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African American Related Links
From 1936 to 1938, over 2,300 former slaves from across the American South were interviewed by writers and journalists under the aegis of the Works Progress Administration. These former slaves, most born in the last years of the slave regime or during the Civil War, provided first-hand accounts of their experiences on plantations, in cities, and on small farms. Their narratives remain a peerless resource for understanding the lives of America's four million slaves. What makes the WPA narratives so rich is that they capture the very voices of American slavery, revealing the texture of life as it was experienced and remembered. Each narrative taken alone offers a fragmentary, microcosmic representation of slave life. Read together, they offer a sweeping composite view of slavery in North America, allowing us to explore some of the most compelling themes of nineteenth-century slavery, including labor, resistance and flight, family life, relations with masters, and religious belief. This web site provides an opportunity to read a sample of these narratives, and to see some of the photographs taken at the time of the interviews. The entire collection of narratives can be found in George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972-79).
North American Slave Narratives
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
Records and photographs of the American Colonization Society
African Ancestry is an established genetic genealogy company, headquartered in Washington, DC. Started in 2002, co-founders, Gina Paige and Dr. Rick Kittles, have created a vehicle to enable people of African descent to trace their ancestry back to their present-day African country of origin by analyzing their DNA.
Researching African-American ancestors
Freedmen's Bureau
Records
Guide to Federal Records in the National Archives of the United States
Registers of Marriages of Freedmen
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Free searching in the following areas |
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If you have questions or problems with this site, email the Web Master: LeFloris Lyon. I am unable to do your personal research. I do not live in Wayne County MS and do not have access to additional records.
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