Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. Administrative Files: Selected Records Bearing on the History of the Slave NarrativesUnited States. Work Projects Administration
History
Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. Administrative Files: Selected Records Bearing on the History of the Slave Narratives
United States. Work Projects Administration
Federal Writers' Project. Slave narratives
12. What did the slaves do when they went to their quarters after the
day's work was done on the plantation? Did they work on Saturday
afternoons? What did they do Saturday nights? Sundays? Christmas
morning? New Year's Day? Any other holidays? Cornshucking? Cotton
Picking? Dances? When some of the white master's family married or died?
A wedding or death among the slaves?
13. What games did you play as a child? Can you give the words or sing
any of the play songs or ring games of the children? Riddles? Charms?
Stories about "Raw Head and Bloody Bones" or other "hants" of ghosts?
Stories about animals? What do you think of voodoo? Can you give the
words or sing any lullabies? Work songs? Plantation hollers? Can you
tell a funny story you have heard or something funny that happened to
you? Tell about the ghosts you have seen.
14. When slaves became sick who looked after them? What medicines did
tho doctors give them? What medicine (herbs, leaves, or roots) did the
slaves use for sickness? What charms did they wear and to keep off what
diseases?
15. What do you remember about the war that brought your freedom? What
happened on the day news came that you were free? What did your master
say and do? When the Yankees came what did they do and say?
16. Tell what work you did and how you lived the first year after the
war and what you saw or heard about the KuKlux Klan and the Nightriders.
Any school then for Negroes? Any land?
17. Whom did you marry? Describe the wedding. How many children and
grandchildren have you and what are they doing?
18. What do you think of Abraham Lincoln? Jefferson Davis? Booker
Washington? Any other prominent white man or Negro you have known or
heard of?
19. Now that slavery is ended what do you think of it? Tell why you
joined a church and why you think all people should be religious.
20. Was the overseer "poor white trash"? What were some of his rules?
The details of the interview should be reported as accurately as
possible in the language of the original statements. An example of
material collected through one of the interviews with ex-slaves is
attached herewith. Although this material was collected before the
standard questionnaire had been prepared, it represents an excellent
method of reporting an interview. More information might have been
obtained however, if a comprehensive questionnaire had been used.
Sample Interview From Georgia
LULA FLANNIGAN
Ex-slave, 78 years.
"Dey says I wuz jes fo' years ole when de war wuz over, but I sho' does
member dat day dem Yankee sojers come down de road. Mary and Willie
Durham wuz my mammy and pappy, en dey belong ter Marse Spence Durham at
Watkinsville in slav'ry times."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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