A Note On The Language Of The Narratives
The Library of Congress notes that the interviewers sent out to talk with former slaves were told to transcribe the interviews as spoken. However, the former slaves were African American, the interviewers were white and "by the 1930s, when the interviews took place, white representations of black speech already had an ugly history of entrenched stereotype dating back at least to the early nineteenth century." This means that the transcriptions may offend some of today's readers.
Senior Research Analyst, Feminist Sexual Ethics Project
Melissa J. de Graaf
Research Analyst, Feminist Sexual Ethics Project