Voices of the Formerly Enslaved in Louisiana The WPA Narratives [#1049138]

Voices of the Formerly Enslaved in Louisiana: The WPA Narratives edited by Andrea Livesey
English | September 17, 2025 | ISBN: 0807183024 | True EPUB | 552 pages | 3 MB
In the 1930s, thousands of formerly enslaved Americans were interviewed across the United States as part of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Writers' Project. While most of those interviews were subsequently published, Louisiana's were not. Gathered here for the first time in complete and contextualized form are the full interviews with the formerly enslaved in Louisiana, the transcripts of which had been separated, fragmented, and distributed throughout archives in the state. Reassembled and analyzed by historian Andrea Livesey, the interviews are critical for understanding how Black Louisianans experienced enslavement but also resisted and built distinctive cultures, communities, and families in spite of it. Equally important is the testimony of how they negotiated emancipation and built relationships after freedom.