Description:

From 1936 to 1939, the New Deal's Federal Writers' Project collected life stories from more than 2,300 former African American slaves. These narratives are now widely used as a source to understand the lived experience of those who made the transition from slavery to freedom. But in this examination of the project and its legacy, Catherine A. Stewart shows it was the product of competing visions of the past, as ex-slaves' memories of bondage, emancipation, and life as freedpeople were used to craft arguments for and against full inclusion of African Americans in society. Stewart demonstrates how project administrators, such as the folklorist John Lomax; white and black interviewers, including Zora Neale Hurston; and the ex-slaves themselves fought to shape understandings of black identity. She reveals that some influential project employees were also members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, intent on memorializing the Old South. Stewart places ex-slaves at the center of debates over black citizenship to illuminate African Americans' struggle to redefine their past as well as their future in the face of formidable opposition.

By shedding new light on a critically important episode in the history of race, remembrance, and the legacy of slavery in the United States, Stewart compels readers to rethink a prominent archive used to construct that history.

About the Author

Catherine A. Stewart is professor of history at Cornell College. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Review

Essential for those interested in African American history and the Great Depression.-- Library Journal

This excellent, penetrating study presents much-needed information about the Ex-Slave Project's creation. . . . An important book deserving of wide readership. Highly recommended.-- CHOICE

This is a superbly researched, engaging, and insightful book, which deserves to be read by all social historians . . . as well as any scholars interested in American racial politics. Indispensable.-- Institute of Historical Research

Enters the interdisciplinary realm by offering a nuanced examination of how the fields of sociology, anthropology, history, and folklore intersected with New Deal politics. . . . Essential reading for anyone hoping to make use of [the WPA Ex-Slave Interviews] archive.-- Journal of Interdisciplinary History

A compelling read which will provide an invaluable contribution to scholarship around the Federal Writers' Project and for those interested in the construction and representation of competing historical memories of race.-- Slavery & Abolition

Scholars and graduate students interested in the New Deal, cultural memory, ethnography, the legacies of slavery, and African American history will find in Long Past Slavery a richly detailed take on the work of the Federal Writers' Project.-- Journal of Southern History

With insightful prose and intricate detail Stewart makes a persuasive case for the centrality of the Ex-Slave Project to the racial landscape of the 1930s. . . . Highly recommended.-- Civil War History

A fascinating study of the Ex-Slave Project, conceived as an arena for contemporary discussions about history, identity, and citizenship.-- Dutch Review of Books

Stewart's trenchant analysis of ex-slave narratives . . . probes deeper rhetorical patterns, identifying interviewees' agency in their deft control of economic and cultural exchange as in their signifying, indirection, and role reversal.-- Journal of American History

Illuminate[s] the complexities of tackling New Deal cultural initiatives. . . . [this study] should encourage more scholars to probe all four arts programs with the same degree of vigor.-- Reviews in American History

Stewart's careful archival research and sensitive close readings render Long Past Slavery valuable for historians of New Deal–era racial representation and for anyone using the FWP narratives to understand slavery.-- American Historical Review

Provides a fresh perspective by situating the FWP's Ex-Slave Project within the intellectual and cultural contexts of the 1930s, mining the archival sources that trace its development and operation from 1936 to 1939, and illuminating the conflicting perspectives of its federal and state leaders, white and African American employees in several states, and formerly enslaved people themselves.-- American Historical Review

Combines the research of an historian with readable prose that makes her scholarship accessible to a wide audience . . . A fascinating study of the struggle to control how history is recorded and interpreted.-- Callaloo

An incisive and well-documented history of racial representation in the Federal Writers' Project. . . . Impressive and highly readable.-- Journal of Social History

--This text refers to the paperback edition.

Review

In this provocative history of the ex-slave narratives compiled by the Federal Writers' Project, Catherine A. Stewart provides an essential text for understanding race relations in America before the civil rights era.--Nina Silber, Boston University

--This text refers to the paperback edition.