was the author a slave?
by Robin Arnette

ver since Henry Louis Gates, Jr., professor of Afro-American Studies at Harvard University, published The Bondwoman's Narrative by Hannah Crafts, the country has been buzzing over the possibility that the 1850s manuscript is the earliest novel published by a woman of color. Gates contacted many experts to help in the authentication of the book and owes a debt of thanks to two Carolina researchers. William Andrews, professor of English, and Bryan Sinche, doctoral student in English, were instrumental in determining if Hannah Crafts existed and whether she belonged to John Hill Wheeler, a prominent lawyer and slaveholder in Lincoln County, N.C. Sinche did not find evidence of a slave named Crafts on the Wheeler plantation but did find records of unnamed female slaves who were the same age.

Sinche spent three weeks reading at Carolina's Southern Historical Collection as well as poring over microfilm at the Lincoln County library. He discovered that many of the books that Hannah Crafts referenced in her work were part of Wheeler's personal library. "I can see how a slave could learn to read and assimilate all of that knowledge into a work as elegantly written as those by educated men and women of that century," Sinche says. "It is a remarkable achievement."

Robin Arnette is a postdoctoral fellow at the UNC school of medicine.