Mapping the WPA Interviews: Lives After Slavery

A student-led digital humanities project exploring the lives of formerly enslaved people interviewed by the Federal Writers’ Project.

In the 1930s, as part of the Federal Writers’ Project, more than 2,300 interviews were conducted with elderly formerly enslaved people across the United States. These narratives provide extraordinary first-hand testimony of enslavement, emancipation and their aftermath, while also presenting important methodological challenges for historians seeking to recover and interpret the experiences of formerly enslaved people.

This student-led digital humanities project grows out of my teaching on the second-year module Gender, Race and Slavery in the United States at Liverpool John Moores University. Students undertake an original research project centred on an interview with a formerly enslaved person, combining close analysis of the testimony with research across digitised archives, historical newspapers, census records and genealogical databases.

Using these digital resources, students reconstruct individual and family histories that extend beyond the surviving interview. They trace people through slavery and emancipation, investigate communities and relationships, and place individual testimony within the wider histories of slavery, race and freedom in the United States.

A central part of the project is critical engagement with the creation of the archive itself. Students research both Black and white Federal Writers’ Project interviewers, considering their backgrounds, relationships with interviewees and the racial and political contexts in which the interviews were produced. This microhistorical approach encourages students to think critically about archival power, mediation and historical voice, while developing methods for recovering individual experiences from complex and sometimes problematic sources.

The resulting research is shared here as an evolving digital resource. Each year, new student research is added, creating a growing collection of individual histories and demonstrating how digital humanities, archival research and public history can be integrated into undergraduate teaching.

Explore the interviews

The map below shows where each individual was interviewed. Select a point to learn more about the interviewee and explore the research produced by students.

This is a growing digital resource. New student research and interview locations are currently being added to the map.