About this book
This volume is the eleventh in a series of folk histories compiled by the Federal Writers’ Project for the Works Progress Administration in the late 1930s. It gathers typed interviews with former enslaved people from North Carolina, preserving the raw, unedited language of the narrators. The opening pages present a roster of informants, Louisa Adams, Ida Adkins, and dozens of others, followed by their personal testimonies, complete with original spelling, punctuation, and handwritten marginal notes. The transcriber’s note explains that formatting quirks, typographical errors, and occasional hand‑written corrections have been retained to reflect the documents’ individual character. Each interview is dated, illustrated with period photographs, and organized by the original interview headers, offering a direct window into the lived experience of slavery as recalled by those who survived it.
The voice is unmistakably oral, marked by dialect, fragmented sentences, and vivid detail that convey both hardship and resilience. The style is documentary rather than literary, presenting the speakers’ words with minimal editorial smoothing. Readers interested in primary‑source history, African‑American studies, or the social conditions of the antebellum South will find this collection compelling, as it provides unmediated insight into the personal narratives that shaped North Carolina’s slave society.
