Long past slavery, what period of time are you talking about here . Prof. Stewart its very interesting because it focuses on a project that came out of the 1930s and specifically out of the roosevelt administrations attempt to do something to create work for all different types of occupations. It created a number of Arts Projects to put unemployed writers and artists back to work. And so it happened in the 1930s that they created the federal writers project and decided to start collecting testimony. So, it was kind of the 1930s was the last opportunity to collect oral histories of the last generation of africanamericans that experienced slavery firsthand before they passed away. So, they have created through that project, it only lasted a ew years, 19361939. That project crated the largest repository of this testimony that we have in the u. S. , winding up with over 2300 interviews that are largely Available Online at the library of congress website. So, anyone whos interested can go and use those, and scholars have used them to dramatically transform the way they write about the history of slavery and emancipation and reconsider that. My book took a slightly different turn or different tact by looking at the exslave project. And what does it tell us about race and the federal government and the attempt to rewrite the National Narrative during a moment of economic crisis and a nationwide crisis. What were the racial politics at the time . Prof. Stewart well, it was very complicated. There was still a great deal of jim crow racial segregation, not just in Southern States, but northern places, as well. Aspects of racial segregation that would go unaddressed until the Civil Rights Movement and the postworld war ii era, resulting in famous legislation like brown v. Board of education. To desegregate the Public School districts. As youre probably aware and your viewers are aware, thats a battle that continues today in terms of ensuring equality for ll in the united states. There was a project in the 1930s that was, get it because it was radical in the sense that the federal government was paying unemployed writers to collect local histories and local culture, and ended up really soliciting from them interviews from former slaves. That meant you had people from genetically different backgrounds, different racial groups, different ethnic or cultural groups, different educational backgrounds, different socioeconomic classes trying to talk to each other, trying to cross these divides about the very highly charged topic of slavery and what it meant for African American citizenship in the 1930s. What is the government telling these writers . Prof. Stewart its interesting, i think the federal writers project is emblematic of new deal projects, and thats why i was drawn to it as a scholar and will be looking at it in my new book. It was a moment of great promise and potential. One of the sessions i attended here, a session on the new deal with some major scholars, and they were talking about the sense of the 1930s and the new deal as a moment of promise, and a moment of possibility, but also the fact that it was highly improvisational. The federal government was willing to try a number of previously unprecedented attempts to bring the economy back to life, to bring spirit back to the nation in different ways through the creation of cultural projects. But it was very often kind of an ad hoc. I think the federal writers project really epitomizes that ad hoc, improvisational quality in that it started under the auspices of the federal writers project. And at the time that it was created, it was considered the Ugly Duckling of the federal arts project. And thats because the public regarded with a great deal of skepticism and suspicion this idea, this illdefined category of unemployed writers getting put on the relief roles to do who knows what. They were kind of called boondogglers and slackers and not seen as pulling their weight during the great depression. It started off as a project that was not well received by the american public, but because of its legacy, the exslave narrative collection, which is absolutely astounding, it has really become the most important of the federal Arts Projects of the time. Just in terms of how did it develop, some federal directors received some exslave narratives from states that had undertaken it early, just in the interest of black history, and that was the state of florida. It was under the direction of a southern white woman who was very interested in africanamerican culture. She was a fan of Zora Neal Hurston, as i think many of us are today. The author of, the eyes are watching god. She was professionally trained as a stenographer and this woman had it in mind that she would bring Zora Neal Hurston back to florida and help her become the negro editor of the exslave florida project. Florida was one of the earliest states to submit these interviews to federal directors in washington. And the federal directors saw this as a rich possibility for other states to undertake, as well, for a number of reasons. But this is where the complications come in. You look at the exslave project, all of these different groups and stakeholders involved within the project all saw the testimony as a way to articulate their own views about the legacy of slavery, whether or not it was a brutal or benevolent institution, and the legacy of africanamericans coming out of emancipation. So to give you an example, at the federal level, you had directors like john lomax, known for being a folk song collector. He helped create one of the largest folksong collections. He toured around the south often with his son, and he was appointed the director of folk ways at the federal writers project federal level, and he was very interested in the potential of these exslave narratives. He wanted these portraits of ex slaves as these kind of rural, colorful folk people, and he thought that would be appealing to a wide audience. On the other end of the spectrum, you had the only africanamerican to be appointed as the federal director of the exslave project, and that was a famous poet, professor of english from howard university, sterling brown. Sterling brown was appointed as the editor of the office of Negro Affairs in washington, and it was his, i would say unenviable task to review all of the copy sent in, all of the submissions sent in from different state directors and state and local offices, anything pertaining to black history and black culture identity. He and his small staff were responsible for reading through it and trying to correct some of the worst stereotypes or worst misrepresentations of a black history and identity. Contrasting objectives and thoughts about what the project was really about. And then how was it perceived by the American People . Whose story was told . Prof. Stewart thats what was fascinating to me about this collection, and something that has stymied scholars, if you will, theyre always running up against the amount of diversity in the collection. So if you look at this collection or browse it online, there are a lot of narratives from former slaves that might surprise you. They talk about the good old days of slavery, or benevolent masters and mistresses. Then you also have come as you might expect, a number of also have, as you might expect, a number of narratives that testify to the brutality and inhumanity of the situation. You have these competing narratives not just about slavery as an institution but thinking further ahead in terms of africanamerican identity. And theres a couple Different Reasons for this. Certainly one is, and maybe the most surprising discovery i made in my research is the number of state employees who were southern whites at the state director level and also at local levels as interviewers who were also united daughters of the confederacy, which was an Organization Established in 1894, specifically to kind of preserve and memorialize the idea of the lost cause. Part of the lost cause narrative was really about trying to reinforce this notion of slavery as a benevolent institution, with stories of faithful, loyal slaves, and southern white largess. They were definitely trying to over, if you will, or at it the edit the exslave narratives in different ways. It shaped the questions they asked and the answers they thought they heard. Thats one layer on top of the exslaves in terms of what theyre actually saying. What kind of sources did you have to use . Prof. Stewart you have to pull back whats going on in this project. Yeah, there are all these competing, woven tapestries. One of the things that was most helpful to me in addition to the narratives was the federal and administrative correspondence. So, one of the things i love as a new deal scholar is the fact that the wpa and the new Deal Administration and roosevelt were very interested in documenting everything. At the national archives, there is a treasure trove of letters that went back and forth between local employees, state irectors, federal directors, mrs. From federal directors saying this is how you should approach the exslaves, these are the guidelines you should follow. These are objectives. And then coming back from Southern State directors disputing their representations of black history are putting forth their own vision of slavery. So it was this contest in battle that you could actually see play out in all these letters and correspondence that went back and forth between federal directors and state directors. But i also want to emphasize that one of the main sources i looked at were the exslave narratives themselves, and really trying to read them in a new way in a way scholars have not previously looked out. Specifically seeing them as a type of oral performance, the fact that exslaves were invested in the stories they had to tell. They definitely wanted to document their own individual life histories and experiences both in slavery and often after slavery as they became freed men and freed women. And they themselves were really invested in truth telling. But because of the complications of speaking often to southern whites, who were not always open and receptive to hearing those particular tales, other complications in the communication, exslaves often had to speak indirectly. So, i kind of looked through the narratives, tried to excavate them, if you will, looking for africanamerican oral traditions. Signifying is what Zora Neal Hurston called it. You kind of have to read between the lines. Often in the exslave narratives, you will find evidence of figurative language that exslaves used. You will find humor and misdirection, all of these interesting ways in which they spun tales to often to mitigate the truth of their own experience even when they were faced with a hostile audience. Did you discover new meaning . Prof. Stewart i did. I think in the sense that its a collection that has been combed over and very well used by scholars previously, i think i found new things in terms of narratives that can look at first glance like a typical oh, southern paternalism slave or exslave narratives. Youll find ways in which exslaves are actually creating a counter narrative within their own life story, a counter narrative that goes against the mythology and romanticizing the old south. But you have to know how to read for those signals and clues left behind. Your paper that you are presenting here is black lives in white households. What did you find out . Prof. Stewart that developed out of my personal project, research i came across as i was working on the first book, and is part of the new book that im working on currently. Africanamerican women and men in Domestic Service during the great depression, back in the 1930s, and looking at the new deal and trying to elevate what was this very menial and very often lowpaid wage work in terms of Domestic Service. One of the kind of delightful finds i discovered in the archives, and i would say a rare and unusual collection, is specifically a group of undergraduate student essays written by young southern white women at a southern womens private college in the south. And they were written for their sociology course. So i found this group of these unidentified essays where young southern white women are supposed to write on a topic of Domestic Service in their own home. This is their own type of narratives, if you will. They were very often short essays, but they give all kinds of information from a contemporary perspective of what the negotiations were like within individual households in the south between africanamerican employees, men and women, working in different positions, and their southern white employers. So it was kind of like we always kind of fantasize about time travel or being a fly on the wall to discover what was actually happening in daytoday conversations and negotiations and interactions, and those essays kind of provide a new window into documenting the 1930s experiences of Domestic Workers. What are these young women writing about . Prof. Stewart they were instructed to write about Domestic Labor within the household. Whats so interesting is even in the title, because they are undergraduate students, theyre taking creative license. Obviously, ive done a Little Research to figure out who was the professor, what was the course, what was the intent of the assignment, but they are very often putting their own spin on it with their own titles. A lot of the titles are the Domestic Service problem in my home, the negro problem in my home. And very often you can see that southern white women are already associating the notion of servitude with race, and africanamericans as the caste that is going to be occupying these domestic, menial positions. And then further than that, also making the assumption that any time youre talking about household help, youre talking about a problem of one kind or another. Especially one student who wrote that there is no Domestic Service problem in my home as we because we have no negros in my home. So there is already this interesting and complicated bringing together of notions of race, class, and servitude. And what did you learn from those essays about those that were doing Domestic Work . Those that were working for these young families . Prof. Stewart absolutely, there were so many interesting glimpses we get into africanamerican Domestic Workers in the south. Their personal lives, unfortunately, because these were undergraduate essays written from a privileged white perspective, are just glances and very fragmentary and yet they reveal family relationships, marital status, clubs and activities of the orkers, their own households and financial arrangements, trying to make ends meet at a time period where there were few employment options for africanamericans in the south. So they kind of give us this new or fuller picture, of africanamericans working as domestic servants. I also read them for the great wealth of information about the southern white ideals about the meaning of racial inequality. And many of the southern white women are invoking this kind of confederate stereotype of the mammy and talking about the good old faithful servants we used to have were wonderful and they were like one of the family. And this newer generation, we dont know what to do with them, they refuse to accommodate our needs, they demand to be paid in wages. They wont work from sun up ntil sundown and the like. Theres this precreation of white southern attitudes, about expectations about africanamericans in terms of service that are very much and problematically shaped, if you will, or informed by racial stereotypes of africanamerican women in particular, kind of being selfsacrificing mammys. So, i read them for that. I also read them for tidbits of evidence about how black workers were often resisting employer demands and finding ways to strategically negotiate or navigate white forms of instruction or surveillance. We could say. Connect those two stories of to today. Prof. Stewart i think you can see there are so many relevant connections. While thats interesting to me as a scholar and exciting to me as a scholar, its also deeply troubling. Part of my title for my first book was meant to be literal, long past slavery, 75 years past slavery, theyre interviewing exslaves for the first time about their expenses. Experiences. But theres also an irony in that title, that africanamericans from exslaves to africanamericans in the project are still trying to be able to tell their own history and to be able to create their own narratives about important events in the nations past. So long past slavery, unfortunately, it continues, as many scholars have talked about, to be a legacy that remains with us as a nation and certainly continues in terms of confederate mythology and memory, and that kind of pushing back against the National Narrative of equality and democracy. That conflict is playing out every day in the news in terms of the forms of public memory we have about again, still the meaning of slavery, the legacy of emancipation, and the ongoing freedom struggle that continues ince then. Thank you. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. Every weekend we bring you American History tv. Its only on cspan3. This weekend testimony of truth. A 1967 film detailing civilian injuries and death caused by u. S. Bombing in north vietnam. Here is a preview. Many educational facilities have been bombed by the united states. More than 120 schools have been destroyed up to now. This is all that remains of a middle school. One of the school boys says, air raids have destroyed all the school buildings. E had shelter in the dugout. Narrowly escaped death and crept out. One woman teacher and 12 pupils cross the passage were killed. A crippled boy speaks. It was about 9 00 in the morning of july 18. An air raid began just as i came home from school and i rushed out of the room in a hurry. Feeling uneasy about my father, i was running to the farm when down came a bomb and i was knocked to the ground. I remember nothing else because fell unconscious. The band on in girls head is a mourning band. She says before the raid, i used to come home from school very happy with my mother, father, grandfather and graund mother. All 15 of them including an unborn baby have been killed. Only i am left. Even little babies are innocent victims of these american air raids. America has systematically attacked hospitals, in the south in particular. They have bombed all provincial hospitals. This is the site of a former k71 hospital. There were some 50 buildings here. All are now destroyed. 30 people, including five doctors, were killed, and many others wounded. You can watch the entire film, testimony of truth, sunday at 4 00 p. M. Eastern on reel america. You are watching american istory tv. National history day is a program that culminates in a student competition. Students are encouraged to choose a topic in history, and that can be anything. It can be world history, local, national, state, ancient, modern, everything in between. As long as they are interested in it. They go out, they do research, and find the resources to tell them the story, but also try to figure out the significance of their topic in history. So they are going to archives, into museums, into libraries,
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