The Slave Narrative Collection
An OKGenWeb Special Project
 

     Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
Oklahoma Narratives, Volume XIII (369 pages)

A Folk History of Slavery in the United States
From Interviews with Former Slaves

The Slave Narrative Collection that has been transcribed as they were written. The language and descriptive portions are as the interviewer transcribed them for the narrative collection; writing the language as spoken by the people they interviewed 

Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. 

Oklahoma Narratives

Oklahoma Narratives, Volume XIII has 369 pages with 75 interviews. This does not cover the interviews that were found in Oklahoma Historical Society's archives, that were not sent to Washington. Of the 75 interviews sent to Washington from Oklahoma, they represent only 3.2 percent of the total number of narratives sent to Washington. 

Information on personnel assigned to the Oklahoma Slave Narrative Project is very limited. Those that went into the field to interview elderly blacks during 1937-38 included:

Three African Americans
Ida Belle Hunter
Bertha P. Tipton
Willie Allen

One American Indian
Ethel Wolfe Garrison

Six Whites
Mrs. Jessie R. Ervin
Robert Vinson Lackey
L. P. Liningston
J. S. Thomas
Craig Vollmer
Lura J. Wilson

Only one being an amateur historian, Robert Vinson Lackey, who wrote for the journal "Chronicles of Oklahoma".

Individuals interviewed for the Oklahoma Slave Narrative Project lived in the state at the time their interviews were recorded, not necessary living in Oklahoma while they were a slave. Twenty-eight of the 130 informants were slaves in what is now Oklahoma, slaves of American Indians, members of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Seminoles and Chickasaw Nations. Many never speaking the English language until long after the Civil War. The people whose memories are preserved in these interviews clearly represent those who helped build Oklahoma into the state that it is today. 

Interviews were conducted in all Southern and most border states, as well as in New York and Rhode Island. Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas sponsored especially productive projects, but the achievement of the Arkansas Project-- whose Director, Bernice Babcock, had a special interest in the ex-slave narratives and exceeded that of any other state.  Nearly seven hundred Arkansas narratives constitute almost one-third of the entire collection. One writer alone, Irene Robertson, interviewed 286 former slaves.  

After interviewing ended, the narratives lay dormant for several years and it appeared that they might be relegated to permanent archival oblivion in their respective states. Upon the termination of the Writers' Project, however, responsibility for the final disposition of the narratives was assumed by the Writers' Unit of the Library of Congress Project, which was concerned primarily with the conservation of Writers' Project materials not intended for publication by the individual states. Approximately 2,300 narratives, as well as a thousand related documents and other "non-narrative materials" (consisting primarily of copies of the following documents: newspaper advertisements of slave auctions and runaways, state laws and bills pertaining to slavery, tax enumerations on slaves, bills of sale, and so forth), were among the materials called in from the states for permanent storage in the Library of Congress.

 Subtitling the collection "A Folk History of Slavery in the United States," the interview materials for each of the states and their organization were bound into volumes that were then deposited in the Rare Book Room of the Library of Congress. With the exception of a number of the Virginia narratives used in the preparation of  "The Negro in Virginia" and not forwarded to Washington, all the narratives that had been sent to Washington from state Writers' Project offices were presented in bound volumes to the Library of Congress in 1941.

Although much has been written about the Writers' Project, much of its story may never be told. This is because most of the research concerning the project has focused upon the activities and objectives of the national office in Washington and has consulted local and state records only infrequently. Yet many of the activities of the state units were undertaken with minimal direction from the national office and when the FWP was terminated, their records and data were hurriedly boxed and stored in local libraries and archives in anticipation of the project's renewal after World War II. They remained untouched for many years or, in some cases, were destroyed.

Location of Narratives

Library of Congress
Manuscript Division
Room LM101
James Madison Building
101 Independence Ave. SE
Washington, D.C. 20540-4680

 
Oklahoma Historical Society
Archives and Manuscript Division
2100 N. Lincoln Blvd
Oklahoma City, OK 73105
405-521-2491
(OHS Library has an index to the narratives, all housed in the Archive and Manuscript division in boxes by alpha order of name on interview. These interview papers can be copied.)

Books

There are several books that are available through your library and inter library loan, check the Slave Resource page.

  [ OKGenWeb ] [ Slave Resources ]

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Entrance to Slave Narratives Index

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