Publisher's Synopsis
The Federal Writers' Project, created during the Great Depression of the 1930s, hired unemployed white collar workers to write guidebooks to each state and major city. Some projects interviewed former slaves. Although these slave narratives have been published, those of the Louisiana Writers' Project have lain dormant for almost fifty years. For the first time these narratives appear in print. They provide a graphic and moving portrait of life during and after slavery. The narrators describe punishment, marriage, religion, food, medical treatment and cures, funerals, war, education, witchcraft, spirits, and other subjects. The fascinating story that emerges is one that no novelist could contrive nor historian construe. Voices once mute, pens once stilled, leap to life. For it is their story - those former slaves, and their work - those members of the LWP - their most enduring legacy.
