About the Project

Between 1936 and 1938, the Federal Writers’ Project undertook a unique project: to interview the last generation of Americans who had been born in slavery. Interviewers in 17 states collected more than 2,300 first-hand accounts of life in and after slavery, as well as nearly 500 photographs and 26 audio-recordings. Part of a national effort to document American life, the Federal Writers’ Project sought to record and preserve the experiences the last generation of Americans who had experienced slavery. Chief Editor B. A. Botkin wrote “To the white myth of slavery must be added the slaves' own folklore and folk-say of slavery” (Vol. 1, II, p. ix). The accounts were published in 1941 as Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. They are available through the Library of Congress.

The interviews provide information about access to literacy, both during and after slavery. The “Supplementary Instructions #9-E to The American Guide Manual” lists “detailed and homely questions” to guide the interviews, including “Did the white folks help you to learn to read and write?” (Vol. 1, p. xxi). (Notably, the question presumes agency by whites rather than those who were enslaved.)

These first-hand accounts enrich our understanding of literacy in American lives and illustrate the importance of literacy, both to those who sought it and to those who restricted it. Some speakers, such as Douglas Dorsey of South Jacksonville, Florida, describe being punished brutally for learning to read. Others, such as Wayne Holliday of Aberdeen, Mississippi, and Page Harris, of Camp Parole, Maryland, discuss schooling after freedom. A few, such as Esther King Casey of Birmingham, Alabama, and Dr. George Washington Buckner, of Vanderburgh County, Indiana, describe high academic achievements.

To learn more about the Federal Writers’ Project, see “Additional Resources.” For a discussion of complications in the use of the transcripts, see “Reading the Transcripts.”