Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume VII, Kentucky Narratives

About this book

"Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from…" is a collection compiled between 1936 and 1938 by the Federal Writers' Project. Over 2,000 interviews with formerly enslaved individuals were conducted across seventeen states, preserving their memories before this generation disappeared. The collection contains more than 10,000 pages of testimonies, photographs, and audio recordings. However, the predominantly white interviewers raised questions about bias and whether interviewees modified their stories under Jim Crow conditions, making these narratives both invaluable historical documents and contested spaces of memory.