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The Nature of Resistance in South Carolina's Works Progress Administration Ex-Slave Narratives

by Gerald J. Pierson

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Institution: University of Toledo
Advisor(s): Marvin L. Michael Kay
Degree: M.A. History
Year: 1990
Volume: 160 pages
ISBN-10: 1581121598
ISBN-13: 9781581121599

Abstract

The Federal Writers' Project, part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration of the 1930s, collected interviews from over 3500 ex-slaves throughout the United States, including 365 former South Carolina slaves. These narratives are an invaluable resource to those interested in resistance by the last generation of South Carolinians held in bondage. This thesis tells us about the separate worlds inhabited by the Palmetto State's slaves and their owners, and describes, often in the slaves' own words, the resistance precipitated by the friction between these worlds.