The passing away of the old time Negro: 200 folk culture, Civil War memory, and black authority in the 1930s -- Committing mayhem on the body grammatic: the FWP, the American guide, and representations of black identity -- Out of the mouths of slaves: the Ex-Slave Project and the "Negro question" -- Adventures of a ballad hunter: John Lomax and the folklorist as hero -- The everybody who's nobody: black employees in the FWP -- Conjure queen: Zora Neale Hurston and black folk culture -- Follow me through Florida: Florida's Negro writers' unit, the Ex-Slave Project, and the Florida Negro -- Rewriting the master('s) narrative: signifying in the ex-slave narratives -- Freedom dreams: the last generation
Summary
From 1936 to 1939, the New Deal's Federal Writers' Project collected life stories from more than 2,300 former African American slaves. 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 were used to craft arguments for and against full inclusion of African Americans in society
