Web Resources

Documenting the American South. Chapel Hill, N.C.: Academic Affairs Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, [1996?]-
Link: http://docsouth.unc.edu/

"North American Slave Narratives, Beginnings to 1920" documents the individual and collective stories of the African Americans in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When completed, it will include all the narratives of fugitive and former slaves published in broadsides, pamphlets, or book form in English up to 1920 and many of the biographies of fugitive and former slaves published in English before 1920. Series editor: William L. Andrews, E. Maynard Adams Professor of English, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

WPA Interviews of the 1930s

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938. A joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs Divisions of the Library of Congress. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, [2000?]-  Link: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html

Presents more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. Provides links from individual photographs to the corresponding narratives. Collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the narratives were assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume work entitled Slave narratives: a folk history of slavery in the United States, from interviews with former slaves.

American Slavery: A Composite Autobiography. Ed. George P. Rawick, et al. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000.
Link: http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/scripts/redirect.pl?db=www.nclive.org/cgi-bin/
nclsm?rsrc=134 (UNCA users only)

Contains the collection of over 2,000 interviews conducted in seventeen states between 1936 and 1938 under the Federal Writers' Project of the Work Progress Administration, as published in 1972 in The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography edited by George P. Rawick. The site contains a links to the narratives and Rawick's analysis of the collection, From Sundown to Sunup: The Making of the Black Community. Each entry links to an Adobe PDF version of the narrative as contained in the Rawick print collection, including any handwritten editorial comments made at the time.

Audio Interviews, 1932-1975

Voices from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves Tell Their Stories. From the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, [2004?]-  Link: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/vfshtml/vfshome.html

Provides the opportunity to listen to former slaves describe their lives. These interviews, conducted between 1932 and 1975, capture the recollections of twenty-three identifiable people born between 1823 and the early 1860s and known to have been former slaves. Several of the people interviewed were centenarians, the oldest being 130 at the time of the interview.

Ramsey Library Collections

Use the following Subject Headings in the library catalog to find out what slave narratives are available in the Western North Carolina Library Network:

Slaves' writings, American

Slaves -- United States -- Biography

Slavery -- United States -- Personal narratives

Autobiography -- African American authors

Slave narratives

Primary sources of slaves and ex-slaves may include diaries, letters, interviews, transcribed songs, and even recorded folklore. Keyword searches using these words may yield additional books, recordings, and materials. For example: "African Americans and slave and interviews"

Some key print collections of slave narrative include the following. You should also browse the shelves in the general collection, concentrating on the E444's.

The American slave: a composite autobiography. Ed. by George P. Rawick. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Pub. Co, 1972. UNCA GENERAL E441 .R38 1972 

Pioneers of the Black Atlantic: Five Slave Narratives From the Enlightenment, 1772-1815. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and William L. Andrews. Washington, D.C.: Civitas, 1998. UNCA GENERAL E444 .P56 1998 

Six Women's Slave Narratives. Intro. by William L. Andrews. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. UNCA GENERAL E444 .S59 1988

Slave testimony : two centuries of letters, speeches, interviews, and autobiographies. Ed. by John W. Blassingame. Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, 1977. UNCA GENERAL E444 .S57

See also the following guide: Yale University Library Primary Sources Research

Secondary Sources / Journal Articles

See the following list of indexes and databases to access journal articles on slave life and culture.

This page created and maintained by Bryan Sinclair, Assoc. University Librarian for Public Services. Email: sinclair@bulldog.unca.edu

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