“I was born in Alabama in 1846 and had a hard time all through slavery as my mother was sold away from me. I was so lonesome without her that I would often go about my work and cry and look for her return … but she never came back.”

So begins the account of Bill Russell, one of 11 former Alabama slaves whose stories of servitude have been made public as part of a university’s collection of narratives gathered from interviews with former slaves. The narratives offer rare first-person insight into one of the cruelest institutions in American history.

“My master was so cruel to his slaves that they were almost crazy at times,” Russell continued. “He would buckle us across a log and whip us until we were unable to walk for three days. On Sunday we would pray to God to fix some way for us to be freed from our mean masters.”

Until three years ago, Russell and 227 other former slaves’ accounts of their enslavement were kept safe in the archives at Louisiana's Southern University. Safe, but out of sight.

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In 1999, Southern University archivist Angela Proctor began the painstaking task of reading, scanning and transcribing 228 handwritten interviews. The interviews were coordinated by former Southern University Dean John B. Cade — whom the university’s library is now named for — and conducted by students after the slaves were freed following the end of the Civil War in 1865. They're also now available to the public.

“It’s opened up my mind to see we have come so very far, but it seems like the further we go, the further back we’re going,” Proctor said when asked how the release of the interviews was received. “In 2017, I never expected some of the comments I saw. Some people were commenting that slavery didn’t exist or that the stories were fabricated.”

After interviewing a former Shelby County slave named Cap Davis, one student wrote that, "When I asked him if he liked slavery he said, 'To tell you is not like feeling it. It was a miserable time and I’m glad you didn’t have to go through it. You should thank God you are free.'"

The interviews were kept in the university archives where they had sat since the collection was completed in 1935. Three years ago, the collection was made public in its entirety, offering raw testimony from the mouths of slaves.

Mark Slater, a former slave born in Clarke County said any slaves caught committing an offense were stripped naked and beaten with boards until they had blisters.

“Then whips were used to burst the blisters,” Slater’s interview reads.

Proctor, an African-American woman, said she tried to keep her emotions out of the tedious archival process but she was sometimes floored by the vivid descriptions of punishment in particular.

“You’re talking about my people,” Proctor said. “It was still hard to take myself out of it. Sometimes when the narratives are truly graphic in nature, I can’t help but sit and cry. 'Terrible' is not the word for it.”

Of the 11 Alabamians included in the collection, five were women and six were men. Their stories include the inhumanity of their conditions: children having to eat out of troughs, and field slaves being herded into pens like cattle. But the accounts also reveal stark differences in some owners’ treatments of slaves. Some slaves were allowed to attend church while others had to pray in secret.

Shallette Spivery, a house slave born in Montgomery in 1852, said she was treated well by her owners. She was able to get married and eat bacon, vegetables and sorghum syrup cake, but she also saw field slaves worked to death, an outcome she said her owner preferred to trying to improve a slave’s health.

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Slaves that belonged to ministers recalled having better lives than most. Chas Parker, a slave to Rev. Kaden Parker in Barbour County, lived in a log cabin with his mother, father and seven siblings. They hoed potatoes and tobacco, but Rev. Parker’s slaves “were called free negroes because they were treated so well.”

“We have a few slaves who say they were treated well,” Proctor said. “When you read the report, it’s because they were fed the same thing the master’s family was fed.”

That was the case with Parker’s family, although he later discovered true freedom. One of Parker’s younger bosses kidnapped Parker after the Civil War ended and took him to Texas. Parker later escaped.

“When I had grown up to be a good size, boy I ran away,” Parker said. “I didn’t like slavery once I found what freedom was.”

Since the collection was released online, Proctor said the response has been overwhelmingly positive, despite a few negative comments. She said the library has seen international interest in the slave narratives that have also become a part of history lessons at universities. Proctor said that's important to carrying the history forward.

“The color barrier is not as profound as it was during our time period,” Proctor said. “For (the youth), they get a whole different perspective. I have students who ask ‘Did this really happen?’ because they didn’t grow up with that.”

The full archive can be seen online at lib.subr.edu.