving forces behind capitalist development both in the USA and in the Caribbean islands. These testimonies from women and men describe the living conditions of this Black population on the large plantations, the customary mistreatment where the whip reigned supreme, the sexual violence (barely mentioned in the testimonies?), and the violence of separation when a slave, a family member, was sold to another owner. In short, they reveal the immense cruelty of the white "masters," both men and women, during the period of slavery and even after the so-called emancipation following the Civil War.
Here are a few excerpts to illustrate my point.
A pastor's statement: "You Negroes, obey your masters and mistresses and steal nothing from them."
Statements from enslaved people: "You had to answer 'Yes, sir, master' and bow very low, otherwise the overseer would smack you. We were their slaves, we were their dogs."
In 1867, "we were supposed to be free. They promised to pay us, but we never got anything."
"Whatever we did, we were entitled to the whip[...]there was a place in the kitchen where she tied the slaves to the walls[...]Sometimes, she practically tore their backs to shreds."
"I saw men[...]being beaten unconscious with a stick; women stripped naked to the hips and whipped."
"Very often he arrived covered in blood from the beatings that damned overseer gave him."
"I received an education, but not the kind you get from books. I received the education of the whip and beatings." (The slaves were absolutely forbidden from learning to read and write.)
The master "threatened to whip me, to immobilize me by tying my hands to my feet, and to put an iron muzzle on me. That was the worst part." "They whipped poor Leah until she collapsed, almost dead. Then they rubbed her wounds with salt and pepper to make her suffer even more."
"The Ku Klux Klan... Those they didn't whip, they hung by their fingers and toes."
"White people told us we were born to work for them and that we did it very well."
This period was appalling and left deep scars on communities across the United States. Trumpism, with its white supremacist and men's rights militias, is a lamentable illustration of this even today.
Hugues
Groupe Commune de Paris
Quéré E. (trans.), 2026 Under the Reign of the Whip: An Oral History of Slavery in the United States, Toulouse, Ed. Ici-bas
https://monde-libertaire.net/?articlen=8861
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Link: (en) France, Monde Libertaire - The Terror of Whiteness (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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