“Fightin’ Long Atter I Is Gone”: Opposing Agendas in the Georgia Federal Writers’ Project Slave Narratives

From 1936 to 1938, the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) interviewed over two thousand former slaves about their experiences under slavery. Since the interviews took place during the Depression, the ex-slaves also shared details about the Depression in the interviews. The Georgia FWP narratives also reveal information about 1930s race relations. In the majority of the interviews, a white FWP interviewer conducted the interview with the ex-slave. To a great degree, white ideas about race in this period shaped the interview. In analyzing the FWP narratives of Georgia, it becomes evident that the conflicting agendas of the FWP interviewers and ex-slaves dominated the interviews. The white FWP interviewers strove to maintain the Jim Crow ideology and supposed racial superiority of whites by censoring criticisms expressed by the ex-slaves, and manipulating the content of the original interviews. In contrast, black interviewers sought to show the ex-slaves as equals, as intelligent, and as worthy of assistance during the Depression. Meanwhile, the ex-slaves had their own agendas. Elderly African Americans had been especially hard hit during the Depression. Elderly ex-slaves often sought to reveal the shortcomings of New Deal and relief programs in helping blacks. The elderly ex-slaves sought much needed information and food, and chose to barter for these items with the FWP interviewers in exchange for an interview. Even though previous scholars have almost exclusively used the FWP slave narratives to understand slavery, using the narratives to explore the Depression reveals the tense race relations of the 1930s dominated by Jim Crow, disenfranchisement, and inequality.