They created the federal writers project and decided to start collecting testimony. The 1930s with the last opportunity to collect oral generationf the last of africanamericans that experienced slavery firsthand before they passed away. They have created through that project, it only lasted a few years, 19361939. Repositoryhe largest of this testimony that we have in the u. S. , winding up with are 2300 interviews that largely Available Online at the library of congress website. Anyone interested can 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 tack by looking at the next flight project slaveve project ex project. What were the racial politics at the time . Prof. Stewart it was very complicated, there was still a great deal of jim crow racial segregation, not just in seven 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. You are probably aware interviewers are aware that that battle continues today in terms of ensuring equality for all 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 soliciting from them interviews from former slaves. People fromou had genetically different backgrounds, different racial groups, different ethnic or cultural groups, different educational backgrounds, different socioeconomic classes trying to talk to each other across these divides them about the daily 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 it is interesting, i think it is emblematic of new deal projects and that is 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 the new dealon on with major scholars, they were talking about the sense of the 1930s and the new deal as a moment of hamas and possibility, but also the fact that it was highly improvisational. The federal government was willing to try a number of 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. It was often 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. At the time it was created, it was consider the Ugly Duckling of the federal arts project. 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 called boondoggle ors 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 slavegacy, the ex narrative, it has become the most important of the federal Arts Projects of the time. In terms of how did it develop, some federal directors received slave narratives from states that had undertaken it early, and that was the state of florida. It was under the direction of a southern white woman who is very interested in africanamerican culture. She was a fan of Zora Neal Hurston, as i think many of us are today. She was professionally trained as a stenographer and this woman had it in mind that she would bring sore neal hurston back to florida and help her become the knee grow editor of the exslave florida project. Florida was one of the earliest dates to submit these interviews to federal directors in washington. As aal directors saw it 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 in the project, they all saw the articulates a way to their own views about the legacy of slavery, whether it was a brutal or benevolent legacy ofns, and the africanamericans coming out of emancipation. At the federal level, you had , knownrs like john lomax as a folk song collector. He toured around the south often with his son, and he was appointed the director of folk ways at the federal level, and he was interested in the potential of these exslave narratives. He wanted these portraits of exslaves as these role, colorful folk people, and he thought that would be appealing to a wide audience. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the only africanamerican to be appointed as a federal director of the exslave project, and that was a famous poet and professor of english from howard university, sterling brown. He was appointed as the editor of the office of Negro Affairs in washington, and it was his 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 of black culture and identity. He and his small staff were responsible for reading through it and trying to correct some of the worst stereotypes or misrepresentations of a black history and identity. Contrasting objectives and thoughts about what the project was really about. How is it perceived by the American People . Whose story was told . Prof. Stewart that is what is fascinating to me about this collection, and something that is stymied that has stymied scholars, if you will, they are always running up against the amount of diversity in the collection. If you look at the collection 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. As youu also have come might expect, a number of narratives that testify to the brutality and in humility 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. There are Different Reasons for this. Be thely one is, and may most surprising discovery i made in my research is the number of state employees who were southern whites at the state director level and at local levels as interviewers who were the united daughters of confederacy, which was an Organization Established in 1894 to preserve and memorialized the idea of the lost cause. Part of the lost cause narrative was about trying to reinforce the notion of slavery as a benevolent institution, with stories of faithful, loyal slaves and southern white largess. They were definitely trying to write over or at it the exslave narratives in different ways. It shaped the questions they asked and the answers they thought they heard. That is one layer on top of the exslaves in terms of what they are saying. What kind of sources did you have to use . You have to pull back what is going on in this project. There are 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. One of the things i love as a new deal scholar is the fact that the wpa and the administration and roosevelt were interested in documenting everything. And the national archives, there is a treasure trove of letters that went back and forth between local employees, state directors, federal directors, mrs. From federal directors saying this is how you should approach the x live, these are the guidelines and objectives. And then coming back from Southern State directors disputing their representations of black history are putting forth their own vision of slavery. There was this battle you could see play out in these letters and correspondence that went back and forth between federal directors and state directors. I also want to emphasize that one of the main sources i looked narratives exslave themselves, and trying to read them in a new way, ways 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 wanted to document their own individual life histories and experiences both in slavery and often after slavery as they became friedman and freed women. They were invested in truth telling. Ofause of the complications speaking often to southern whites who were not always open and receptive to hearing those tales, other complications in the communication, exslaves often had to speak indirectly. I looked through the narratives and tried to excavate them, if you will, looking for africanamerican oral traditions. Signifying is what sore neal Zora Neal Hurston called it. Narrativese exslave , you will find evidence of figurative language a used. You will find humor and misdirection. All of these interesting ways in which they spun their tales too 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 it is 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 southern internal as him paternalism exslave narratives. You will find ways in which exslaves are creating a counter narrative within their own my story. Own life story. It 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 you are presenting here is black lives in white households. What did you find out . Developedart that out of my personal project, research i came across as i was working on the first book, and is part of the book im working on currently. Africanamerican women and men in the mystic service during the great depression, back in the 1930s, and looking at the new deal and trying to elevate what was this menial and often lowpaid wage work in terms of Domestic Service. One of the 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. They were written for a sociology course. Of theseroup unidentified essays where young southern white women are supposed to write on a topic of Domestic Service in their own home. Type oftheir own narratives, 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. Fantasize about time travel or being a fly on the wall to discover what was happening and daytoday conversations and negotiations and interactions, and those essays kind of provide a new window into documenting the 1930s experiences of Domestic Workers. What were the young women writing about . Prof. Stewart they were instructed to write about Domestic Labor and the household. What is so interesting is even in the title, because they are undergraduate students, they are taking creative license. 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 often putting their own spin on it with their own titles. A lot of the titles are the Domestic Service problem in my negro problem in my home. And you see that many of these women are already associating anditude with race, africanamericans as the caste that will occupy menial positions. Also the assumption that any time you are talking about household help, youre talking about a problem of one kind or another. One student wrote that there is no Domestic Service problem in my home as we have no negros in my home. So there is already this interesting and complicated bringing together of notions of race, class, and servitude. What to do learn from those essays about those that were doing Domestic Work . Those that were working for these young families . Prof. Stewart there are so many intoesting glimpses we get africanamerican Domestic Workers in the south. Their personal lives. Unfortunately because these were undergraduate essays written from a privileged white perspective, a are just glances and very fragmentary and yet they reveal family relationships, marital status, clubs and activities of the workers, their own households and financial arrangements, trying to make ends meet at a time where there were few employment options for africanamericans in the south. They give us a full or picture, of africanamericans working as domestic servants. Great wealth of information about the southern white meaning of racial inequality. Many of these young women are invoking this kind of confederate stereotype of the mammy and talking about the good old faithful servants we used to have. They were one of the family. We dontgeneration, 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 until sundown. There is this precreation of white southern attitudes, expectations about africanamericans in terms of service that are very much and problematically shaped or forms by racial stereotypes of africanamerican women in particular, kind of being selfsacrificing. I also read them for tidbits of evidence about how black workers were often resisting employer demands and finding ways to trinity to to strategically negotiate or navigate white instruction or surveillance. Connect those two stories of today. Prof. Stewart i think you can see their are so many relevant connections. While that is interesting to me as a scholar and exciting to me as a scholar, it is also deeply troubling. Part of my title for my first book was meant to be literal, long past slavery, 75 years past slavery, they are interviewing exslaves for the first time about their expenses. There is also an irony, that africanamericans from exslaves to africanamericans in the project are still trying to be able to tell their own history and create their own narratives about important events in the nations 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 pushing back against the National Narrative of equality and democracy. That conflict is playing out every day in the that conflict is playing out every day in the news. The meaning of slavery, a legacy of emancipation, and the ongoing freedom struggle that continues. Catherine stewart, thank you. Prof. Stewart thank you so much. It was a pleasure. I appreciate it. Announcer you are watching American History tv, all weekend, every weekend on cspan 3. Announcer next on the presidency, a discussion about beatrix farrand. Herear about her interests, College Campus projects, and her white house garden designs. This program