W’en I git bigger, dey send me to school to Miss Crocker to learn to be seamstruss.We had enuff for anybody. I been right here when de Yankees come through. stream J. F. Boone, age sixty-six, of Little Rock recalled his father saying, “They auctioned off niggers accordin’ to the breed of them. Well, when ever ‘thing was done th’ vittles was poured in a troughan’ we all et.

Nigger git back cut w’en dey don’t do wuk or w’en dey fight. One give her silver to de colored butler to bury but he was kill, an’ nobody else know where he bury it. She did not want them writing down everything as they talked because she felt it would constrain the interview. Me father was a slave in Virginia. From dere we went to Hardeeville. This generation!

100 Rock Street Reconstructing and understanding the many voices of the WPA Slave Narratives Students will be able to think critically about the slave narratives and to understand that the slave narratives represent many voices and points of view, which are impacted by many factors and motivations. In 1973, after working with Alex Haley on the Kinte Library Project, I had the fortune to meet Dr. Alice Eichholz.

<< /Length 5 0 R /Filter /FlateDecode >> In August 1936, Babcock, with Alsberg’s approval, hired two African-American applicants, but state officials would not add their names to the payroll. Save for her wearing glasses and walking slowly, there are no evidences of illness or infirmities. HOME: WPA. Andy Marion was in Sumter County when he heard about the firing at Fort Sumter. These narratives and other slave sources were not always highly valued. She said since I was only 5 she could raise me as she wanted me to be. All Rights Reserved.Lovell, Linda Jeanne. We had spoons cut out of wood that we et with. She is neatly dressed and still wears a fresh white cap as she did when she worked for the white folks.
Some directors complied, while others did not, and Washington could not make it compulsory. He lived on a plantation owned by Eugene Mobley that had seventy-two slaves living on it. My mistress give us a task to do and when we got it done, we went to our playhouse in the yard.”Earl Rowe’s thesis on the FWP in Arkansas addresses how Mary Hudgins, the Hot Springs supervisor, addressed the word-for-word interview situation. Others, from other counties and states mention family and historical connections to this area. I born up Cooper river in ‘66, where me father was a farmer. Mary Island, age eighty, of El Dorado (Union County) recalled that at “seven years old I was cutting sprouts almost like a man and when I was eight I could pick one hundred pounds of cotton.

I hab one sister Eliza—she die de odder day.Melvin Smith of Beaufort, stated that his white folks lived in Beaufort, South Carolina.Support the Heritage Library when you shop onDuring the later years of the 1930s the WPA Slave Narratives Project was produced by the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Project Administration after the Great Depression.


African Americans were barred from the FWP in some Southern states. Cross listed under Photographs/Prints.

Brown, a Washington DC poet and Howard University English professor. They names was Saphronia an’ Annie. After we refugee from Bluffton, we spent de fust night at Jonesville. The WPA Oklahoma Slave Narratives by T. L. Baker and Julie P. Baker; What the Slaves Believed: Recollections of Faith and Religion in WPA Slave Narratives by Tom Head; Homeless, Friendless, and Penniless: The WPA Interviews with Former Slaves Living in Indiana by Ronald L. Baker The largest part came from Arkansas, where interviewers found someone from every slave state. He his own boss an’ a smart man too.

Washington became agitated with the situation and sought an explanation on all African Americans hired for the FWP in Arkansas.