Still
They
Speak
From the words of Noah DavisVirginia · 1859
So I tried
to make
letters…”
An enslaved shoemaker. The names inside a pair of shoes. A beginning, told in his own words.
AI-generated interpretationThe activity follows Davis’s account.
The workshop, hands and tools are imagined.
Noah DavisAutobiography · Chapter II, p. 17
Enter a life through its words
Five lives.
Words that remain.
A search for family. Learning to write. Claiming freedom. A concealed escape. A scholar’s life across an ocean. Enter all five stories through original words, animation and narration.
A life of his own.Robert Falls · Recorded testimonyAI illustration3-D scenes & Lamar narrationThree passages 04
A family, concealed.Caroline Hammond · Recorded testimonyAI illustration3-D scenes & Marcia narrationFive passages 05
A life before the crossing.Omar ibn Said · Translated autobiographyAI illustration3-D scenes & Lamar narrationFive passages
I. Mary Armstrong · A journey remembered
To carry
your freedom.
She had been freed. She carried the papers to prove it. And she was leaving Missouri to find her mother in Texas. Follow the journey through the words Mary Armstrong left behind.
Selected passages from her WPA interview · Texas, part I, pp. 25–30
A departure, and a purpose.
I say I goin' find my mamma.
Mary recalls receiving freedom papers and money for the journey. She leaves to search for her mother.
Places in her accountMissouri to Texas · Civil War era
Loading the spatial atlas…
Drag to turn.
Use + / − to zoom.
Archival photograph.
The person behind the route
A journey becomes
a recollection.
Decades later, Mary described the boats, the stagecoach, the papers, and finding her mother. Her interview preserves that recollection through the recording and editing of the Federal Writers’ Project.
The photograph shows her later life, not the journey.
“You jes' look at it up here,”
Mary’s reply when asked to hand over her papers.
II. Noah Davis · The act of learning
To make letters.
He saw names written inside boots and shoes. He began to imitate the letters. Then he learned to write his own name.
A typographic interpretation · Not his handwriting
01 / Names in the lining
The first idea I ever got of writing, was from trying to imitate my employer, who used to write the names of his customers on the lining of the boots and shoes, as he gave them out to be made.
Noah Davis · Autobiography, 1859 · Chapter II, page 17
III. Robert Falls · A life of his own
“I want no man's yoke on my shoulders no more.”
Robert Falls · WPA interview recorded by Della Yoe · Tennessee volume
Selected passages · Original wording · Source always in reach
The words remain at the center
A life cannot be
reduced to a line
on a map.
Each movement begins with a passage. Each passage leads back to its source. These stories hold learning, separation, resolve and reunion alongside the violence of enslavement.
These five stories bring together autobiographical writing and recorded interviews. The archive also contains letters and other forms of testimony. Their differences matter.