Herbert Aptheker

I. INTRODUCTION The wholly erroneous conception of life in the old South which is still dominant in our movies and novels and textbooks was invented by the slaveholders them-selves. They and their spiritual—and even lineal—de-scendants have written the history of American Negro slavery....

I. INTRODUCTION The time-worn myth that life in the old South was heavenly and that the slaves enjoyed an idyllic existence is repeated to this day. Hear, for example, an eminent professor, R. S. Cotterill, writing in the year 1936: From the physical side his working hours were long but not...