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CNN Live At Daybreak

Slavery is Gone but not Forgotten

Aired February 26, 2002 - 06:26   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Slavery, it is part of our national history that's long gone, but CNN's Elaine Quijano introduces us to a woman who feels that even though slavery is gone, it should not be forgotten.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sometimes he sell the babes from the breast and then again, he sell the mothers from the babes, and the husbands from the wives, and so on.

ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's a rare glimpse into the lives of former slaves told by the men and women themselves. Their stories and images documented in the 1930's as part of a federal project by the Works Progress Administration.

DONNA WYATT HOWELL, AUTHOR: So these writers received the assignment of going to all of the Southern states and sitting down with the former slaves, wherever they were, usually in their own homes, and taking dictation.

QUIJANO (on camera): Some of those interviews and photographs wound up here at the Library of Congress, largely forgotten in archives. Then decades later, in 1988 while doing other research, Donna Wyatt Howell came across those stories and decided to compile them in a series of books called "I Was a Slave."

(voice-over): The words and photographs depict unimaginable conditions, the separation of entire families and the indignities of slave auctions.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Slaves were put in stalls like pens for cattle.

HOWELL: People say well just get over it, but they don't know and many of us still don't know what it is that we're supposed to get over. Only by bringing all of that to light can we understand where we were and where we need to be.

QUIJANO: Wyatt-Howell hopes through her books those slave voices from America's past will continue to speak to future generations.

Elaine Quijano, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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