The Work Projects Administration’s (WPA) Federal Writers' Project (FWP) had one ambitious goal: to dispatch out-of-work writers across four states (Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia) to collect stories from formerly enslaved people.
The interviews fascinated the journalists so much, twelve more states were added in. The work uncovered not only testimonies of struggle, resilience, and triumph, but also unexpected commonalities.
500 portraits of interviewees from the project show how the taste of independence could be so sweet.
From 1936 to 1938, federal workers documented how Black people were celebrating freedom, community, and heritage.
The simple acts of dressing in “becoming” clothing, using manners and speech to reveal pride or concerns once suppressed, and being photographed as a family, rather than the property of a master, was indescribably impactful.
Kin could now be proudly claimed, families were being reunited, and fuller lives were being constructed from the ground up.
The project closed due to lack of federal funding. Had it not, who knows what more could have been revealed from such an ambitious collection of our rich history.
The Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives Project and a SEVENTEEN-volume transcript drawn from the work have since been digitized and are being cared for by the Library of Congress.
Dive into this rare and profound collection of our ancestors’ lives today online or in person.