The Born in Slavery collection is one of the most important primary-source archives for studying the lives, beliefs, customs, language, healing traditions, folklore and spiritual worldview of formerly enslaved African Americans. Created through the Federal Writers’ Project during the 1930s, the collection contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and approximately 500 photographs. Interviews were collected across numerous states, including Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. The Library of Congress For students of Hoodoo, these narratives provide historical context for understanding the communities in which African American folk spiritual traditions were preserved and transmitted.
History
Between 1936 and 1938, Federal Writers’ Project workers interviewed elderly African Americans who had experienced slavery firsthand. The interviews were eventually assembled into 17 volumes organized largely by state. Georgia alone occupies four parts of Volume 4. The Library of Congress The collection is especially valuable because researchers can hear the recollections of people born much closer to the period in which African American spiritual and folk traditions developed under slavery. However, these accounts must be read critically. Interviewers shaped the written transcripts, attempted to represent African American dialect in writing, and operated within the racial conditions of the 1930s. The Library of Congress therefore provides contextual essays about the collection, its interviewers and its language.
Traditional Uses
This collection is not a Hoodoo instruction manual. Instead, it should be used as a historical research source. Researchers can search the narratives for references to folk belief, conjure, root doctors, healing, charms, dreams, signs, spirits, prayer, plants, remedies and other elements of African American folk culture. When researching Hoodoo, search multiple terms and variant spellings rather than relying solely on the word “Hoodoo.” The Library of Congress specifically recommends searching the collection by keyword, narrator or informant and trying variant spellings. The Library of Congress
Cultural & Historical Context
Hoodoo developed within African American communities shaped by enslavement, survival, African cultural inheritance, Christianity, Indigenous and European influences, regional plant knowledge and generations of oral transmission. These narratives allow researchers to examine the broader Black Southern world from which Hoodoo emerged rather than studying spiritual practices in isolation. Because the accounts passed through interviewers and editors, they should be compared with additional oral histories, Black-authored scholarship, folklore collections and practitioner testimony.
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