My Folks Don’t Want Me To Talk About Slavery

For one to truly understand this period in history, one must not only look to secondary sources of information that are usually provided to students in school, such as textbooks and lectures. One must also look to primary sources of information, such as direct accounts, historical documents, and personal records. Secondary sources can give basic facts and a general idea of what happened. Primary sources can give specific facts, ideas, and even the feelings of those who lived during the period. Through reading people’s actual accounts of what happened at a certain time in history, rather than an account from a person th

to live on was bad. Two Snakes full of poison.” This is not an idea that is usually inferred from secondary sources.

Secondary sources are very helpful in understanding history. However, they can’t give the reader a full understanding of a historical event or of a particular experience, such as slavery, like a primary source can. They can only give basic facts and generalizations concerning events in history. Primary sources can help give the reader a better understanding of how events happened and how they affected different people. Both are very useful in understanding history, but primary sources help give a better understanding.

Each slave has their own story, and each story differs from another. For example, Isaac Johnson describes his life as slave to Jack Johnson. Issac stated, “No sir, the slaves worked very much as they pleased.” He goes on to tell how well they were treated. They were fed well, treated when sick, and given time off on major holidays. This account differs from many accounts of life as a slave. However this is one person’s experience that mirrors others, therefore it is important to history.

Primary sources on the other hand, are usually comprised of individuals’ accounts, writings, reports, statistics, etc. They tend to be much more specific. For example, My Folks Don’t Want Me to Talk About Slavery is composed of twenty-one accounts from those who lived in slavery. It is twenty-

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