The American Slave Narratives were gathered in 1940-1941 - 80 years
after the outbreak of the Civil War - by interviewers of the Works
Progress Administration, a program of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. In
Arkansas, the effort was headed by Bernie Babcock, a local author and
founder of the museum that would become the Arkansas Museum of
Discovery, and administered out of the WPA's headquarters at the Old
State House. The Arkansas interviews are particularly noteworthy for
their candor, a testament to the ability of the interviewers to put
their subjects at ease.
Over half of the Arkansas interviews recount experiences that actually
occurred in other states. For the most part, we have elected not to
include these here. We have also edited them for the sake of brevity.
Even so, there are hundreds of pages of material available. You may
browse the contents either alphabetically or by themes. You may also
search using this site's search engine.
Some of the interviews contain racial terminology some might find
objectionable. We apologize if this is the case, but we have elected to
maintain the actual language used by the interviewees. Regarding the
subject of language, in accordance with the ethnographic practices of
the time, the interviewers have made an effort to capture the dialect
of the speakers. Some interviewers tended to abuse this practice,
writing "shure" instead of "sure," for example, or "staid" instead of
"stayed." For the most part, however, the interviewers seem to be
genuinely trying to capture the sound of the speech they are
transcribing from tape. At any rate we have elected to forego political
correctness and reproduce the document in its historical form. We do
not feel this in any way diminishes the power of what these people have
to say.
Buy
a copy of Bearing
Witness: Memories of Arkansas Slavery, a
compilation of Arkansas Slave Narratives edited by George E.
Lankford.
Also learn
about Arkansas
governors at the exhibit titled The Road from Conway to
Clinton: Biographies of Arkansas's Governors.
Next: The Road from
Conway to Clinton: Biographies of Arkansas's Governors
»