William Andrews – författare

The post-Civil War slave narrative isn't nearly so well known or widely taught as the antebellum texts by Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Henry Box Brown, and others. But now that these antebellum narratives have taken their rightful place in courses in American literature, not to mention African American literature, it's time to make available four representative post-Civil War narratives, to ensure that teachers and readers understand the richness of the slave narrative and its continuing socio-political import after Emancipation. Few people know that there were almost as many narratives of slavery published in the fifty years following the end of slavery as there were during the fifty years before abolition. Post-Civil War narratives don't merely recapitulate the themes and issues of the antebellum texts. Postwar narratives have a more varied agenda, owing largely to the fact that their authors did not have to adhere so closely to the antislavery movement's priorities and aims. Postwar narratives compare life in freedom to life in slavery in ways that most antebellum narrators do not pursue, for instance. Postwar narratives bring the issue of class and economic mobility among black people, particularly after Emancipation, into much greater focus than appears in the antebellum narratives.

In 1911, William Pickens published the first edition of his autobiography, The Heir of Slaves, in which he writes about the importance of his education and recounts the experiences that led him into public life. The narrative discusses his family, the various teachers and mentors who helped guide him, and the incidents and methods by which he accomplished so much. Pickens's later works increasingly demanded the rights of full citizenship for African Americans. Bursting Bonds (1923), the second edition of his autobiography, clearly demonstrates this development by the inclusion of five new chapters on racial tensions. This important work, now back in print, marks a turning point in the evolution of African American autobiography from defence to confrontation.