HISTORICAL MEMORY: BLACK VIRGININANS' PERCEPTIONS OF SLAVERY AND THE CIVIL WAR AS REFLECTED IN NAVY PENSION RECORDS AND W.P.A. SLAVE NARRATIVES. Joy P. Jackson; and mentor, Dr. Joseph Reidy, Department of History, Howard University, Washington, DC.

In an attempt to provide a better understanding of slavery and the Civil War, the proposed research will examine the recollections of former slaves from Virginia. There are two useful source of such memories. The first is the United States Naval Pension Records, which were compiled after the Civil War and contain testimony regarding each sailor's service in order to verify his claim for a pension. Windows, relatives, and neighbours often substantiated a veteran's claims. The depositions frequently offer detailed accounts of the black sailor's experiences during slavery and the War. Testimony will also come from the Works Progress Administration's slave narrative collection. To capture former slaves' recollections of their experiences and their preceptions of pivotal events, the W.P.A., in 1939, began to collect and edit interviews previously conducted under the Federal Writer's Project. Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia's Ex-Slaves, a printed collection of such interviews, highlights the slave experience in Virginia.
In viewing the sources, the study will examine historical memory as it relates to ex-slaves' fixed dates of reference, recollections of personal occurrences, personal relationships and their importance, and general preceptions of the Civil War and slavery. Of course, the purpose for which these recollections were summoned, in part, determined what the informant remembered. Yet a close reading of the depositions also illuminates the slaves' preceptions and relationships with their loved ones as well as with their slave owners. That former slaves remembered key events in their lives in relation to major events in U.S. history suggests knowledge of the world beyond the plantation. The awareness of events allowed the slaves to form preceptions about the events and the circumstances affecting the country.
The study will show how understanding historical memory enhances the study of African American history during the Civil War era. While the disadvantages of subjectivity and the changes that individuals' memories undergo must be noted, the insight that they provide on individual experiences and collective perceptions of the time is crucial. More specifically, this research will attempt to understand how African Americans remembered slavery and the Civil War and how they used those memories in different circumstances during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Joy Patrice Jackson, a senior majoring in history and minoring in anthropology, is a native of Newport News, Virginia. Upon graduating from Howard, Jackson plans to attend graduate school at the University of Arizonia where she will concentrate on her studies in history with an emphasis on Native American Studies. Concurrently, she hopes to teach English as a second language to youn adults. Jackson bacame intrested in Native American Studies after sonducting limited research on her family history which led to her grandparents' relevation of their Native American parental lineage. She will complete her doctoral studies in history at the University of Mexico, Mexico City. "I look foward to being afforded the opportunity of presenting informative forums, educating individuals within America and abroad of the diverse cultural and historical backgrounds of the Native Americans," she says.

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