Related Resources

Archival Resources

Collections Illustrating the African-American Experience

• The African-American Experience in Ohio: Selections from the Ohio Historical Society External
• African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship
• African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907
• African-American Sheet Music, 1850-1920: Selected from the Collections of Brown University External
• First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 External
• From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1822-1909
• Maps of Liberia, 1830-1870
• "Now What a Time": Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals, 1938-1943

Collections from the New Deal Era

• America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA and OWI, ca. 1935-1945
• American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940
• By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943
• California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties
• Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections, 1937-1942
• The New Deal Stage: Selections from the Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939
• Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip
• Voices from the Dust Bowl: the Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940-1941

Additional Resources in the Library of Congress

• African-American History and Culture (from Library of Congress Manuscripts: An Illustrated Guide)
• The African-American Mosaic: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture
• American Treasures of the Library of Congress: Abolition & Suffrage
• Images of African-American Slavery and Freedom from the Collections of the Library of Congress

Related External Web Sites

NOTE: The Library of Congress does not maintain these Internet sites. Users should direct concerns about these links to their respective site administrators or Web masters.

• African-American Women: On-line Archival Collections External
  Durham, N.C.: The Digital Scriptorium, Special Collections Library, Duke University, 1997.
• American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology External
  Charlottesville: American Studies Hypertexts at the University of Virginia, University of Virginia, 1998.
• American Slavery: A Composite Autobiography External
  Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000.
• The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record External
  Charlottesville: The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and The Digital Media Lab at the University of Virginia Library.
• "Been Here So Long": Selections from the WPA American Slave Narratives External
  New York: New Deal Network, Columbia University, 2000.
• Annotated Documents about Slavery External
  Houston, Tex.: Gilder Lehrman Slavery Collection, University of Houston.
• Missouri Slave Narratives External
  St. Louis: African Missouri, University of Missouri.
• North American Slave Narratives, Beginnings to 1920 External
  Chapel Hill: Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1998.
• Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation External
  Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1999.
• Testimony of the Canadian Fugitives (ca. 1850) External
  Groningen, Netherlands: From Revolution to Reconstruction, University of Groningen, 1997.
• Through the Lens of Time: Images of African Americans from the Cook Collection External
  Richmond: VCU Libraries' Online Exhibits, Virginia Commonwealth University, 2000.

Selected Bibliography

Slave Narratives

• Andrews, William L., ed. Slave Narratives After Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2011. LC catalog record.
• Andrews, William L. Slavery and Class in the American South: A Generation of Slave Narrative Testimony, 1840-1865. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2019. LC catalog record
• Andrews, William L., and Henry Louis Gates Jr., eds. Six Women's Slave Narratives. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. LC catalog record
• Andrews, William L., and Henry Louis Gates Jr., eds. Slave Narratives. New York: Library of America, 2000.LC catalog record
• Baker, T. Lindsay, and Julie P. Baker, eds. Till Freedom Cried Out: Memories of Texas Slave Life. College Station: Texas A. & M. University Press, 1977. LC catalog record
• Baker, T. Lindsay, and Julie P. Baker, eds. The WPA Oklahoma Slave Narratives. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. LC catalog record
• Berlin, Ira, Marc Favreau, and Steven F. Miller, eds. Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk about Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation. New York: The New Press, 1998. LC catalog record
• Billington, Ray Allen, ed. The Journal of Charlotte Forten: A Free Negro in the Slave Era. New York: Norton, 1981. LC catalog record
• Blassingame, John W., ed. Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977. LC catalog record
• Botkin, B. A., ed. Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery. New York: Delta, 1994.
• Browne, Martha Griffith. Autobiography of a Female Slave. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998. LC catalog record
• Bunch, Lonnie G. Slave Culture: A Documentary Collection of the Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project [3 Volumes]. Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2014. LC catalog record.
• Burton, Annie L. Women's Slave Narratives. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2006. LC catalog record
• Cook, Charles Orson, and James M. Poteet, eds. "’Dem Was Black Times, Sure ’Nough’: The Slave Narratives of Lydia Jefferson and Stephen Wiliams." Louisiana History 20 (Summer 1979): 281-92. JSTOR External
• Crew, Spencer R., Lonnie G. Bunch III, and Clement A. Price, eds. of the Enslaved: Voices From the Slave Narratives. Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, 2015. LC catalog record
• Curtin, Philip D., ed. Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967. LC catalog record
• Douglass, Frederick. Autobiographies: Narrative of the Life; My Bondage and My Freedom; Life and Times. New York: Library of America, 1994. LC catalog record
• Drake, Kimberly, ed. The Slave Narrative. Ipswich: Salem Press, 2014. LC catalog record
• Ferguson, Moira, ed. The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave--Related By Herself. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997. LC catalog record
• Finseth, Ian., and Nicole N. Aljoe. Journeys of the Slave Narrative in the Early Americas. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014. LC catalog record
• Fisch, Audrey. The Cambridge Companion to the African American Slave Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. LC catalog record
• Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and Charles T. Davis, eds. The Slave's Narrative. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. LC catalog record
• Hurmence, Belinda, ed. Before Freedom, When I Just Can Remember: Twenty-Seven Oral Histories of Former South Carolina Slaves. Winston-Salem, N.C.: J. F. Blair, 1989. LC catalog record
• Hurmence, Belinda, ed. My Folks Don’t Want Me to Talk about Slavery: Twenty-One Oral Histories of Former North Carolina Slaves. Winston-Salem, N.C.: J.F. Blair, 1984. LC catalog record
• Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987. LC catalog record
• Jones-Rogers, Stephanie E. They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. LC catalog record
• Killion, Ronald, and Charles Waller, eds. Slavery Time When I Was Chillun Down on Marster's Plantation. Savannah: Beehive Press, 1973. LC catalog record
• Mellon, James, ed. Bullwhip Days: The Slaves Remember. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988. LC catalog record
• Meltzer, Milton. The Black Americans: A History in Their Own Words, 1619-1983. New York: Harper and Row, 1984.
• Osofsky, Gilbert, ed. Puttin' On Ole Massa. The Slave Narratives of Henry Bibb, William Wells Brown and Solomon Northup. New York: Harper and Row, 1969. LC catalog record
• Perdue, Charles L., Jr., Thomas E. Barden, and Robert K. Phillips, eds. Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex-Slaves. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1992.
• Porter, Dorothy, ed. Early Negro Writing 1760-1837. Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1994.
• Rawick, George P., et al., eds. The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography. 41 vols. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972-79. LC catalog record
• Stewart, Catherine A. Long Past Slavery: Representing Race in the Federal Writers’ Project. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. LC catalog record
• Taylor, Susie King. A Black Woman's Civil War Memoirs: Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd U.S. Colored Troops, Late 1st South Carolina Volunteers. Edited by Patricia W. Romero, with a new introduction by Willie Lee Rose. Princeton, N.J.: Markus Wiener, 1988. LC catalog record
• Taylor, Yuval, ed. I Was Born a Slave: An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives. 2 vols. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1999. LC catalog record
• Tyler, Ronnie C., and Lawrence R. Murphy, eds. The Slave Narratives of Texas. Austin: Encino Press, 1974. LC catalog record
• Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery. New York: Penguin, 1986. LC catalog record
• Yetman, Norman R., ed. Voices From Slavery: 100 Authentic Slave Narratives. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 2000. LC catalog record

Other Life Histories from the WPA

• Banks, Ann, ed. First-Person America. New York: Vintage Books, 1981. LC catalog record
• Brown, James Seay, ed. Up Before Daylight: Life Histories from the Alabama Writers' Project, 1938-1939. University, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1982. LC catalog record
• Federal Writers' Project. These Are Our Lives. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1939. LC catalog record
• McDonogh, Gary W., ed. The Florida Negro: A Federal Writers' Project Legacy. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993. LC catalog record
• Terrill, Tom E., and Jerrold Hirsch, eds. Such As Us: Southern Voices of the Thirties. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978. LC catalog record

Related Books and Articles

• Bailey, David Thomas. "A Divided Prism: Two Sources on Black Testimony on Slavery." Journal of Southern History 46 (1980): 381-404. Available online through JSTOR External
• Blassingame, John W. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Ante-Bellum South. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. LC catalog record
• Blassingame, John W. "Using the Testimony of Ex-Slaves: Approaches and Problems." Journal of Southern History 41 (1975): 473-92. Available online through JSTOR External
• Butts, J. J. "Pattern and Chaos: Ralph Ellison and the Federal Writers' Project." American Studies 54, no. 3 (2015): 35-49. Accessed July 20, 2020. Available online through JSTOR External
• Butts, J. J. "New World A-Coming: African American Documentary Intertexts of the Federal Writers' Project." African American Review 44, no. 4 (2011): 649-66. Accessed July 20, 2020. Available online through JSTOR External
• Cade, John B. "Out of the Mouths of Ex-Slaves." Journal of Negro History 20 (July 1935): 294-337. Available online through JSTOR External
• Campos, David. "Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project 1936-1938: Stories as a Catalyst for Historical Comprehension." Black History Bulletin 69, no. 2 (2006): 8-14. Accessed July 20, 2020. Available online through JSTOR External
• Clayton, Ronnie W. Mother Wit: The Ex-Slave Narratives of the Louisiana Writers’ Project. New York: P. Lang, 1990. LC catalog record
• Covey, Herbert C., and Paul T. Lockman Jr. "Narrative References to Older African Americans Living Under Slavery." Social Science Journal 33:2 (1996): 23-37.
• Davis, David Brion. "Slavery and the Post-World War II Historians." Daedalus 103 (Spring 1974): 1-16. Available online through JSTOR External
• Elkins, Stanley M. Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959. LC catalog record
• Escott, Paul D. Slavery Remembered: A Record of Twentieth-Century Slave Narratives. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979. LC catalog record
• Frazier, E. Franklin. The Negro Family in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939. LC catalog record
• Garner, Lori Ann. "Representations of Speech in the WPA Slave Narratives of Florida and the Writings of Zora Neale Hurston." Western Folklore 59, no. 3/4 (2000): 215-31. Accessed July 21, 2020. Available online through JSTOR External
• Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Pantheon Books, 1974. LC catalog record
• Georgia Writers’ Project. Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among the Georgia Coastal Negroes. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1940. Reprint, 1986. LC catalog record
• Gilmore, Al-Tony, ed. Revisiting Blassingame’s "The Slave Community": The Scholars Respond. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978. LC catalog record
• Hartman, Saidiya V. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. LC catalog record
• Henige, David. Oral Historiography. London: Longman, 1982. LC catalog record
• Johnson, Charles S. Shadow of the Plantation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934. LC catalog record
• Jacobs, Donald M. The Index to the American Slave. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981. LC catalog record
• Lantz, Herman R. "Family and Kin as Revealed in the Narratives of Ex-Slaves." Social Science Quarterly 60 (1980): 667-75.
• Lester, Julius. To Be a Slave. New York: Dial Books, 1998. LC catalog record
• Mangione, Jerre. The Dream and the Deal: The Federal Writers' Project, 1935-1943. Boston: Little, Brown, 1972. LC catalog record
• McDonald, William F. Federal Relief Administration and the Arts. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1969. LC catalog record
• Musher, Sharon Ann. "Contesting "The Way the Almighty Wants It": Crafting Memories of Ex-Slaves in the Slave Narrative Collection." American Quarterly 53, no. 1 (2001): 1-31. Accessed July 21, 2020. Available online through JSTOR External
• Penkower, Monty Noam. The Federal Writers' Project: A Study in Government Patronage of the Arts. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977. LC catalog record
• Phillips, Ulrich B. American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment, and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime. 1918. Reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966. LC catalog record
• Rawick, George P. From Sundown to Sunup: The Making of the Black Community. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Co., 1972. LC catalog record
• Saxon, Lyle, comp. Gumbo Ya Ya: A Collection of Louisiana Folk Tales. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1945. LC catalog record
• Shaw, Stephanie J. "Using the WPA Ex-Slave Narratives to Study the Impact of the Great Depression." The Journal of Southern History 69, no. 3 (2003): 623-58. Accessed July 21, 2020. Available online through JSTOR External
• Soapes, Thomas F. "The Federal Writers' Project Slave Interviews: Useful Data or Misleading Source." Oral History Review 2 (1977): 33-38. Available online through JSTOR External
• Spindel, Donna J. "Assessing Memory: Twentieth-Century Slave Narratives Reconsidered." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 27 (1996): 247-61. Available online through JSTOR External
• Virginia Writers' Project. The Negro in Virginia. New York: Hastings House, 1940. Reprint, Winston-Salem, N.C.: J. F. Blair, 1994. LC catalog record
• Woodward, C. Vann. "History from Slave Sources." American Historical Review 79 (1974): 470-81. Available online through JSTOR External
• Yetman, Norman R. "The Background of the Slave Narrative Collection." American Quarterly 19 (1967): 534-53. Available online through JSTOR External
• Yetman, Norman R. "Ex-Slave Interviews and the Historiography of Slavery." American Quarterly 36 (1984): 181-210. Available online through JSTOR External