Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1998
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 4, Fall 1998, pp. 344-45
Abstract
The editors of this rich work of research and compilation have done an outstanding job in bringing together the entire huge collection of previously published and recently rediscovered Oklahoma ex-slave narratives. These accounts resulted from interviews conducted during the late 1930s by field workers of the Oklahoma Federal Writers' Project, part of a national Depression-era employment program that fortuitously appeared while the decreasing numbers of elderly former slaves were still alive to tell their stories.
The unemployed writers and schoolteachers who served as reporters were both black and white, and there is no doubt that the responses given by each interviewee depended upon the race of the person asking the questions. But other factors in assessing the narratives must also be considered. The project workers asked each person a prepared set of questions, transcribing responses onto legal pads. Later, they rewrote each interview in story form, standardizing black speech expressions, revising, and editing before sending the rewrite off to Washington, D.C.
Comments
Copyright 1998 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska- Lincoln