In the 1930's, the last decade when many men and women who were born under slavery and freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.still lived, the New Deal's Federal Writing Project made an extraordinary and important decision. It sent interviewers to ask these African-American survivors: What does it mean to be free? Even more, how does it feel? "Does I remember much 'bout slavery times? Well, there is no way for me to disremember unless I die." B.A. Botkin compiled nearly three hundred of these narratives to create a rich, unvarnished portrait of lives lived half slave, half...
In the 1930's, the last decade when many men and women who were born under slavery and freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.still lived, the New Dea...