Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2

About this book

"Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from…" is a collection undertaken by the Federal Writers' Project between 1936 and 1938. The project documented over 2,000 interviews with formerly enslaved individuals across seventeen states, preserving their life histories before the last generation born into slavery disappeared. However, the collection sparked controversy: primarily white interviewers conducted the interviews during Jim Crow, raising questions about whether interviewees could speak freely or had to modify their accounts for safety and survival.