Black History Month Day 5 ~ WPA Slave Narratives

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Posted: 2/5/11 at 2:48pm

During the Great Depression the New Deal Works Projects Administration (WPA) used unemployed writers and researchers from the Federal Writers' Project to interview and document the stories of surviving African-Americans who had been part of the American slave system up until the Thirteenth Amendment. Produced between 1936 and 1938, the narratives retell the experiences of more than 2,300 former slaves. (It's estimated that there were still 100,000 former slaves living at the time.)

Stories from the WPA archive have been adapted to stage and screen on various occasions. Perhaps most famoulsly, HBO in 2003 released “Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives”; voices were provided by over 15 actors, including Broadway stars Whoopi Goldberg (who narrated), Angela Bassett, Michael Boatman, Roscoe Lee Browne, Sandra Daley, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Jasmine Guy, Robert Guillaume, and Samuel L. Jackson. Stage adaptations have been mounted by student and community groups in Kansas, California, North Carolina, and New Jersey.