WPA Oral History Transcripts on the Internet Archive

The WPA's Federal Writers' Project employed thousands of writers during the Great Depression to collect life histories from ordinary Americans. The most significant of these are the Slave Narratives: over 2,300 first-person accounts from people who had been enslaved, recorded in the 1930s when the last generation of survivors was still alive.

The Internet Archive preserves digitized transcripts from these interviews, which represent an irreplaceable historical resource. The narratives were recorded by writers of varying skill and sensitivity, and they reflect the racial dynamics of their era — but they remain the largest collection of first-person testimony about American slavery.

Beyond the Slave Narratives, WPA oral histories document the experiences of immigrants, factory workers, farmers, and tradespeople during the Depression era. They are primary sources for social history that no census data or newspaper account can replace.