The idea of interviewing slaves about their experiences dates to the
1760s, when abolitionists first began to publish slave narratives as a
way to educate the public to the horrors of slavery. From 1929 to 1932,
the social sciences department at Fisk University in Nashville,
Tennessee, sponsored a project to gather more interviews. In 1934, one
of the Fisk project workers suggested the federal government hire
unemployed white-collar blacks to undertake similar projects in Indiana
and Kentucky. Two years later, the Works Progress Administration
directed the Federal Writers' Project teams in four more states to begin
interviewing former slaves living in their states. The project soon
expanded to cover fourteen states. By the time the WPA project ended in
1938, some 2,000 interviews, representing about two percent of the
ex-slave population in the United States at the time had been completed
and transcribed.
The editors of the volumes listed on this page combed
through the transcriptions to find the most interesting of the
narratives from each particular state.
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