Slave Narratives

Born in Slavery
Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938

Contains more than 2,300 first-person 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. This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs Divisions of the Library of Congress and includes more than 200 photographs from the Prints and Photographs Division that are now made available to the public for the first time. Born in Slavery was made possible by a major gift from the Citigroup Foundation.

To go directly to the slave narratives: Click Here.

To first visit a site identifying the Appalachian slave narratives in the collection and discussing where they came from and how they differ from the slave narratives as a whole: Click Here.

Note: This site contains three sample narratives, including one from East Tennessee which is very much recommended, and its own link to the slave narratives site. Both sites require Adobe Acrobat Reader.