Ta-Nehisi Coates: “I take it as given that black people, because they are human beings, generally didn’t like being slaves. … Having said that, I think that just as the photography of the Civil War is interesting from an artistic perspective, the oral histories of slavery are interesting to me from a literary perspective. Looking at them as literature – and the recollection of specific individuals, not agitprop for anything – I’m never surprised to come across black people saying that they liked being slaves.”