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HST371: African Americans remeber Slavery: The WPA Slave Interviews: Primary Sources

Spring 2019, E. Pryor

Slavery - Digital Collections

Digitized Books, Newspapers, Magazines, etc.

The WPA Slave Narratives

Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project
In the 1930's, the Federal Writers' Project (part of the WPA, or Works Progress Administration) sent out-of-work writers to 17 states to conduct interviews with former slaves. The writers collected over 2,000 narratives, compiled here. To search, click on Contents, then Slave Narratives from the FWP, then use the Search within these results box in the upper left corner.

Library of Congress: Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves.

The American Slave by George P. Rawick Vol. 2-17 consist of transcriptions of narratives prepared by the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-38, and deposited in the Library of Congress, where they were assembled under title: Slave narratives, a folk history of slavery in the United States from interviews with former slaves.
Call Number: Young Library Reserve
ISBN: 0837133149
Publication Date: 1972-10-20
Weevils in the Wheat by Charles L. Perdue; Thomas E. Barden; Robert K. Phillips; Virginia Writers' Project Staff (Contribution by)
Call Number: Young Library Reserve
ISBN: 0813905966
Publication Date: 1976-01-01

Web Sites with Narratives, Memoirs, Letters & Other Info

African-American Women (Duke Univ.)
Includes a digitized slave memoir and letters.
Documenting the American South (Univ. of North Carolina)
See in particular North American Slave Narratives (link below).

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A collection of sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century.
Making of America
Primary sources, from the antebellum period through reconstruction.
North American Slave Narratives (Univ. of North Carolina)
US Freedmen's Bureau Project
Will launch in a few months. Watch for additional records that will be available for indexing on DiscoverFreedmen.org, if you'd like to participate in this crowd-sourced project.
Voices from the Days of Slavery (American Memory, Library of Congress)
7 hours of recorded interviews, in which 23 interviewees, born 1823-1860's, discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion, the family, & freedom.

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Last Updated: May 13, 2022 12:33 PM
URL: https://libguides.smith.edu/hst371
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Subjects: History

Tags: hst, hst 371, hst guides, pryor, slave interviews, slave narratives, slavery, spring19, wpa