John,

What Jeff Southmayd is referring to is the Library of Congress website,
"Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project,
1936-1938," which can be found here:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html

They were also published in a series of volumes edited by George P. Rawick,
titled "The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography". The set of 41
volumes, with a somewhat idiosyncratic numbering system, can be found in
many libraries; they were reprinted by Greenwood Press in the 1970s, and
are now available as e-books through ABC-CLIO (Greenwood is now an imprint
of ABC-CLIO). The LOC website also has a good bibliography of these and
other narratives. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snrelated.html

As many on this list know, the circumstances under which the interviews
were made were highly variable, and the interviews themselves must be read
and used with some caution. Norman Yetman's introduction to the collection
is very thorough and should be read before using the interviews.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snintro00.html

Despite the difficulties with the interviews, they are the best (and
sometimes only) way we know about the experience of slavery from the point
of view of the enslaved. And contrary to Mr. Southmayd's assertion, though
there are indeed interviewees who expressed some nostalgia for that period
(remember, most of the interviewees were children in the period between
1845-1865), there are many who had no hesitation in relating the brutal and
dehumanizing circumstances in which they lived and worked.

Martha Katz-Hyman
Independent Curator
Co-editor, *World of a Slave: Encyclopedia of the Material Life of Slaves
in the United States*

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