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“'They Was Things Past The Tellin’: A Reconsideration Of Sexuality And Memory In The Ex-Slave Narratives Of The Federal Writers’ Project", Lynn Cowles Wartberg
“'They Was Things Past The Tellin’: A Reconsideration Of Sexuality And Memory In The Ex-Slave Narratives Of The Federal Writers’ Project", Lynn Cowles Wartberg
University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations
In 1936, Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) employees began interviewing formerly enslaved men and women, allowing them to speak publicly of their experiences under slavery. Defying racism and the repressions of Jim Crow, ex-slaves discussed intimate details of their lives. Many researchers considered these interviews unreliable, but if viewed through the lens of gender and analyzed using recent scholarship on slavery and sexuality, FWP interviews offer new insights into the lives of enslaved men and women. Using a small number of ex-slave interviews, most of them drawn from Louisiana, this thesis demonstrates the value of these oral histories for understanding the …