Ex-slave Narratives and WPA Interviews

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Procedures:

Background – Read the backgrounds on the slave interviews and narratives from the two sites that will be used in this lesson. These backgrounds can be read by the teacher and presented to students as part of the introduction to this lesson or read by the students. The readings are

1. Reading the Narratives from American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology
2. An Introduction to the Slave Narrative from North American Slave Narratives, Beginnings to 1920

Opening - This lesson will be taught using two web sites. These sites contain interviews and narratives of slaves' lives. The interviews were written in the 1930's. The narratives were written in the 19^th century. The American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology web site contains audio file clips from one of the interviews. To introduce students to this lesson, play selections from this audio file.

Part I Reading and Research

• Step 1 Select interviews or narratives for your students to read. The reading choices can be based on your students’ interest or content related objectives. The interviews are annotated, but the narratives are not. If you have a particular content objective who may want to review the Annotated list of interviews. Narratives are listed alphabetically. If your interest is in students' historical skills, the choice of interviews and narratives may not be as important.
• Step 2 Assign each student one interview or narrative. Explain the historical context of the readings before the students begin. The interviews may reflect a very narrow slice of life among slaves in America. They were also conducted over sixty years after slavery ended. The narratives were written for publication in the popular and the abolitionist press. This information should be taken into account by students as they read. The introductions to the web sites listed in the background portion of this lesson will help students understand the respective contexts of the documents.
• Step 3 Analyze the document. This analysis should be done using the document analysis form. This form has questions relating to the content and the historiography of the document. By analyzing the content and historiography at once, students will be able to think historically on content related a subject. The content analysis portion of the form relates to the National History Standards construct of historical understanding. This historiography analysis portion relates to the National History Standards construct of historical thinking.

Each student will annotate his or her interview or narrative. The annotation should be a long paragraph and should include information from the document analysis form. Some of the items students should be sure to include are;

1. Interview - Who was the interviewer?  Who was the interviewee?
2. Narrative - Who was the narrative about? Who wrote the narrative? Who published the narrative?
3. When it was written?
4. Why was the document written?
5. A summary of the document contents
6. A description of the source in terms of it historical accuracy

Center for Technology and Teacher Education, University of Virginia, This module was created by John K. Lee University of Virginia