Resources

"No! No! Oh! No! You had better not dare let white people know that you could read, in those days." 

(Mary Colbert, Athens, GA)

Primary Texts

Library of Congress, “Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938.” [Manuscript Division] 

Library of Congress, “Voices from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves Tell Their Stories.”  Audio recordings of 26 formerly enslaved Americans. 

Applewood Books/Library of Congress: Facsimile printed editions of selected interviews.

Project Gutenberg: open-access e-book versions of the 1941 version of Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves 

Secondary Texts

Berlin, I., Favreau, M., & Miller, S. F. (1996). Remembering slavery. New York: New Press.

Berlin, I., Hancock, S., Boritt, G. S., & Gettysburg Civil, W. I. (2007). Slavery, resistance, freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Davis, C. T., & Gates, H. L. (Eds.). (1985). The slave's narrative. NY: Oxford University Press.

Garner, Lori Ann. "Representations of Speech in the WPA Slave Narratives of Florida and the Writings of Zora Neale Hurston." Western Folklore 59.3/4 (2000): 215. Web.

Grobman, Laurie. ""Engaging Race": Teaching Critical Race Inquiry and Community-Engaged Projects." College English 80.2 (2017a): 105-32. Education Database, ProQuest Central Essentials. Web.

Grobman, Laurie. "Disturbing Public Memory in Community Writing Partnerships." College Composition and Communication 69.1 (2017b): 35-60. Education Database, ProQuest al Essentials. Web.

 Hirsch, Jerrold. "Rediscovering America: The FWP Legacy and Challenge." Community Literacy Journal 7.1 (2012): 15-31. Web.

McKee, Heidi A., and James E. Porter. "The Ethics of Archival Research." College Composition and Communication 64.1 (2012): 59-81. Social Science Premium Collection. Web.

Mutnick, Deborah. "Toward a Twenty-First-Century Federal Writers' Project." College English 77.2 (2014): 124. Proquest. Web. Jan 21, 2018.

Mutnick, Deborah. "Pathways to Freedom: From the Archive to the Street." College Composition and Communication 69.3 (2018): 374. Web.

Royster, Jacqueline Jones. Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000.

Stewart, C. A. (2016). Long past slavery : Representing race in the federal writers' project. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.10.5149/9781469626277_stewart