Throughout its tenure on United States soil, African American literature has reflected a combination of History written with a capital “H” and history written in the lower case of everyday folk, that is, the masses of unlettered black folks for whom orality was the primary mode of cultural conveyance. Given the fact that many enslaved Africans were not allowed to learn to read and write, indeed that many states had laws forbidding such learning, it is not surprising that vibrant oral traditions developed among those who suffered through American bondage. Moreover, as Chapter 1 in this volume suggests, indigenous Africans derived from equally rich oral cultures on which they were forced to rely and upon which they could build. The space of oral narrative and folk arts and crafts became as much a part of African American history as academy-derived accounts of enslavement. From this perspective, African American folk traditions, both oral and those deriving from their interactions with the physical culture – such as quilting and basket-making – provide as much of the truth, that is, the history, of African American lives as any researched study. We can therefore speak of the factual history of oral tradition as persuasively as we speak of the factual History of researched/recorded/written traditions. As a people given to orality because of their circumstances in America, African Americans are thus heirs to dual histories, so to speak – that for the ear and that for the eye. When such orality influences written texts, it becomes eye for the ear while more fact-based Historical materials remain eye for the eye.