Experienced slaevry firsthand before they passed away. They had created through that project that lasted only a few years, 1936 to 1939, that project created the largest repository of exslave testimony we have in the united states, winding up with over 2300 exslave interviews that are now largely Available Online at the library of congress website. Anyone who is interested can go in and use those. Scholars have used them to dramatically transform the way they write about the history of slavery and emancipation and kind of reconsider that. My book took a slightly different turn or different tact by looking at the exslave collection as its known to look at the racial politics of the 1930s and really to see what does it tell us about race and the federal government and attempts to rewrite a National Historical narrative during the kind of moment of economic crisis and kind of a nationwide crisis in terms of the sense of national identity. What are the racial politics at the time . Well, you know, it was very complicated by the fact that there was still a great deal of jim crow, racial segregation, not just in Southern States but in many northern places as well. Aspects of racial segregation that would not go addressed or would go unaddressed really until the Civil Rights Movement of the post world war ii era, resulting in famous legislation like the brown versus board of education to desegregate the Public School district. As youre probably aware and viewers are aware, thats a battle that continues today in terms of ensuring equality for all within the united states. It was a project of the 1930s that was complicated because it was radical in the sense that the federal government was paying unemployed writers to go out and kind of collect local histories and local culture. And then ended up soliciting from them interviews with former slaves. And that meant that you had people from dramatically different backgrounds, different racial groups, different ethnic or culture groups, different educational backgrounds, different socioeconomic classes trying to talk to each other, very often, across these divides about the very highly charged topic of slavery and emancipation and its meaning for the nation and for africanamerican citizenship in the 1930s. What is the government telling these writers . Its interesting. I think its emblematic of the new deal projects. Thats one of the reasons im drun to it as a scholar and will be look at it as well in my new book. Its of great promise and potential. One of the sessions i was attending here at the american historians is a session with the new deal with major scholars. They were talking about the sense of 1930s and the new deal as a moment of promise, moment of possibility but also it was highly improvisational. 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 and certainly through the creation of cultural projects. It was very often an ad hoc development. And i think the federal writers project epitomizes the ad hoc, in that it started off under the auspices of the wpa. At the time it was created it was considered kind of the Ugly Duckling because the public really regarded with a great deal of skepticism and suspicion this idea of illdefined category of unemployed writers getting put on the relief roles to do who knows what. They were called boonedogglors or slackers, not really pulling their weight during the time of the great depression. It was not well received by the American Public but because of its legacy, exslave narrative collection, which is absolutely astounding, its really become, in retrospect, really the most important of the federal Arts Projects of the time. To speak to your question in terms of how did it develop, some of the federal directors received exslave narratives from one of the states that had undertaken it early, in an interest of preserving black history and that was the state of florida under the state direction of a southern white woman who was very interested in africanamerican culture. She was a fan of the writers, author of the eyes are watching god. A professionally trained sten ographer and she had it in mind she would help her become the negro editor, as it would have been referred to at the time, of the exslave portion of the florida project. The federal directors in washington saw this as really a rich possibility for other states to undertake as well for a number of Different Reasons. This is kind of where the complications come in. When you look at the exslave project at every level of the project, all of these different groups and different stake holders involved within the project all saw exslave testimony as a way to really kind of or as a space to articulate their own views about the legacy of slavery, whether or not it was a brutal or Benevolent Institution and the legacy for africanamericans coming out of emancipation. To give you an example at the federal level, you had federal directors like john lomax, who is well known for being a folk song collector, who helped to create the largest folk song collection, touring around the south very often with his son, allen lomax. At the federal writers project federal level and was very interested in the potential of these exslave narratives. He wanted portraits of former slaves as this kind of rural, exotic, kind of 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 a federal director of the federal writers exslave project and that was the very famous poet, from Howard University sterling brown. So sterling brown was appointed as the editor of the office of Negro Affairs in washington. And it was his, i would say, very unenviable task to review all of the copy that was sent in, all of the submissions sent in from different state directors, state and local offices, anything pertaining to black history, black culture and identity. Sterling brown and his very small staff were responsible for reading through it and trying to correct some of the worst stereotypes or misrepresentations of black history and identity. So you kind of got contrasting objectives and thoughts about what this project was really about. And then how was it perceived by the American People then . I mean, whose story was told . Thats whats so fascinating to me about this particular collection. And something thats really stymied, if you will, scholars who have used itesquively, but are always running up against this question of the great amount of diversity that exists within this collection. If you look at this collection or brows it online, youll notice a lot of narratives from former slaves that might surprise you. They talk about the good old days of slavery or kind of benevolent masters and mistresses and as you might expect, a number of exslave narratives that really testify to the brutality, inhumanity and violence of the system. So you have competing stories, competing narratives. Again, not just about slavery as an institution but really kind of thinking further ahead in terms of africanamerican identity. And theres a couple of Different Reasons for this. Certainly one is, and maybe the most surprising discovery i made in my research, is the fact that a number of state employees who were southern whites, both at the state director level and also in local offices as white interviewers, were also members of the united daughters of the confederacy, an Organization Established in 1894 specifically to kind of preserve and memorialize the idea of the lost cause. And part of that lost cause narrative was really about trying to reinforce this notion of slave ry as a Benevolent Institution with stories of faithful, loyal slaves, black dependents and southern white so they were trying to write over, if you will, or edit the exslave narratives in different ways that shaped the kind of questions they asked. It also shaped the answers that they thought they heard. So, thats kind of one layer thats put on top of the exslaves in terms of what theyre actually telling. So, what kind of sources did you have to use to discover and pull back whats going on in this project . Yeah, because theres all these kind of competing, woven tapestry if you will of voices within this collection itself. One thing that was most helpful to me in addition to the nar actives was the federal and administrative correspondence. One thing 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. In the national archives, theres a huge treasure trove of letters that went back about forth between local employees, state directors, federal directors, saying this is how you need to approach the exslave narratives. These are the guidelines you should follow. These are the objectives and correspondence coming back from Southern State directors, disputing their own representations of black history or putting forth your own vision of slavery. So, its kind of this contest and battle that you can see play out in all these letters and correspondence that went back and forth between federal and state directors. One of the main sources i looked at were the exslave narratives themselves. And that was really trying to read them in a new way, in ways that scholars hadnt specifically looked at, specifically seeing them as a type of oral performance. The fact that exslaves themselves were invested in the stories that they had to tell. They definitely wanted to document their own individual life histories and their experiences, both during slavery and very often after slavery, as they became freed men and freed women and they, themselves, were very invested in truth telling. But speaking to southern whites who were not necessarily open or receptive to hearing those particular tales, other complications in that communication, exslaves very often had to speak indirectly. So i kind of looked through the narratives, tried to excavate them if you will, looking for africanamerican traditions known as signifying. Henry lewis gates jr. Has talked a lot about signifying. Thats a way of telling the truth but in a roundabout, indirect way. You have to read between the lines. Very often in the exslave narratives, youll find evidence of figurative language that exslaves used. Youll find very often humor or indirection. All of these kind of interesting ways in which they spun their tales in order to, very often, communicate the truth of their own experience, even when they were faced with a hostile audience. Did you discover new meaning . I did. I think in the sense that it is a collection thats been combed over and use bid scholars previously. I feel like i found new things in terms of narratives that very often can look, at first glance, like a typical southern exslave narrative. We look for those oral traditions, youll find ways in which exslaves are creating a counternarrative within their own life story, a counternarrative that goes against lost cause mythology, against this idea of romanticizing the old south. You have to learn how to read for those signals and clues left behind. Your paper that you are representing here at aoh is black lives in white households. What did you find out . That is a project that developed out of my first book project, reeveryone is i came across while working on that first book. Its part of my new book im working on currently, looking at africanamerican women and men and service during the great depression, back in the 1930s and looking at new deal attempts to elevate what was considered a very menial and very often lowpaid wage work in terms of Domestic Service. One of the delightful finds i discovered in the archives, and i rare and unusual collection is a group of undergraduate student essays written by young southern white women at a private college in the south. They were written for their sociology course. I found this group of unident y unidentified essays where young, southern white women are supposed to write on domestic servants in their own homes. Their own type of narrative, if you will. Very often short essays, two to three pages but really give all kinds of information from a contemporary perspective, what negotiations were like within individual households in the suggest between africanamerican employees, men and women working in different positions, and their southern white employers. The stories fantasize about time travel, being a fly on the wall to discover what was happening in daytoday conversations and negotiations and interactions and those essays kind of provide this new he essays provide ligh into the new window in 1930s experiences. What are the young women writing about . So the titles, they were instructed to write about domestic help within the home or Domestic Labor within my household. Even in the titles, because theyre undergraduate students, theyre kind of taking creative license in a test of what that means to them. So obviously ive done a Little Research to try to figure out what was the course, who was the professor . What is the intent of this type of assignment and the goal. But theyre putting their own spin on it with their own titles. A lot of the titles, are the domestic servant problem in my home. The problem in my home. And very often you can see that southern young white women are already associating this notion of servitude with race and connecting it to africanamericans as being the group or the cast, if you will, thats going to be occupying these kind of domestic menial positions. And then further than that, also making assumptions about the fact that any time youre talking about household help, youre talking about a problem of one kind or another. Actually one student that wrote and said there is no problem. There is no Domestic Service problem in my home because we have no negroes in my home. So there is already this kind of interesting bringing together and complicated bringing together of the notions of race, class, and servitude. What did you learn from those essays about those that were doing the domestic work, those that were working for these young families . Absolutely. There are so many interesting kind of glimpses that we get into africanamerican Domestic Workers in the south, their personal lives. Unfortunately, these are undergraduate student written from a privileged white speshgtive. The glimpses are just glimpses. But they reveal new information about family relationships, about marital status, about club and social activities of these workers, about their own households, their own financial arrangements, trying to make times meet when there railroad few Employment Opportunities and options for africanamericans in the south. So they give thus new fuller picture, if you will, of africanamericans working as domestic servants. I also reason for the great wealth of information they give us about southern whites ideas about the meaning of racial inequality. And many of these young southern white women are talking about and invoking this confederate stereotype of the nanny and talking about oh, the good old faithful servants we used to have. Wonderful. And they were like one of the family. And this newer generation, you know, we dont know what to do with them. They refuse to accommodate all of our needs. They demand to be paid in wages. They wont live in any more. They wont work from sunup to sun down and the like. So there is this kind of recreation, if you will, of white southern attitudes about expectations, about africanamericans in terms of service that are very much and problematically kind of shaped if you will or informed by racial stereotypes of africanamerican women in particular as being the self sacrificing nanny figure. So i read them for that. But then i also read them for little tidbits and evidence of how black workers were very often resisting employers demands and finding ways to kind of strategically negotiate or navigate white forms of instruction or surveillance, with he could say. Connect those two stories to today. I think you can see there were so many relevant connections and, you know, while that is interesting to me just as a collar, exciting for me as a scholar, it is also deeply troubling. Part of my title for my first book long past slavery was really meant to be literal. Long past slavery. 75 years past slavery. Theyre interviewing exslaves for the first time about their own experiences. But there is also an irony in that title. Long past slavery in the 1930s, africanamericans from exslaves to africanamerican employees of the project are still trying to gain the authority with the white public to tell their own history and narratives about important events in the nations past. So long past slavery, unfortunate lishgs it continu unfortunately, they talk about that legacy to shape us as a nation and certainly continues in terms of confederate memorien that kind of pushing back against a National Narrative of equality and democracy. That conflict is playing out every day in the news. Forms of public memory that we have about, again, still the meaning of slavery, the legacy of emancipation and the on going freedom struggle that continues since then. Katherine stewart, thank you. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. I appreciate it. Thanks for your interest in my work. Yes. Cdc director dr. Robert redfield is getting ready to talk to the subcommittee on the governments response to the coronavirus pandemic. Live coverage of his testimony right here on cspan3