Audiobook · read by volunteers
À Narrative of the Life of Rev. Noah Davis, A Colored Man
Noah Davis (1804–1867)
Read by Bryan Ness · 9 chapters · 1 h 27
About the book
Noah Davis was born into slavery in Virginia in 1804. By the time he wrote this narrative, he had bought his own freedom and that of his wife and five of his children, and had become a Baptist minister. He wrote his story for one purpose: to raise enough money to free his last two children from slavery. The account tells how he grew up with pious parents, learned a trade, learned to write and to cipher, and faced the cruelty of a system that held people as property. It is a plain, direct testimony, never polished for effect, and it carries the force of lived experience. Short but moving, it is a valuable first-person voice from nineteenth-century America and a reminder of the human cost of slavery and the determination of those who resisted it. It is a short account with lasting power.
Introduction
Noah Davis (1804–1867) was a Black Baptist minister who lived in Virginia and later Baltimore. His Narrative of the Life of Rev. Noah Davis, A Colored Man was published in 1859, and its stated purpose appears on the first page: to gather the money needed to free two of his children. In this respect it differs from many slave narratives of the period, which aimed chiefly to arouse opposition to slavery.
The nine recordings begin with the author’s explanation of his purpose and then follow his life in chapters, from early years in Virginia and his apprenticeship to the shoemaking trade, through the learning of housework, the dangers of intemperance and the struggle to learn to write and calculate. Davis describes the prejudice he faced, including the assumption that a Black man could not be trusted. The book is a significant historical document, and it speaks with quiet dignity about faith, labour, family and perseverance.
Its language is simple, and its details of daily work, religious life and family ties give a vivid sense of the world in which Davis lived. The narrative is a reminder that many people who were enslaved did not simply endure, but worked patiently, sometimes over decades, to win freedom for their families.
Nine recordings, about 1.5 hours in all, are read by a LibriVox volunteer. The book is short enough to hear in an evening, and its plain, practical voice, that of a man with a task to finish, is best taken without hurry, a chapter at a time. Davis writes with the practical tone of a man counting costs: what a trade earned, what a purchase cost, what stood between his family and freedom. Today one hears in it both the particulars of one life in Virginia and Baltimore and the wider history to which they belong.
Public domain
Noah Davis died in 1867: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text